Margarita M. Balmaceda. Russian Energy Chains: The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021

Abstract

Margarita Balmaceda’s book Russian Energy Chains wants to rethink energy and power from the perspective of value chains. Unlike other studies of Russian energy resources, Balmaceda focuses on the paths that the goods take and analyzes them through their respective value chains. The central questions the book seeks to answer are, first, how the specificities of these energy value chains affect power relations in the region; second, how these value chains have been different through different types of energy; and, third, how their specificities constrain or amplify Russia’s ability to use energy supplies as leverage. Finally, the publication aims to provide a deeper understanding of complex relationships such as coalitions of local actors instead of a mostly state-based classification of energy policy through and throughout energy chains. The research field of energy relations, which has already been examined from a historical or political science perspective (e.g., Gustafson 2012, 2020; Högselius 2013), gains a new viewpoint here.

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