This unique work provides the only sustained political history of independent Kyrgyzstan, explaining events in the context of its society and the broader international order. Drawing on three decades ...of personal encounters with ordinary citizens and leading public figures, Eugene Huskey takes readers on a journey through the unlikely birth and tumultuous development of Central Asia’s most open society. Starting with the heady, romantic first days of independence and moving through the popular uprisings and inter-ethnic violence of recent years, he chronicles the struggles of a new state to establish a democratic order and to find its place in the international community, while caught between China, the Middle East, and the Russian world. At the center are the very human stories of leaders and citizens trying to navigate the transition from communism, where identities, property, and the rules of the political game were constantly in dispute. With citizens of independent Kyrgyzstan stripped of their Soviet identity, the book illustrates how alternative loyalties based on kinship, geography, statehood, and religion competed for prominence in ways that often complicated the new country’s political, social, and economic development.
The current conflict in Ukraine has spawned the most serious crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. It has undermined European security, raised questions about NATO's ...future, and put an end to one of the most ambitious projects of U.S. foreign policy -- building a partnership with Russia. It also threatens to undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts on issues ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation. And in the absence of direct negotiations, each side is betting that political and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. Caught in this dangerous game of chicken, the West cannot afford to lose sight of the importance of stable relations with Russia.This book puts the conflict in historical perspective by examining the evolution of the crisis and assessing its implications both for the Crimean peninsula and for Russia's relations with the West more generally. Experts in the international relations of post-Soviet states, political scientists Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer clearly show what is at stake in Ukraine, explaining the key economic, political, and security challenges and prospects for overcoming them. They also discuss historical precedents, sketch likely outcomes, and propose policies for safeguarding U.S.-Russia relations in the future. In doing so, they provide a comprehensive and accessible study of a conflict whose consequences will be felt for many years to come.
Utilising cutting-edge theory and unique data, this book examines the role of power, culture, and practice in Russia's story of post-socialist economic change, and provides a framework for addressing ...general economic change.
No other book places power and culture as centrally as this, and in doing so it provides new insights not only into how Russia came to its present state under Putin, but also how economies operate and change generally. In particular, the importance of remaking authority and culture - creating and contesting new categories and narratives of meaning - is shown as central to Russia's story, and to the story of economies overall.
Power, Culture and Economic Change in Russia is an excellent research tool for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, political science, economics, area studies, and other related disciplines.
Many saw the United States' decisive victory in Desert Storm (1991) as not only vindication of American defense policy since Vietnam but also confirmation of a revolution in military affairs (RMA). ...Just as information-age technologies were revolutionizing civilian life, the Gulf War appeared to reflect similarly profound changes in warfare. A debate has raged ever since about a contemporary RMA and its implications for American defense policy. Addressing these issues, The Iraq Wars and America's Military Revolution is a comprehensive study of the Iraq Wars in the context of the RMA debate. Focusing on the creation of a reconnaissance-strike complex and conceptions of parallel or nonlinear warfare, Keith L. Shimko finds a persuasive case for a contemporary RMA while recognizing its limitations as well as promise.
Russia Since 1980 recounts the epochal political, economic, and social changes that destroyed the Soviet Union, ushering in a perplexing new order. Two decades after Mikhail Gorbachev initiated ...regime-wrecking radical reforms, Russia has reemerged as a superpower. It has survived a hyperdepression, modernized, restored private property and business, adopted a liberal democratic persona, and asserted claims to global leadership. Many in the West perceive these developments as proof of a better globalized tomorrow, while others foresee a new cold war. Globalizers contend that Russia is speedily democratizing, marketizing, and humanizing, creating a regime based on the rule of law and respect for civil rights. Opponents counterclaim that Russia before and during the Soviet period was similarly misportrayed and insist that Medvedev's Russia is just another variation of an authoritarian 'Muscovite' model that has prevailed for over five centuries. The cases for both positions are explored while chronicling events since 1980.
When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a ...great power. How did he do it? What principles have guided Putin's economic policies? What patterns can be discerned? In this new analysis of Putin's Russia, Chris Miller examines its economic policy and the tools Russia's elite have used to achieve its goals. Miller argues that despite Russia's corruption, cronyism, and overdependence on oil as an economic driver, Putin's economic strategy has been surprisingly successful.Explaining the economic policies that underwrote Putin's two-decades-long rule, Miller shows how, at every juncture, Putinomics has served Putin's needs by guaranteeing economic stability and supporting his accumulation of power. Even in the face of Western financial sanctions and low oil prices, Putin has never been more relevant on the world stage.
Russia Dutkiewicz, Piotr; Trenin, Dmitri
05/2011, Letnik:
5
eBook
In Russia, a group of leading Russian intellectuals and social scientists join with top researchers from around the world to examine the social, political, and economic transformation in Russia. This ...timely and important book of original essays makes clear that neither politics nor economics alone holds the key to Russia's future, presenting critical perspectives on challenges facing Russia, both in its domestic policies and in its international relations. It also explores how global order - or disorder - may develop over the coming decades.Contributors include: Oleg Atkov, Timothy J. Colton, Georgi Derluguian, Mikhail K. Gorshkov, Leonid Grigoriev, Nur Kirabaev, Andrew C. Kuchins, Bobo Lo, Roderic Lyne, Vladimir Popov, Alexander Rahr, Richard Sakwa, Guzel Ulumbekova, Vladimir I. Yakunin, Rustem Zhangozha.
Gender, politics, and society in Ukraine Hankivsky, Olena; Salnykova, Anastasiya
Gender, politics, and society in Ukraine,
c2012, 20121231, 2017, 2012, 2012-12-31, 2013-04-02, 20120101
eBook
Gender, Politics, and Society in Ukraine is particularly innovative in its exploration of both women's and men's experiences and the ways in which gender relations shift over time in societies ...undergoing transitions to democracy.
The last two decades have been marked by momentous changes in forms of governance throughout the post-Soviet region. Ukraine's political system, like those of other formerly socialist states of ...Eastern Europe, has often been characterized as being "in transition," moving from a Soviet system to one more closely aligned with Western models. Anna Fournier challenges this view, investigating what is increasingly recognized as a critical aspect of contemporary global rights discourse: the active involvement of young people living in societies undergoing radical change. Fournier delineates a generation simultaneously embracing various ideological stances in an attempt to make sense of social conditions marked by the disjuncture between democratic ideals and the everyday realities of growing economic inequality. Based on extensive fieldwork in public and private schools in the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv,Forging Rights in a New Democracyexplores high-school-aged students' understanding of rights and justice, and the ways they interpret and appropriate discourses of citizenship and civic values in the educational setting and beyond. Fournier's rich ethnographic account assesses the impact on the making of citizens of both formal and informal pedagogical practices, in schools and on the streets. Chronicling her subjects' encounters with state representatives and "violent entrepreneurs" as well as their involvement in peaceful protests alongside political activists, Fournier demonstrates the extent to which young people both reproduce and challenge the liberal discourse of rights in ways that illuminate the everyday paradoxes of market democracy. By tracking students' active participation in larger contests about the nature of liberty and entitlement in the context of redefined rights, her book provides insight into emergent configurations of citizenship in the New Europe.
A number of large-scale transformations have shaped the economy, polity and society of India over the past quarter century. This book provides a detailed account of three that are of particular ...importance: the advent of liberal economic reform, the ascendance of Hindu cultural nationalism, and the empowerment of historically subordinate classes through popular democratic mobilizations.
Filling a gap in existing literature, the book goes beyond looking at the transformations in isolation, managing to:
Explain the empirical linkages between these three phenomena
Provide an account that integrates the insights of separate disciplinary perspectives
Explain their distinct but possibly related causes and the likely consequences of these central transformations taken together
By seeking to explain the causal relationships between these central transformations through a coordinated conversation across different disciplines, the dynamics of India's new political economy are captured. Chapters focus on the political, economic and social aspects of India in their current and historical context. The contributors use new empirical research to discuss how India's multidimensional story of economic growth, social welfare and democratic deepening is likely to develop. This is an essential text for students and researchers of India's political economy and the growth economies of Asia.
