"This manuscript is packed with superb insights, interesting findings, innovative methods, and valuable data. It seeks to reveal the agency and discretion that bureaucrats and other regulatory actors retain and strategically deploy within authoritarian regimes and explores how their actions interact with important political economy outcomes. Above all, it shows the highly complex and conditional effects of "regulatory reforms" when they are uncritically introduced in authoritarian settings where politicians face trade-offs to retain power and distribute patronage to clients and allies." --Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow Professor of Political Science, Barnard College"Thieves, Opportunists and Autocrats is a fascinating, rich, and complex book that makes multiple contributions to the literatures on political economy and the former Soviet Union. The study, which provides a great review of Russia and Kazakhstan's post-Soviet economic history, reveals how economic regulations, institutional politics, and business-state relations together determine the nature and effectiveness of autocratic governance with ramifications for states across the globe." --Marc Berenson, Kings College London"Thieves, Opportunities and Autocrats is a fascinating and extremely well-researched study of how authoritarian elites use very modern bureaucratic techniques for the purposes of control and co-optation. Duvanova provides more evidence that the neoliberal model of bureaucracy, which has spread across the world in recent decades, is entirely compatible with authoritarian rule. The book is a must-read for anyone working on public policy or comparative political economy of non-democracies." --John Heathershaw, University of Exeter