A book review by Ekaterina Paustyan, our post-doctoral fellow, has just come out in the new issue of Europe-Asia Studies. Ekaterina reviewed the book by Alexander Libman and Michael Rochlitz "Federalism in China and Russia: Story of Success and Story of Failure?", published by Edward Elgar in 2019.

In their book, Alexander and Michael seek to explain the variation in the growth performance in large multi-tiered autocracies by studying the cases of China and Russia. Building on the principal-agent theory, the authors compare the key dimensions of centre-region relations in the two countries. They suggest that the difference in the growth performance in China and Russia, to a large extent, can be explained by the way formal and informal institutions and centre-region relations are organised there.