Local Power And Post Soviet Politics

An analysis of local legislative and budgetary politics during the late Soviet and post-Soviet period with case studies of electoral behaviour, distribution processes, political contestation, and institutional development.

Ever since the behavioral revolution reached Communist studies more than 2 decades ago, Western scholarship has tended to ignore the powerful and unwieldy institutional structure of the Soviet government. Today, suddenly, it is clear that the dramatic political and legislative reforms of the Gorbachev years will remain incomplete as long as the issues of state bureaucratic power and executive prerogative are unresolved. This volume, brings together original studies of the Soviet executive under Gorbachev by specialists including Barbara Chotiner, Stephen Fortescue, Brnda Horrigan, Ellen Jones, Wayne Limberg, T.H. Rigby and Louise Shelley. Among the topics covered are the major economic, national security and law enforcement ministries, the presidency, the cabinet and questions of presidential-ministerial, presidential-presidential, legislative-executive and party-state relations.

Examines the transformation of the Russian electricity system during post-Soviet marketization, arguing for a view of economic and political development as mutually constitutive.

Energy has been an important element in Moscow’s quest to exert power and influence in its surrounding areas both before and after the collapse of the USSR. With their political independence in 1991, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania also became, virtually overnight, separate energy-poor entities heavily dependent on Russia. This increasingly costly dependency – and elites’ scrambling over associated profits – came to crucially affect not only relations with Russia, but the very nature of post-independence state building. The Politics of Energy Dependency explores why these states were unable to move towards energy diversification. Through extensive field research using previously untapped local-language sources, Margarita M. Balmaceda reveals a complex picture of local elites dealing with the complications of energy dependency and, in the process, affecting the energy security of Europe as a whole. A must-read for anyone interested in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the politics of natural resources, this book reveals the insights gained by looking at post-Soviet development and international relations issues not only from a Moscow-centered perspective, but from that of individual actors in other states.

Considers the establishment of devolved government in the traditionally hierarchical countries of Eastern Europe, looking at the experiences of countries including the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Moldova. Examines how resources could be redistributed across regions, efforts to strike a balance between tendencies to over-centralize and tendencies towards fragmentation, and the continuing influence of the regional elites of the old regime. Central-local relations are shown to be more orderly in countries with successful financial stabilization. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Special Sections: Russian Foreign Policy Towards the “Near Abroad” and Russia's Annexiation of Crimea II This special section deals with Russia’s post-Maidan foreign policy towards the so-called “near abroad,” or the former Soviet states. This is an important and timely topic, as Russia’s policy perspectives have changed dramatically since 2013/2014, as have those of its neighbors. The Kremlin today is paradoxically following an aggressive “realist” agenda that seeks to clearly delineate its sphere of influence in Europe and Eurasia while simultaneously attempting to promote “soft-power” and a historical-civilizational justification for its recent actions in Ukraine (and elsewhere). The result is an often perplexing amalgam of policy positions that are difficult to disentangle. The contributors to this special issue are all regional specialists based either in Europe or the United States.

In the wake of the USSR's breakup, the eighty-nine constituent subjects of the Russian Federation emerged as political players, grasping power for local policies from a weakened central authority and electing the legislators who have altered the complexion of the central government. Beyond the Monolith examines the impact of Russia's emerging regionalism on the political, economic, and social transformation of the largest of the successor states of the Soviet Union. The authors explore significant variations between and similarities among different provinces; the development of federalism in Russia; the effectiveness of local government; the power relationships between the center and the regions; the differential impact of privatization outside Moscow and St. Petersburg; and the role of environmental, public health, and labor market factors in regional economies. Contributors are Cynthia Buckley, Carol Clark, Robert V. Daniels, Mark. G. Field, Alexander A. Galkin, Nail Midkhatovich Moukhariamov, Demosthenes James Peterson, Greg Poelzer, Don K. Rowney, Darrell Slider, and John F. Young.

This book presents an account of war settlement in Georgia and Tajikistan as local actors maneuvered in the shadow of a Russian-led military intervention. Combining ethnography and game theory and quantitative and qualitative methods, this book presents a revisionist account of the post-Soviet wars and their settlement.