Wie wirkt sich die Politisierung von Finanzinfrastrukturen auf Gesellschaften und die Internationalen Baziehungen aus?

Financial infrastructures are a very prominent item of present geo-economic contestations and in this conext often studied with regard to the global realm. Especially with the advent of decentralized finance, interesting questions concerning its realtionship to states’ sovereignty arose and are still not studied exhaustively.The present paper investigates the policies of Russia to popularize the use of Russian alternatives to Western payment services and infrastructures, developed under the looming threat of expanding financial sanctions after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. It argues that the Russian state’s response to the international sanctions regime is to be understood not only as directed at saveguarding its sovereignty vis-à-vis geopolitical adversaries, but no less at enhancing its infrastructural power as an authoritarian state. The created infrastructures have the potential to not only tighten the controle over the domestic economy, but also over oppositional actors. Apart from that they potentially provide the government with information about society that autocratic governements typically lack.