Building Business in Post-Communist Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia

Dinissa Duvanova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo. Her research explores business-state relations, state regulatory quality and bureaucratic institutions. Native to the country of Kazakhstan, in 1998 she received the prestigious 'Bolashak' Presidential Scholarship, awarded to the top graduates of Kazakh universities. She was a recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies and the German Academic Exchange Service academic fellowships. After receiving her PhD from Ohio State University, she spent the 2007–8 academic year as a visiting scholar at the Princeton University Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. She was also awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. In 2008, Duvanova joined the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, where she researches the issues of regulatory intervention, bureaucratic discretion, civil service reforms and public accountability of state bureaucracy. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs and Europe-Asia Studies. Her current research projects are supported by the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo Law School.

1. Introduction; 2. Collective action in adverse business environments; 3. Postcommunist business representation in a comparative perspective; 4. Business environment and business organization: the quantitative approach; 5. What you do is what you are: business associations in action; 6. Compulsory vs voluntary membership; 7. Conclusions.