Guest Speaker Dr Cheng Chen

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE SPEAKER SERIES

Regime-Building and Corruption Crackdowns in Russia and China

Cheng Chen  (University at Albany)

Friday, April 5, 2024

12:30-2:00pm

Hall Building, Room H-1220

Given vast elite corruption in contemporary China and Russia, what drove these regimes’ divergent approaches to controlling elite corruption over time? In general, what roles have corruption crackdowns played in Russia and China’s regime-building efforts both during and after communism, and what can they tell us about Russia and China’s different types of authoritarianism? By analyzing elite corruption crackdowns in China and Russia both under and after communism, this comparative-historical study argues that controlling elite corruption has been an integral part of authoritarian regime-building, and that these regimes’ divergent anticorruption strategies at present were conditioned by their past experiences combatting elite corruption under communism, as well as the institutional tools at their disposal.

Cheng Chen is Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY.