Elites and Democratic Development in Russia PDF Download

Author: Vladimir Gel'man
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134399049
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The transformation from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia cannot be fully understood without taking the elites into full consideration. Elites and Democratic Development in Russia examines how elites support and challenge democracy and why they are crucial to Russian democracy in particular. In this innovative volume, twelve respected scholars investigate how elites have affected the transition from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia. They discuss how the elites' degree of integration on national and regional levels may constitute the main condition for the consolidation of the emerging political regime and interpret the complex post-communist elite patterns of behaviour and attitudes into a theoretical framework of elitist democracy. This book will appeal to those interested in democratization, elites, post-Soviet Russia and post-communist studies.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788257046675
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description

Author: Stefan Szücs
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3531901109
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
This book helps to understand in which ways local governing elites are important for the success or failure of national democratic development. Although we know a great deal about the general importance of civil society and social capital for the development of sustainable democracy, we still know little about what specific local governing qualities or political capital that interact with democratic development. The collected data covers time series of surveys from between 15 to 30 political and administrative leaders in over a hundred middle-sized European and Eurasian cities. The study takes us across the 1980s and 1990s, going from cities in Sweden and the Netherlands - through the Baltic cities - to the cities of Belarus and Russia. The findings show the importance of local political capital based on commitments to core democratic values, informal governance networks, and the significance of initially connecting the community to global, non-economic relationships.

Author: Danielle N. Lussier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107084377
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
This book studies why some democracies survive and others fail by examining the experiences of Russia and Indonesia.

Author: Anastassia V. Obydenkova
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317595130
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
In recent decades, the regions of Russia have taken different paths of regime transition. Despite the consolidation of an autocratic regime at national level and the centralization steered by Vladimir Putin’s government, the variation across sub-national regimes persists. Using an innovative theoretical framework, this book explores both causes and consequences of democratization in the regions of Russia. It is the first study in the field to systematically integrate structural and agency approaches in order to account for economic, social, historical and international causes of democratization and to trace its consequences. By focusing on the challenging and under-studied topic of sub-national regimes, the book provides a unique perspective on regime transition and the new theoretical framework contributes to a better understanding of democratization world-wide. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of democratization, sub-national regimes, East European politics, comparative politics, post-communism, and international relations.

Author: Valerie Sperling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429981589
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This study critically assesses the condition of Russia's political, economic, social, legal, and military institutions and questions the capacity of the institutions to perform the duties of a state in the modern world. Has the Russian state managed to lay the institutional groundwork for long-term stability and democratic governance? The consensus of the contributors to this book is grim. The courts have grown increasingly complex, but their ability to enhance and support democracy has remained limited. State economic institutions have been unable to collect taxes, pay government workers, fund the healthcare system, pay its soldiers, or retain value in its currency. Political mechanisms for resolving center-periphery conflicts remain ineffective, and Russia's political institutions seem less focused on serving public interests than on enriching the power of those in power.

Author: Jeffrey W. Hahn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315480999
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
The development of Russian democracy has been a gradual process of maturation punctuated by dramatic events. This text examines events such as the first free elections, the Russian parliament's resistance to the 1991 coup, and the bloody confrontation with the military in 1993.

Author: Anton Steen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134392745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Political Elite and the New Russia convincingly argues that although reforms in Russia have been initiated by those close to the President, in fact local and national elites have been the crucial strategic actors in reshaping Russia's economy, democratising its political system and decentralising its administration. This book analyses the role of elites under Yeltsin and Putin, discussing the extent to which they form a coherent political culture, and how far this culture has been in step with, or at odds with, the reform policies of the Kremlin leadership.

Author: Timothy J. Colton
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815715009
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 774

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Book Description
The Russian Federation on December 12, 1993, held its first national election since the collapse of Soviet Communism. The election, to a new, two-chamber parliament, was accompanied by a constitutional referendum. It followed months of wrangling over political and economic reform and a violent showdown in Moscow between President Boris Yeltsin and his opponents. After a bitter campaign in which the government frequently changed the rules of the game, Russians narrowly endorsed Yeltsin's draft constitution, but turned out in large numbers for nationalistic and socialistic opposition parties, leaving Russia's Choice, the party favored by the president, with a small minority of the seats. The contest, with its deeply contradictory results, was a watershed in the evolution of Russia's fledgling democracy. Growing Pains is a detailed study of the 1993 election and of its implications for Russian development and for the country's relations with the West. Several chapters, relying on comprehensive surveys of the Russian electorate, analyze the election process and how social structure and citizen opinions shaped voter choice. Others examine the campaigns of the major parties, the nature and consequences of electoral rules, and the roles of the mass media. Still others examine the campaign and its outcome at the grassroots in ten regions of Russia, from the western provinces to the Pacific coast, demonstrating the significance of local context and local elites and power structures in Russia's transitional politics.

Author: Tom Bjorkman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780815708971
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Russia has embarked on a slow but steady path of foreign policy alignment with the West. President Vladimir Putin¡¯s market-oriented economic policies and structural reforms have added momentum. But in the long run, the decisive factor in Russia¡¯s relationship with the West will be the nature of the political order it builds on the ruins of communism. There is a broad consensus among Western observers that Russia¡¯s effort to build Western-style democratic institutions in the eleven years since the Soviet collapse has stalled somewhere between democracy as understood in the West and the highly authoritarian order Russia inherited from the USSR. Some would say that Russia is doomed by its history and political culture to a lengthy period of semi-authoritarianism. In Russia¡¯s Road to Deeper Democracy, Tom Bjorkman presents evidence that this assessment is too pessimistic and underestimates the forces for political change that lie beneath the surface of what seems to be an era of political somnolence. Bjorkman argues that it is not the weight of history or the antidemocratic attitudes of the Russian population that restrain Russia from making progress toward stronger democratic institutions but specific leadership policies and elements of Russia¡¯s political elite who have a self-interest in maintaining the status quo. Putin and other senior leaders¡¯ support for proposals for democratic change now under discussion in Russia can create the kind of competitive political marketplace that the country needs to avoid political stagnation and begin to build the strong and prosperous state that all Russians want. America exerts a large influence on Russia¡¯s debate about its political future: by demonstrating that Russia¡¯s progress toward a stronger democratic order matters to the United States and by treating Russia as a part of the West, the United States can buttress internal forces pushing for a deeper Russian democracy.