Instead of traditional principal–agent conflicts espoused in most research dealing with developed economies, principal–principal conflicts have been identified as a major concern of corporate governance in emerging economies. Principal–principal conflicts between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders result from concentrated ownership, extensive family ownership and control, business group structures, and weak legal protection of minority shareholders. Such principal–principal conflicts alter the dynamics of the corporate governance process and, in turn, require remedies different from those that deal with principal–agent conflicts. This article reviews and synthesizes recent research from strategy, finance, and economics on principal–principal conflicts with an emphasis on their institutional antecedents and organizational consequences. The resulting integration provides a foundation upon which future research can continue to build.

Corporate governance in emerging economies: A review of the principal-principal perspective: Review paper

Instead of traditional principal-agent conflicts espoused in most research dealing with developed economies, principal-principal conflicts have been identified as a major concern of corporate governance in emerging economies. Principal-principal conflicts between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders result from concentrated ownership, extensive family ownership and control, business group structures, and weak legal protection of minority shareholders. Such principal-principal conflicts alter the dynamics of the corporate governance process and, in turn, require remedies different from those that deal with principal-agent conflicts. This article reviews and synthesizes recent research from strategy, finance, and economics on principal-principal conflicts with an emphasis on their institutional antecedents and organizational consequences. The resulting integration provides a foundation upon which future research can continue to build.

Review Paper Corporate Governance in Emerging Economies: A Review of the Principal-Principal Perspective

Entrepreneurship in and around institutional voids: A case study from Bangladesh ☆

This is the first comprehensive critical evaluation of the use of rational choice theory in political science. Writing in an accessible and nontechnical style, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro assess rational choice theory where it is reputed to be most successful: the study of collective action, the behavior of political parties and politicians, and such phenomena as voting cycles and Prisoner's Dilemmas. In their hard-hitting critique, Green and Shapiro demonstrate that the much heralded achievements of rational choice theory are in fact deeply suspect and that fundamental rethinking is needed if rational choice theorists are to contribute to the understanding of politics. In their final chapters, they anticipate and respond to a variety of possible rational choice responses to their arguments, thereby initiating a dialogue that is bound to continue for some time.

Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science.

This paper explores the ethnographic technique of the focused revisit-rare in sociology but common in anthropology-when an ethnographer returns to the site of a previous study. Discrepancies between earlier and later accounts can be attributed to differences in: (1) the relation of observer to participant, (2) theory brought to the field by the ethnographer, (3) internal processes within the field site itself or (4) forces external to the field site. Focused revisits tend to settle on one or another of these four explanations, giving rise to four types of focused revisits. Using examples, the limits of each type of focused revisit are explored with a view to developing a reflexive ethnography that combines all four approaches. The principles of the focused revisit are then extended to rolling, punctuated, heuristic, archeological, and valedictory revisits. In centering attention on ethnography-as-revisit sociologists directly confront the dilemmas of participating in the world they study-a world that undergoes (real) historical change that can only be grasped using a (constructed) theoretical lens

Revisits: An outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography

In light of the experiences of an entire decade, the economic transition in Russia has repeatedly been assessed as having resulted in unforeseen and extraordinary economic contraction, accompanied by all-round sociopolitical (and monetary) chaos. Such an outcome is all the more disturbing because it emerged in place of what had been expected as the most important result of market-oriented policies and reforms: a profound change in the behavior of the economic actors in accordance with the new market forces. Explanations for the failure are numerous, starting with the institutional erosion that Russia has undergone and ending with the partial character of the reforms. David Woodruffs Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism occupies an important place in the literature on the transition in Russia. By focusing on a characteristic phenomenon of Russian society and economy, barter, the book brings us substantially closer to an understanding of the country's economic failure so far. It demonstrates both the reasons why a barter economy has developed to an unprecedented extent in contemporary Russia, originating in the lack of a state building project with widespread popular support, and why the barter economy constitutes an obstacle of unprecedented potency in the path of Russia's problematic transition. As the title of the book suggests, the author directly links 'unmade money' and barter to 'the fate of Russian capitalism'. Woodruff uses the expression 'making money' as a dual metaphor: in the first place, the expression relates to the Soviet organization of production which functioned not to make money but to implement a plan; in the second place, it signifies the opposite of barter: when an enterprise 'makes money', naturally enough, it receives payment for its goods or services, instead of receiving goods in exchange for goods. When barter proliferates, the enterprise is paid in kind, another important concept in Woodruffs discussion. Hence the expression 'money unmade' signifies a general notion of a barter' dominated economy when enterprises are both unwilling to and incapable of , making money. Hence money as a means of exchange is deprived of any func. tion in the economy. ̀

Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism

In the first decade after the collapse of Communism, Russia became notorious for conflicts around corporate property and corporate governance. In Poland, such conflicts were far less frequent. This distinction, I argue, reflects the form of privatization in each country. In Poland, negotiation among potential shareholders and current enterprise stakeholders preceded privatization, whereas in Russia privatization procedures pitted these same groups against one another. The legacy of privatization in Russia expressed itself in long-running legal conflicts over the security of property rights. These developments highlight the importance of situational incentives to challenge or respect property rights, undermining various new-institutionalist arguments that link security of property rights primarily to the commitment and capacity of state bodies to enforce them, to the normative legitimacy of the law, or to coordination equilibria in a game-theoretic framework. The argument also enables a clarification of the political trajectory now leading to stronger corporate property rights in Russia. M ore than a decade after the collapse of state socialism in the East Bloc, the region displays many striking and intriguing contrasts in national trajectories. This article focuses on one such contrast: the remarkable distinctions between Poland and Russia in the area of corporate governance. In the 1990s, Russia’s corporate governance became notoriously conflictual. In any number of privatized firms, management refused to share power and profits with shareholders, sometimes via flouting the law, at other times by simply manipulating it. Legal experts asked “What went wrong?” and sought “corporate governance lessons from Russian enterprise fiascoes” (Black, Kraakman, and Tarassova 2000; Fox and Heller 2000). The state of corporate legality in Poland, by contrast, drew far more flatter

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Property Rights in Context: Privatization's Legacy for Corporate Legality in Poland and Russia

The Eurozone’s reaction to the economic crisis beginning in late 2008 involved both efforts to mitigate the arbitrarily destructive effects of markets and vigorous pursuit of policies aimed at austerity and deflation. To explain this paradoxical outcome, this paper builds on Karl Polanyi’s account of how politics reached a similar deadlock in the 1930s. Polanyi argued that democratic impulses pushed for the protective response to malfunctioning markets. However, under the gold standard the prospect of currency panic afforded great political influence to bankers, who used it to push for austerity, deflationary policies, and the political marginalization of labor. Only with the achievement of this last would bankers and their political allies countenance surrendering the gold standard. The paper reconstructs Polanyi’s theory of “governing by panic” and uses it to explain the course of the Eurozone policy over three key episodes in the course of 2010-2012. The prospect of panic on sovereign debt markets served as a political weapon capable of limiting a protective response, wielded in this case by the European Central Bank (ECB). Committed to the neoliberal “Brussels-Frankfurt consensus,” the ECB used the threat of staying idle during panic episodes to push policies and institutional changes promoting austerity and deflation. Germany’s Ordoliberalism, and its weight in European affairs, contributed to the credibility of this threat. While in September 2012 the ECB did accept a lender-of-last-resort role for sovereign debt, it did so only after successfully promoting institutional changes that severely complicated any deviation from its preferred policies.

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Governing by Panic: The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis

An American specialist on Russia's political economy critically analyzes the “virtual economy” model pioneered by Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes Particular focus is on the model's characterization of the allegedly value-destroying sectors of the Russian economy An analysis of Gazprom tests propositions about rationality embedded in the model An algebraic appendix reinforces the article's conclusions with the results of a more formal methodology

It's Value That's Virtual: Bartles, Rubles, and the Place of Gazprom in the Russian Economy

I investigate contemporary Russia’s real, but shallow success in implementing two borrowed capitalist institutions—a monetary system and the joint-stock company. Even though money and shares of stock in Russia are exchanged in voluntary transactions, they fail to play the legal roles ordinarily expected of them, resulting in weak corporate governance and nonmonetary (barter) exchange. Via a criticism of gametheoretic approaches to institutions in the New Institutional Economics, I argue that the roots of this shallow marketization lie in the distinct social foundations of the transactional and legal roles of money and corporate stock. Arguments drawn from sociological institutionalism then illuminate why Russia displays this limited isomorphism to authoritative international models of market institutions. The article concludes by discussing implications for a third body of institutional theory, historical institutionalism, and the possible broader relevance of the pattern of shallow marketization in contemporary relatively backward countries.

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David M. Woodruff

Papers

Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism

Property Rights in Context: Privatization's Legacy for Corporate Legality in Poland and Russia

Governing by Panic: The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis

It's Value That's Virtual: Bartles, Rubles, and the Place of Gazprom in the Russian Economy

Rules for Followers: Institutional Theory and the New Politics of Economic Backwardness in Russia: