Authors:

V.V. Volchik, S.S. Tsygankov, A.I. Maskaev

Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Abstract:

Ideology is an integral part of modern economics that reflects the use of appropriate mental models and shapes the vision of economic processes. However, existing academic literature lacks analysis of dirigisme as an economic ideology. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the position of dirigisme in Russian economic science. Methodologically, the research rests on the narrative economics approach that facilitates the identification of concise theoretical narratives focusing on the relationships between events, facts, and their interpretations. The authors applied the methods of quantitative and qualitative text analysis through machine learning: classification using vector representations (embeddings), and analysis of relevant n-grams. Empirical data cover a corpus of 40,045 Russian-language scientific articles on economics published between 1992 and 2023 that are attributed to the ideology of dirigisme. According to machine analysis, dirigisme is the most prominent ideology in contemporary Russian economics. Having considered the most common bigrams and trigrams, we identified three stages – early, intermediate, and modern – in the development of this ideology in Russian economics. The paper also formulates three its theoretical narratives: “dirigisme and technocracy”, “dirigisme and eternal lag (catching-up)”, and “manageability of economy”. The findings demonstrate that dirigisme’s elements are formalized through strategic and indicative planning in the Federal Law “On Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation” and related bylaws. The research results contribute to a better understanding of dirigisme as an economic ideology and can be used to analyze public economic policy in Russia.

Keywords: economic ideology; dirigisme; theoretical narrative; economics; narrative economics.

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For citation: Volchik V.V., Tsygankov S.S., Maskaev A.I. (2025). Why the ideology of dirigisme matters in Russian economic science. Upravlenets / The Manager, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 17–33. DOI: 10.29141/2218-5003-2025-16-6-2. EDN: JMBAZC.