Brian D. Taylor is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Previously, he served as Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and holds a master of science from the London School of Economics and a B.A. from the University of Iowa. He is a 2011 Fulbright Scholar to Russia and was a Carnegie Scholar from 2002 to 2003. He was also a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689– 2000, and his work has appeared in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Europe-Asia Studies, International Studies Review, Survival, Millennium, and the Journal of Cold War Studies.

Building a strong Russian state was the central goal of Vladimir Putin's presidency. This book argues that Putin's strategy for rebuilding the state was fundamentally flawed. Taylor demonstrates that a disregard for the way state officials behave toward citizens – state quality – had a negative impact on what the state could do – state capacity. Focusing on those organizations that control state coercion, what Russians call the "power ministries," Taylor shows that many of the weaknesses of the Russian state that existed under Boris Yeltsin persisted under Putin. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews, as well as a wide range of comparative data, the book reveals the practices and norms that guide the behavior of Russian power ministry officials (the so-called siloviki), especially law enforcement personnel. By examining siloviki behavior from the Kremlin down to the street level, State Building in Putin's Russia uncovers the who, where, and how of Russian state building after communism.