MODERN VIKINGS IN THE EAST. Sweden’s Role in 1990’s Russian Economic Reforms: Institutions, Elite Networks, and Informal Practices

Considerable evidence indicates that Sweden, despite its size, played substantial roles in the “free market” economic reforms in 1990’s post-Soviet Russia and as an intermediary with the West.

This four-year project employs mixed qualitative methods and network analysis to study the roles of Swedish institutions, elites, and funding in the reforms and the ways in which reforms stimulated existing informal practices in Russia such as double accountancy, elite networks of “mutual complicity,” and the alternative enforcement of law.

It will trace the links between the reforms on one hand and institutions and (mostly) new practices on the other involving pyramid schemes, offshoring money, and elite networks.

And it will examine the ways and extent to which these practices and networks continue to wield influence on Russian and Swedish institutions.

While the involvement of the United States in this era is well-established, the influence of Swedish institutions and experts in the reforms and as middlemen with the West is not.

This project brings together scholars with combined expertise in governance, banking, finance, elite influence, network analysis, foreign aid, and Eastern Europe to fill that gap.

In engaging diverse literatures on informal practices, elite networks, and varieties of capitalism in conversation, the study also will contribute to theory.

The project will capture network data in graphic visualizations and result in a series of scholarly articles and two books.