User:Anna.s.ivanova/sandbox

Alena V. Ledeneva (Russian: Алёна Валерьевна Леденёва; born May 12, 1964) is  Professor of Politics and Society at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London (UCL). She is known for her studies of blat, corruption and informal practices in Russia.

Career
Ledeneva studied Economics at the Novosibirsk State University (1986) and Social and Political Theory at the University of Cambridge (Newnham College, M.Phil.1992; Ph.D.1996). She was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at New Hall College, Cambridge (1996-1999); Senior Fellow at the Davis Center, Harvard University (2005); Simon Professor at the University of Manchester (2006), Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Paris (2010) and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Paris (2013-2014). She is a member of Valdai Disscussion Club. Currently, Ledeneva leads the UCL pillar in the large-scale research project funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program - Anticorruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenge of Corruption (ANTICORRP).

Research
Ledeneva's expertise is on Russia and global affairs, global governance and corruption; informal economy; economic crime; informal practices in corporate governance; the role of networks and patron-client relationships.

In her first book "Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange" Ledeneva examines the phenomenon of blat - the use of informal contacts and personal networks to obtain goods and services under the rationing that pervaded Soviet Russia. She analyzes the historical, socioeconomic and cultural aspects of blat, and explores its implications for post-Soviet Russia. She argues that even if the political and economic reforms introduced since the collapse of the Soviet Union have radically affected everyday practices, an understanding of blat remained crucial for interpreting the social, economic and criminal problems that affected the development of a market economy in post-Soviet Russia.

In "How Russia Really Works" Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s—from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in "alternative" techniques of contract and law enforcement. She discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions.

In her book "Can Russia Modernise?" Ledeneva describes key types of networks that make up Sistema: Russia’s systems of informal governance. Ledeneva puts forward a theory of networked governance that relativises the significance of formalised vertical structures and hierarchical decision-making for understanding Russian politics.

Main publications

 * Russia’s Economy of Favours (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
 * How Russia Really Works (Cornell University Press, 2006)
 * Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2013)