Authors

Dmitry D. Volkov¹;  ¹ National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, France

Discussion

Since the early 2000s, the Russian IT sector has developed independently from the state to become one the most dynamic and internationalised sectors of the Russian economy. The state’s interventionism grew progressively following political consolidation. Its double concern with both security and economic development manifested itself through greater control in strategic domains, on the one hand, and internationally competitive regulatory incentives, on the other. The increasing role of the state in the economy strengthened the neo-prebendal elements of Russian capitalism, consequently affecting the dominant sources of finance and demand. This paper argues that these institutional developments have become an important factor in the choice of strategies of Russian IT companies adopted depending on the target market (international or domestic), customer strategy (B2C or B2B) and product or service specialisation. The impact of the war in Ukraine is instrumental to our understanding in as much as it crystalised and reinforced some of the trends that came to characterise the sector’s state-market relations in its three-decades-long evolution with important implications on the country’s technological development. The paper draws on an institutionalist and evolutionary approach to the study of Russia’s state-market relations in the digital sector with reference to thirty-one interviews with Russian entrepreneurs and experts conducted by the author between February and July 2022.