Professional Affiliation

Strategy and Policy Fellow, Harvard University & Professor, CEU

Expert Bio

Inna Melnykovska is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Central European University (CEU) Budapest and a Strategy and Policy Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin. Her disciplinary background is a combination of Political Science and Political Economy. Her expertise is in business elites and business-government relations in Eurasia (foci: Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia). In addition, Dr. Melnykovska works on regional economic integration initiatives driven by the EU, Russia and China in Eurasia, as well as on Ukraine’s non-/participation in these integration processes. Her research has been published in Journal of Common Market Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, and Post-Soviet Affairs, among others.

Wilson Center Project

Big Business, Capital Mobility and Crony Capitalism in Russia and Ukraine. Stabilizing and Transformative Powers of Global Finance

Project Summary

How to manage capital mobility without feeding corruption in Ukraine, and without sustaining Russia’s kleptocratic regime? This is one of the core issues for the U.S. democracy promotion and security policies. Analyzing politically influential Russian and Ukrainian holdings, Inna Melnykovska demonstrates how they have integrated into the global financial markets and what effects this integration has on their behavior in domestic politics, and eventually on sustainability and transformation of crony capitalism in Russia and Ukraine. Her analysis builds on the unique datasets on political networks of Russian and Ukrainian holdings and on the mobility of their capital from 1998 till 2014.

Major Publications

Big Business and Politics in Ukraine: the Evolution of State-Business Relations, EMECON, 2015, Issue 1.

 

Do Russia and China Promote Autocracy in Central Asia? Asia Europe Journal, 2012, Vol. 10, Issue 1, pp. 75–89 (with R. Schweickert and H. Plumper).

 

Prospective NATO or EU Membership and Institutional Change in Transition Countries, Economics of Transition, 2011, Vol. 19, Issue 4, pp. 667-692 (with A. Belke, I. Bordon and R. Schweickert).