This discussion will present the project “Platform of Normalization: Return of the Future,” which analyzes scenarios for Russia’s post-Putin transformation and the incentive structures shaping relevant domestic actors. The presentation will provide a succinct summary of the project’s central arguments, supplemented by updated insights based on prior materials.

Andrei Yakovlev is an economist whose main research interests include state-business relations in Russia, political economy of development, industrial policy, public procurement, and incentives for bureaucracy (with a comparative study of Russia and China). From 1993 to 2023, he worked at the HSE (Higher School of Economics) University in Moscow as director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies. In 2011-2022, together with Timothy Frye of Columbia University, he led HSE's International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID). In 2015-2019, he served as president of the Association of Russian Economic Think Tanks (ARETT). In 2017, he was awarded the Gaidar Memorial Prize in economics. He is the author of "Agents of Modernization" (HSE, 2006) and the paper "Composition of the ruling elite, incentives for productive usage of rents, and prospects for Russia’s limited access order" (Post-Soviet Affairs, 37(5), 417–434).

Lunch will be provided for event attendees.