Beyond Cronyism: Local Governance and Welfare Provision by Large Companies in Russian Monotowns

In the 2000s, rather than choosing between abandonment and restructuring, Russian authorities opted to maintain the socio-economic status quo in monotowns, an important source of support for the Putin regime. Yet, this status quo is not a given equilibrium; it needs constant maintenance through cooperation between state and business actors, especially under the severe financial constraints of regional and local budgets. This single case study explores how and why local authorities and large companies cooperate in monotowns to provide public goods at the nexus of vertical pressures and horizontal incentives. We show that public goods are produced through resource pooling in a network-like cooperation between public and private actors.