The Strategic Value Framework developed in this book explicates the dominant sectoral patterns of market governance in Russia today. Historical process tracing from sectoral origins of labor-intensive textiles and capital-intensive telecommunication in this chapter shows how Russian state leaders intersubjectively respond to objective economic and political pressures. The political basis and evolution of the perceived strategic value of national security and resource management took root in the Soviet era through Soviet collapse and transition to and away from democratic rule. In the context of macro-liberalization and mass privatization at the founding of the Russian Federation, interacting perceived strategic value and sectoral structures and organization of institutions have shaped the centralized role of the state in market coordination and variegated property rights arrangements of centralized governance in defense-origin dual use telecommunications reenforced by the rise of Vladimir Putin aided by economic and political crises. The less strategic value of non-defense sectors, such as textiles, is governed by the decentralized coordination and dominant private property of private governance and decentralized governance since Gorbachev’s perestroika. The rise of bifurcated oligarchy in Russian-style capitalism are shaped by the joined imperatives of resource security nationalism and path-dependent sectoral organization of institutions.

In parallel to the centralized governance of strategic industries in Chapter 4, the lower degree and narrower scope of the perceived strategic value of labor intensive and less value-added sectors, represented by textiles, for national security and the national technology base, has shaped decentralized governance and private governance in nonstrategic sectors. In the context of sectoral structural and organization of institutions, less concerned about controlling products or services that have few applications for national security and low contribution to the national technology base, the central state introduced competition in textiles in the 1980s and devolved market coordination of quasi-state and private ownership to local governments and commerce bureaus by the early 1990s before China’s World Trade Organization accession. The cross-time sector and company case studies reveal the interacting strategic value and sectoral logics apply at the subsector. Capital-intensive and more value-added technical textiles experience more deliberate market coordination by local governments and the central state and are characterized by mixed property rights sponsored by and connected with state-run research and development institutions. Taken together the textile industry today experiences periodic overexpansion, environmental degradation, and reactive local state interventions in response to economic reverberations and central-level environmental and developmental mandates.

This chapter shows how in parallel to the regulated governance in telecommunications uncovered in Chapter 7, the perceived strategic value of labor-intensive industries dominated by rural small-scale producers, showcased by textiles, for national self-reliance and neoliberal development, shape the centralized governance by the Indian government. The cross-time sector and company case studies reveal that at a time when centralized market coordination in labor-intensive, less value-added textiles is eliminated around the world, India created a central ministry and other sector-specific bureaucracies in textiles associated with nationalist narratives of Gandhian Swadeshi self-reliance in the 1980s following internal political and economic crises. Endowed with limited resources and regulatory capacity, the centralized governance of the textile ministry has introduced extensive competition in the neoliberal era and deliberately intervened in market developments. In addition to subsidizing industrial upgrading and deregulating market entry, business scope, and trade, the textile ministry has nationalized large-scale textile mills of the organized sector during economic slowdowns. Moreover, fiscal and protectionist trade policies have also cushioned the survival of small-scale, labor-intensive handlooms in apparel and clothing and the highly polluting power looms dominant in more capital-intensive technical textiles even as the state promotes export-oriented industrialization.

This chapter shows how the perceived strategic value of high-tech, globally integrated sectors, represented by telecommunications, for neoliberal development interacts with sectoral structures and organization of institutions. The resultant regulated governance by the Indian government of telecommunications are the micro-institutional foundations of Indian-style capitalism undergirding the globalization and development of such industries disconnected from the post-Independence legacies of the Indian nationalist imagination. The cross-time sector and company case studies show the initial introduction of competition in telecommunications occurred during Big Bang Liberalization supported by pro-liberalization industrial stakeholders disconnected from the existing telecommunications bureaucracy. Today a central-level ministry makes policy and an independent regulator enforces the market entry and business scope of a state-owned fixed-line operator and fiercely competitive mobile carriers and value-added service providers. The role of the state in market coordination and the dominant property rights arrangements vary by subsector as a function of interacting strategic value and sectoral logics. Nehruvian interpretation of Gandhian Swadeshi self-reliance has retained bureaucratic oversight of the development of state- and privately-owned equipment makers, which concentrated on rural automatic exchanges and low-tech inputs until the dominance of Chinese competition pivoted focus to indigenous development in new generation mobile consumer and terminal telecommunications equipment.

The Strategic Value Framework introduced in this chapter offers a unified explanation, linking macro- and micro-sectoral-level changes and continuities, of what appears to be contradictory and irreconcilable forces at work within globalizing countries. It first identifies historically and institutionally rooted values, objective and intersubjective in nature, which arise from state elite responses to political and economic pressures internal and external in nature experienced during significant moments of national consolidation. The perceived strategic value orientation evolves and transforms overtime; and interacts with sectoral structures and organization of institutions. The resultant dominant patterns of market governance vary by country and sector within country and filter the relative impacts of an open economy, global norms and international organizations, resource and factor endowments, regime type and political institutions, and national characteristics and domestic structures. The Strategic Value Framework is tested and substantiated with a multilevel comparative case research design, which systematically conducts across case and within case analysis at (time, country, sector, and company). The case studies leverage historical process-tracing and triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data, including in-depth interviews with state, subnational government, business, and industry stakeholders and primary and secondary documentation collected during extensive fieldwork.

This chapter exposes how the perceived strategic value of capital-intensive, value-added sectors, represented by telecommunications, for national security and resource management, interacts with sectoral structures and organization of institutions. The centralized governance by the Russian state since the collapse of the Soviet Union and further reenforced during the Putin era witnessed in these sectors shows the federal government consolidating in one corporate entity the ownership and management of civilian and dedicated landlines of the Soviet military industrial complex. Centralized market coordination presides over the predominantly privately owned mobile and value-added service providers operating in fiercely competitive markets deregulated in the 1990s. The cross-time sector and company cases further show various lower-level bureaucracies and non-sector-specific economywide rules regulate telecommunications equipment privatized after Soviet collapse, perceived less strategic than the state-owned and managed backbone infrastructure. Similar interacting strategic value and sectoral logics apply to Information Technology (IT) Software, a sector which has benefitted from former science and technology personnel of the Soviet defense industry. In the face of perceived security threats from within and without after economic crises and conflicts with neighboring countries, however, the state has reenforced its control of the information communications infrastructure, including RuNet and cybersecurity, designated strategic assets.

The Strategic Value Framework explicates the dominant sectoral patterns of market governance in India today. Historical process tracing from sectoral origins of labor-intensive textiles and capital-intensive telecommunication in this chapter shows how Indian state leaders intersubjectively respond to objective economic and political pressures. The political basis and evolution of the perceived strategic value of national self-reliance and neoliberal development are the successively elected governments’ interpretations of Independence legacies in response to external and sectarian conflicts and economic crises. The joined imperatives in the Emergency period through Big Bang Liberalization in the 1990s have profound implications for the Singh and Modi governments alike in 2004 and beyond. Interacting perceived strategic value and sectoral structures and organization of institutions shape the decentralized role of the state and the dominant distribution of public and private economic actors of regulated governance in high-tech, globally integrated sectors, such as telecommunications. The more centralized state coordination and numerically dominant small-scale industry and politically dominant business groups of centralized governance operate in more rural, labor-intensive sectors, such as textiles, associated with the nationalist imagination of Gandhian Swadeshiism. The dominant sectoral patterns of market governance have given rise to Indian-style capitalism of bifurcated liberalism shaped by neoliberal self-reliance.

This chapter shows how the perceived strategic value of high-tech, value-added sectors, represented by telecommunications services and manufacturing, for national security and the national technology base, interacts with sectoral structures and organizational of institutions, and shapes the Chinese government’s centralized governance. Two decades after accession to the World Trade Organization, the Chinese government has yet to implement many of its market entry and business scope commitments in telecommunications. The state governs telecommunications with centralized coordination by a supraministry of government-owned fixed-line and mobile carriers and privately-owned but government-controlled value-added service providers and equipment makers. The dominant pattern of centralized governance enables the state to achieve its security and developmental goals even while introducing competition and exposing the industry to global economic integration. The cross-time sector and company cases uncover how reregulation and deliberate state interventions in corporate governance and anti-trust followed the market liberalization in the 1990s and 2000s. From the development of network technologies, such as 5G, to semiconductors, Chinese state-owned institutional and firm-level initiatives have strategically courted foreign direct investment and reregulated to gain corporate control or force divestment. Similarly, foreign investment and private capital have developed value-added services; but subsequent reregulation controls information dissemination and sectoral development.