Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Gendering Post-Soviet Space
This volume combines approaches from three disciplines – economics, sociology, and demography – and empirically analyzes the key aspects of the labor market and social demography processes in post-Soviet transitional societies while focusing on the gender perspective. Here, readers will find empirical studies on such countries as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The volume contributes to the literature by addressing the lack of academic empirical research on gender difference issues in the labor markets of post-Soviet countries as well as gender inequalities in fertility preferences, gender disparities am...
The Return of the Cold War
This book examines the crisis in Ukraine, tracing its development and analysing the factors which lie behind it. It discusses above all how the two sides have engaged in political posturing, accusations, escalating sanctions and further escalating threats, arguing that the ease with which both sides have reverted to a Cold War mentality demonstrates that the Cold War belief systems never really disappeared, and that the hopes raised in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union for a new era in East-West relations were misplaced. The book pays special attention to the often ignored origins of the crisis within Ukraine itself, and the permanent damage caused by the fact that Ukrainians are killing Ukrainians in the eastern parts of the country. It also assesses why Cold War belief systems have re-emerged so easily, and concludes by considering the likely long-term ramifications of the crisis, arguing that the deep-rooted lack of trust makes the possibility of compromise even harder than in the original Cold War.
Russia after 2012
This book provides an overview of the state of Russia after the 2012 presidential election. It considers a wide range of both domestic and international issues, examining both the run up to and the consequences of the election. It covers political, economic, and social topics. It assesses the political scene both before and after the election, and discusses the nature of and likely future of democracy in Russia. The election’s impact on the Russian economy is discussed in detail, as are Russia’s relationships with the United States, the European Union, and other parts of the world.
The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia
In this book, Vladimir Gel’man considers bad governance as a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices quite different from those of good governance. Some countries are governed badly intentionally because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self-interests. Gel’man considers bad governance as a primarily agency-driven rather than structure-induced phenomenon. He addresses the issue of causes and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond from a different scholarly optics, which is based on a more general rationale of state-building, polit...
Slow Anti-Americanism
Negative views of the United States abound, but we know too little about how such views affect politics. Drawing on careful research on post-Soviet Central Asia, Edward Schatz argues that anti-Americanism is best seen not as a rising tide that swamps or as a conflagration that overwhelms. Rather, "America" is a symbolic resource that resides quietly in the mundane but always has potential value for social and political mobilizers. Using a wide range of evidence and a novel analytic framework, Schatz considers how Islamist movements, human rights activists, and labor mobilizers across Central Asia avail themselves of this fact, thus changing their ability to pursue their respective agendas. B...
The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas
As the United States aggressively expands its exports of liquefied natural gas, it stands poised to become an energy superpower. This unanticipated reality is rewriting the conventional rules of intercontinental gas trade and realigning strategic relations among the United States, the European Union, Russia, China and beyond, as Agnia Grigas shows.
Paradox of Power
"State weakness" is seen to be a widespread problem throughout Central Asia and other parts of post-socialist space, and more broadly in areas of the developing world. Challenging the widespread assumption that these "weak states" inevitably slide toward failure, Paradox of Power takes careful stock of the varied experiences of Eurasian states to reveal a wide array of surprising outcomes. The case studies show how states teeter but do not collapse, provide public goods against all odds, interact with societies in creative ways, utilize coercion effectively against internal opponents, and establish practices that are far more durable than the language of "weakness" would allow. While deepening our understanding of the phenomenon in Eurasia in particular, the essays also contribute to more general theories of state weakness.
A Martian Stranded on Earth
Much like Vladimir Lenin, his onetime rival for the leadership of the Bolshevik party during its formative years, Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) was a visionary. In two science fiction novels set on Mars, Bogdanov imagined a future in which the workers of the world, liberated from capitalist exploitation, create a “physiological collective” that rejuvenates and unites its members through regular blood exchanges. But Bogdanov was not merely a dreamer. He worked tirelessly to popularize and realize his vision, founding the first research institute devoted to the science of blood transfusion. In A Martian Stranded on Earth, the first broad-based book on Bogdanov in English, Nikolai Krementsov examines Bogdanov’s roles as revolutionary, novelist, and scientist, presenting his protagonist as a coherent thinker who pursued his ideas in a wide range of venues. Through the lens of Bogdanov’s involvement with blood studies on one hand, and of his fictional and philosophical writings on the other, Krementsov offers a nuanced analysis of the interactions between scientific ideas and societal values.
The Social Process of Globalization
A rich and compelling analysis of how cultural globalization occurs, including the structural conditions, personal meanings and social interactions involved.
Pluralism by Default
"Focusing on regime trajectories across three countries in the former Soviet Union (Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine), Lucan Way argues that democratic political competition has often been grounded less in well-designed institutions or emerging civil society, and more in the failure of authoritarianism. In many cases, pluralism has persisted because autocrats have been too weak to steal elections, repress opposition, or keep allies in line. Attention to the dynamics of this "pluralism by default" reveals an important but largely unrecognized contradiction in the transition process in many countries - namely, that the same factors that facilitate democratic and semi-democratic political competition may also thwart the development of stable, well-functioning democratic institutions. Weak states and parties - factors typically seen as sources of democratic failure - can also undermine efforts to crack down on political opposition and concentrate political control"--
