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Focusing on the vastly different outcomes of post-Soviet regime transitions, this study explores why some societies have become more democratic and some have not. Based on in-depth comparative analyses, the book assesses political developments in six of Russia's regions (Saratov, Nizhnii Novgorod, Volgograd, Ryazan', Ul'yanovsk, and Tver' oblasts) since 1988.
According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted in 1993, local autonomy is one of the fundamental principles of the constitutional system. The Politics of Local Government in Russia aims to provide a dedicated and comprehensive discussion of the pursuit of local self-government in contemporary Russia where "local" refers to the third tier of government beyond federal and regional governments. Some of the ablest scholars in the field focus on the existing institutional and social climate for municipal and district level government in Russia while placing recent reforms in a comparative and historical perspective.
Subnational political units are growing in influence in national and international affairs, drawing increasing scholarly attention to politics beyond national capitals. In this book, leading Russian and Western political scientists contribute to debates in comparative politics by examining Russia’s subnational politics. Beginning with a chapter that reviews major debates in theory and method, this book continues to examine Russia’s 83 regions, exploring a wide range of topics including the nature and stability of authoritarian regimes, federal politics, political parties, ethnic conflict, governance and inequality in a comparative perspective. Providing both qualitative and quantitative ...
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's party system has suffered a difficult and turbulent infancy. Moscow based parties have had only very limited territorial penetration, and fragmentation has been one of its most significant features. Based on extensive fieldwork in three Russian regions, this book examines the development of the country's party system and the role played by parties in regional politics. Using a comparative approach, it scrutinises the internal structures and activities of the parties, looks at their decision-making processes, their everyday party life, the activities of party members, and the role of regional party organisations in federal and local election campaigns.
This book examines the impact of Russia's local self-governing institutions on nationalist movement mobilization in Russia. It is the first study identifying municipalities as central to explaining aspects of ethnic or broader social activism in post-Soviet Russia. Because the book is comparative in scope, it also contributes to debates on movement dynamics and nationalist mobilization in other national and institutional settings.
This book examines federalism and regional and local politics in Russia. Many commentators have alluded to the unique nature of Russia's dual transition and its difficult task of simultaneously reforming its economy and polity. But there is in fact a third transition under way in Russia that is of no less importance, the need to reconfigure central-local relations and to create a stable and viable form of federalism. Federal states are much more difficult to set up than unitary ones, and forging a new federal system at the same time as privatising the economy and trying to radically overhaul the political system has clearly made Russia's transition triply difficult. The book discusses how Vl...
Exploring urban democracy in Russia, this book considers a wide range of cities of different types, and of different political allegiances, showing that the power and status of cities varies tremendously across the federation, as does the development of grassroots democracy.
Political parties are the fabric of democratic politics. In 1991 a new Russia emerged after seven decades of one-party dictatorship, claiming to be on the road towards democracy. In this volume the authors analyse the many contradictions, dilemmas, and paradoxes of reconstituting free party politics and democratic rule in a severely traumatized country. Frequently from a comparative perspective they deal with a range of topics, from the behaviour of the new parties in parliament, the role of ideology in cementing party organizations, to the character and prospects of the transient Russian party system.
Many authors have alluded to the unique nature of Russia’s dual transition and its difficult task of simultaneously reforming its economy and polity. But there is in fact a third transition still far from completed that is of no less importance, the need to reconfigure central-regional relations and to create a stable and viable form of federalism. There are vast economic, demographic and political variations across the Russian federation. Therefore an understanding of regions, and the causes and consequences of cross-regional diversity, is a vitally important dimension of Russian politics that should not be overlooked. It is only by studying regional level politics that we can gain a full...
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...