This book reconciles the conflicting evidence of simultaneous improvements in the governance of post-Soviet states and the unmistakable signs of growing predation and systemic corruption. To better understand how corruption and statism can coincide with improved governance, Thieves, Opportunists, and Autocrats focuses on the varying ways in which legislatures and bureaucrats have drafted regulatory policy--the state's key economic policy tool in capitalist socieites--and implemented it in Russia and Kazakhstan.
