To survive, all forms of government require popular support, whether voluntary or involuntary. Following the collapse of the Soviet system, Russia's rulers took steps toward democracy, yet under ...Vladimir Putin Russia has become increasingly undemocratic. This book uses a unique source of evidence, eighteen surveys of Russian public opinion from the first month of the new regime in 1992 up to 2009, to track the changing views of Russians. Clearly presented and sophisticated figures and tables show how political support has increased because of a sense of resignation that is even stronger than the unstable benefits of exporting oil and gas. Whilst comparative analyses of surveys on other continents show that Russia's elite is not alone in being able to mobilize popular support for an undemocratic regime, Russia provides an outstanding caution that popular support can grow when governors reject democracy and create an undemocratic regime.
The break-up of the USSR was unexpected and unexpectedly peaceful. Though a third of the new states fell prey to violent civil conflict, anarchy on the post-Soviet periphery, when it occurred, was ...quickly cauterized. This book argues that this outcome had nothing to do with security guarantees by Russia or the United Nations and everything to do with local innovation by ruthless warlords, who competed and colluded in a high-risk coalition formation game. Drawing on a structured comparison of Georgian and Tajik militia members, the book combines rich comparative data with formal modeling, treating the post-Soviet space as an extraordinary laboratory to observe the limits of great powers' efforts to shape domestic institutions in weak states.
How do individuals decide to exercise their democratic rights? This 2006 book argues that they first assess their economic autonomy, meaning their ability to make a living independent of government ...authorities. Before individuals consider whether their resources and organizational abilities are adequate to act on their interests, they calculate the risk of political activism to their livelihood. This is particularly evident in regions of the world where states monopolize the economy and thus can readily harass activists at their workplaces. Economic autonomy links capitalism and democracy through individuals' calculations about activism. Accounts of activists' decisions about establishing independent media, leading political organizations, and running for office and descriptions of government harassment in Russia and Kyrgyzstan, along with examples from most regions of the world, illustrate these arguments. Economic autonomy and the interaction among democratic rights help explain the global proliferation of hybrid regimes, governments that display both democratic and authoritarian characteristics.
Focusing on regime trajectories across the former Soviet Union, Pluralism by Default posits that political competition in new democracies has often been grounded less in well-designed institutions, ...democratic leaders, or emerging civil society and more in the failure of authoritarianism. Lucan Way contends that pluralism has persisted in many cases because autocrats lack the organization, authority, or coordination to steal elections, impose censorship, repress opposition, or keep allies in line.
Attention to the dynamics of this pluralism by default reveals a largely unrecognized contradiction in the transition process: the same factors that facilitate democratic and semi-democratic political competition may also thwart the development of stable, well-functioning democratic institutions. National divisions or weak states and parties—typically seen as impediments to democracy—can also stymie efforts to crack down on political opposition and concentrate control. Way demonstrates that the features that have made Ukraine the most democratic country in the former Soviet Union also contributed to the country’s extreme dysfunction and descent into war in 2014.
Post-Soviet social Collier, Stephen J
2011., 20110808, 2011, 2011-08-08
eBook
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across ...a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state.
Russia Transformed Rose, Richard; Mishler, William; Munro, Neil
11/2006
eBook
Since the fall of communism Russia has undergone a treble transformation of its political, social and economic system. The government is an autocracy in which the Kremlin manages elections and ...administers the law to suit its own ends. It does not provide the democracy that most citizens desire. Given a contradiction between what Russians want and what they get, do they support their government and, if so, why? Using the New Russia Barometer - a unique set of public opinion surveys from 1992 to 2005 - this book shows that it is the passage of time that has been most important in developing support for the new regime. Although there remains great dissatisfaction with the regime's corruption, it has become accepted as a lesser evil to alternatives. The government appears stable today, but will be challenged by constitutional term limits forcing President Putin to leave office in 2008.
Why has democracy failed to take root in Russia? After shedding the shackles of Soviet rule, some countries in the postcommunist region undertook lasting democratization. Yet Russia did not. Russia ...experienced dramatic political breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it subsequently failed to maintain progress toward democracy. In this 2005 book, M. Steven Fish offers an explanation for the direction of regime change in post-Soviet Russia. Relying on cross-national comparative analysis as well as on in-depth field research in Russia, Fish shows that Russia's failure to democratize has three causes: too much economic reliance on oil, too little economic liberalization, and too weak a national legislature. Fish's explanation challenges others that have attributed Russia's political travails to history, political culture, or to 'shock therapy' in economic policy. The book offers a theoretically original and empirically rigorous explanation for one of the most pressing political problems of our time.
When US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, they occupied a country that had been at war for 23 years. Yet in their attempts to understand Iraqi society and history, few policy makers, analysts and ...journalists took into account the profound impact that Iraq's long engagement with war had on the Iraqis' everyday engagement with politics, the business of managing their daily lives, and their cultural imagination. Drawing on government documents and interviews, Dina Rizk Khoury traces the political, social and cultural processes of the normalization of war in Iraq during the last twenty-three years of Ba'thist rule. Khoury argues that war was a form of everyday bureaucratic governance and examines the Iraqi government's policies of creating consent, managing resistance and religious diversity, and shaping public culture. Coming on the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, this book tells a multilayered story of a society in which war has become the norm.
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Azerbaijan Since Independence offers a comprehensive introduction to modern Azerbaijan, a post-Soviet republic located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. This small country has outsized ...importance due to its strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, its energy wealth, and its historical experience as an early modernizer in the Muslim world.
The book begins with six chapters on Azerbaijan’s history from pre-Soviet times to the present, with an emphasis on the past twenty years. The next four chapters are thematic, covering the conflict over Karabakh, the political system, the oil-dominated economy, and societal changes and trends including the role of Islam. The remainder of the book surveys Azerbaijan’s foreign relations, with an analysis of the foreignpolicy-making context complemented by chapters on relations with Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the West. The book closes with a brief epilogue discussing the country’s future.
Azerbaijan, a small post-Soviet republic located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, has outsized importance becaus of its strategic location at the corssroads of Europe and Asia, its oil resources, and
