Russia’s Multinationals: Network State Capitalism Goes Global

Abstract

In the last few years, Russian multinationals have been subject to increasing attention, due to the spectacular growth of Russian foreign direct investment (FDI) during the 2000s, which set a new world record (Andreff, 2013). Efforts at explaining this extraordinary growth focused on separating real FDI (productive activities abroad) from its ‘fake’ cousins and on trying to adapt theories of multinationalization by introducing home-country variables. This chapter will build on this literature and ask what drives Russian multinational corporations (MNCs) abroad and what role state actors have in their investment behavior. In analogy to Mikler’s (Chapter 1) concern about the impact of the home-country context on MNCs, this chapter provides a thorough analysis of the domestic politicoeconomic context, of government capacities and policies, and investment behavior of the MNCs. Due to space constraints, the chapter will focus on the oil and gas industries, but will also include some evidence from the ferrous and nonferrous metals industries.