An unlikely friendship: rethinking state-society relations in contemporary Russia

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationships between state authorities and civil society organisations in Russia, using a qualitative case study of ten registered disability NGOs in Nizhny Novgorod. While much of the extant literature on state-civil relations in Russia focuses on political claim-making, this dissertation looks instead at how disability NGOs partner with state institutions in order to provide welfare services. In doing so, it challenges several common assumptions about state-society relations in Russia: that collaboration between NGOs and the state in the absence of political contention is a form of puppetry, undermining the autonomy of the third sector; that the state does not have NGOs' best interests at heart; and that Russian civil society is 'sui generis' and cannot be compared with its Western counterparts. On the contrary, by looking at how disability NGOs engage with the state to collaboratively deliver welfare services to their clients, the research finds that local state authorities can be a key partner for disability NGOs and that the two sectors complement one another in serving their clients' needs. In this regard, the relationships between Russian disability NGOs and the state may bear more similarity to those of their counterparts in more democratic states than most current literature would suggest.