The Anatomy of the Newly Emerging Illiberal Model of State Capitalism: A Developmental Dead End?

Abstract

The article aims to conceptualize the contemporary illiberal model of state capitalism with the main focus on emerging economies. State capitalism is understood in a broad sense, as a multifaceted institutional construct, in which increased state interventionism is a steady feature, materializing in diverse forms. It is a first attempt to theorize and systematize the recent version of state capitalism along the Kornai’s system paradigm framework in a deductive-positivist way. Acknowledging that national varieties of contemporary statist experiments exist, the article aims at a higher abstraction level to define the operational logic and some common core characteristics of contemporary state-capitalist regimes, as a new type, a steady hybrid regime with its own values. Finally, it is argued that even though some illusionary short-term (economic) success stories have emerged, on the longer run illiberal statist measures aiming at consolidating political power at any costs, might undermine widely defined development.