Quintin H. Beazer

About my dissertation:

Two fundamental tasks of government are to make and implement policy, and the manner in which governments carry out both tasks is crucial to the private actors that are governed by the state. This is especially true with regards to businesses and their response to states' economic policies. As such, the question of what determines whether policy environments attract or deter investment is central to research on the interaction between states and markets.

Located at the intersection of comparative politics, business, and public policy, my dissertation identifies bureaucratic discretion -- agents' leeway in making subjective determinations about when and how rules apply -- as a primary source of uncertainty that deters long-term investors by undermining the predictability of firms' regulatory environment. By highlighting bureaucrats' role in determining how and when regulatory laws apply to businesses, the theory emphasizes a group of political actors that many traditional explanations of state-business relations overlook. Whereas existing studies on the role of the state in the economy tend to focus on the economic effects of particular policies or government decisions, my dissertation contributes by calling attention to the importance for private actors of how government agents carry out those decisions. In making this argument, my dissertation challenges a body of literature that emphasizes the economic benets of insulating state actors, such as bureaucrats, from the pressures of the political arena. In response, I theorize about how the broader institutional context shapes discretion’s effect on market actors; by allowing multiple actors to share the task of monitoring discretionary agents, institutions which encourage political participation and political competition help to mitigate investors’ uncertainty and stabilize their expectations about rule enforcement.

Employing a multi-methods approach, I test this argument in the context of the Russian Federation, using quantitative data alongside qualitative evidence from field interviews. Among my findings, I show that firm managers who perceive bureaucrats to have high discretion are less likely to make fixed-capital investments in the immediate future; furthermore, I find this negative relationship to be most pronounced in regions of Russia where surrounding institutions prevent shared monitoring by restricting interested actors' access to the political system.

For more details, a summary and annotated outline of my dissertation is available in PDF format.

Dissertation-related presentation from the 2010 MPSA conference.