The crisis of 1990s attracted the attention of many Russian economists to the problems of economic security. Now we have a vast body of literature on this topic. However, there remain important problems of a conceptual nature: alternative definitions of the economic security are often contradictory, analytical instruments are quite vague, whereas the range of phenomena considered as belonging to the sphere of economic security tends to expand ad infinitum (from the questions of the planetary scope to the personnel management practices at the enterprise level). In the recent article, we survey competing approaches to the economic security based on its understanding in terms of national or public interest, economic stability, and economic independence. It is argued that the definition in terms of stability of national and international economic systems allows one to evade various conceptual difficulties peculiar to the alternative definitions, at the same time providing an opportunity to analyze important practical issues. We interpret threats to the national economic security as endogenous and exogenous shocks of economic and political origin leading to the destabilization of the national economy, and use this approach to describe major problems facing the economy of post-communist Russia.

The crisis of 1990s attracted the attention of many Russian economists to the problems of economic security. Now we have a vast body of literature on this topic. However, there remain important problems of a conceptual nature: alternative definitions of the economic security are often contradictory, analytical instruments are quite vague, whereas the range of phenomena considered as belonging to the sphere of economic security tends to expand ad infinitum (from the questions of the planetary scope to the personnel management practices at the enterprise level). In the recent article, we survey competing approaches to the economic security based on its understanding in terms of national or public interest, economic stability, and economic independence. It is argued that the definition in terms of stability of national and international economic systems allows one to evade various conceptual difficulties peculiar to the alternative definitions, at the same time providing an opportunity to analyze important practical issues. We interpret threats to the national economic security as endogenous and exogenous shocks of economic and political origin leading to the destabilization of the national economy, and use this approach to describe major problems facing the economy of post-communist Russia.