LAUSR

ABSTRACT Why do state capitalist regimes, while aiming to increase control over the economy, introduce partial privatization and liberalization at their national oil companies (NOCs)? The article presents a case study and discourse analysis of liberalizing reforms to the management of “Health, Safety, and Environment” at the Russian and Brazilian NOCs. Employing a constructivist political economy approach emphasizing the co-constitution of state power and market power, it argues that adopting the practices of effective oil multinationals allows NOCs to represent themselves as capitalist corporations – not state bureaucracies – and thereby better fulfill their coordinating function in state-permeated market economies.