Understanding the survival of post-Communist corruption in contemporary Russia: the influence of historical legacies

Corruption is widespread throughout the former Communist states, and it is particularly severe and entrenched in Russia. Despite the fact that Russia's contemporary corruption has recently become a subject of analysis, there is, however, no study that has addressed the role of the Communist legacy in the development of various aspects of corruption. This paper contributes to the debates through, first, disentangling the complex phenomenon that is corruption, and focusing on its three aspects: supply, demand, and the attitude of the population. Second, the paper also contributes to the literature on modern corruption by explicitly focusing on the role of the historical legacy in these different aspects of corruption. The study is based on several rich data-sets on corruption and on an original data-set compiled to measure the percentage share of Communists in various regions of Russia in the last decades of the USSR (1970s–1980s). The analysis presented in the paper uncovers different roles of the Communist legacies across the development of various aspects of corruption. By doing so, the paper contributes to the literature on historical legacies in general, on Communist legacies in particular, as well as to the broader literature on the causes of corruption in transitional societies.     

从“北溪-2”项目看德俄关系及俄美欧三方博弈

作为两个重要的地区大国,德国与俄罗斯的关系对彼此和欧洲都有着重要影响。在双边关系中,能源因素因其对国民经济生产的决定性意义长期发挥着“稳定器”的作用。2018年9月,由德俄牵头,法国、奥地利与荷兰合资建造的“北溪-2”天然气管道项目正式动工铺设。该项目将使输往欧洲的俄罗斯天然气绕开乌克兰,经过波罗的海海底直接连通德俄两国,德国由此成为俄罗斯天然气最重要的转运国。此举虽然在双边层面上保证了德俄的能源经济安全,但在多边层面却招致欧盟、美国等多方反对。因担心会进一步加深对俄罗斯能源的依赖,欧盟委员会及中东欧国家欲诉诸法律对该项目施以约束;美国在制裁项目企业的同时转而向波兰、乌克兰等国出口液化天然气,在利用政治机遇抢占欧洲市场的同时试图制衡俄罗斯的影响力。在多方力量博弈中,德国需要在平衡俄美欧关系中付出更多努力。     

Between practices and demands: ambiguities,controversies and constraints in the emergence of active citizenship in Turkey

This article discusses the emergence of active citizenship in Turkey in the light of two working definitions that provide different outcomes in terms of research objectives and aims. On the one side, we define active citizenship as a practice stimulated by public institutions through public policy with the aim of promoting civic and political engagement in order to shape participatory policy processes and ultimately improve the democratic bases of policy-making. On the other side, we define active citizenship as a demand, which becomes particularly important where the civil society expresses certain claims through different means using both traditional and alternative channels of mobilization. In our discussion, we have examined different macro-processes and macro-events that have been key in bringing about different formulations of active citizenship. Using a case study method – where we overview different contextual elements/dynamics that bring to the fore various elements of civic and political engagement and civic and political participation during the past 15 years – we argue that, in a context where the expression of active citizenship is volatile and constrained, further research should take into account different top-down and bottom-up dynamics that bring about different challenges for the study of this subject in Turkey.     

Russia,NMD and the ABM treaty: The dangers of American unilateralism

In order to consolidate its strategic bilateral relations developed in Africa over the past 14 years, South Africa must choose five key ‘hubs’ (regional powers) in each of Africa's five sub-regions. In addition, South Africa should pick two additional ‘spokes’ (influential actors) in each sub-region. These 15 strategic partners can increase South Africa's engagement on the continent in the areas of diplomacy, conflict management, and trade relations. South Africa's bilateral relations would thus resemble a gigantic bicycle, with five hubs and ten spokes. The five hubs are Mozambique, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, and Algeria. The ten spokes would be Zimbabwe, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan, Tanzania, Egypt and Libya. It is around these countries that South Africa can build solid strategic bilateral relationships in Africa.     

The logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia,Ukraine, and the conflict in Donbas

The crisis in Ukraine since late 2013 has seen four successive internationally mediated agreements that have been at best partially implemented. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and 42 key informant interviews sides, we explain this outcome with reference to the logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia is currently unable to achieve a friendly and stable regime in Kyiv and thus hedges against the consolidation of an unfriendly pro-Western and stable regime by maintaining its control over parts of eastern Ukraine and solidifying the dependence of local regimes there on Russian support. This gives Russia the opportunity to maintain the current status quo or settle for re-integration terms through which Russia can sustain long-term influence over Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy. We conclude by reflecting on the consequences of competitive influence-seeking in the post-Soviet space: the likely persistence of low-intensity conflict in Ukraine; the further consolidation of territorial divisions in other post-Soviet conflicts; and the need for policy-makers in Russia and the West to prioritize the management of the consequent instability.     

经济危机、社会政策和经济发展:俄罗斯的经验

苏联解体之后,俄罗斯的社会政策保持了基本的连续性。尤其是叶利钦之后的俄罗斯,政府对社会保障和改善民生进行了巨大的投入,居民收入的增长和生活的改善非常明显。经济危机爆发之后,俄罗斯反危机政策更是赋予了社会政策以特别的使命,不仅缓解了危机的烈度,也起到了社会稳定器的作用。俄罗斯社会政策解决了国家长期发展需要面对的两个重要问题:一个是国家长期发展的人力资本积累问题,另一个是社会扩大再生产的可持续性问题。     

Citizenship,migration and loyalty towards the state: a case study of the Kyrgyzstani migrants working in Russia and Kazakhstan

Building upon recent studies in the field of citizenship and transnationalism, this article examines the relations that Kyrgyzstani migrants in Kazakhstan and Russia entertain with their homeland, both in terms of concrete status (rights and responsibilities) and subjective attitudes (feeling of membership and loyalty). The article relies on field research, including semi-structured interviews, conducted in March and April 2007. Findings show that Kyrgyzstani migrants have developed a distinctive and somewhat paradoxical relation to their state of origin, in which pragmatic interest and long-term loyalty are not easily reconciled.     

Running to stand still: aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of ‘mundane’ policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts – involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy – in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality – usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure – creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of “aggressive immobility” – the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state – has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.     

Complying with European standards of minority education: Estonia's relations with the European Union,OSCE and Council of Europe

Abstract

Between 1993 and 2000, Estonia's policy towards minority education experienced four approximate phases of development, each denoting an increasing degree of compliance with European norms, which call on governments to provide individuals belonging to minorities with access to education in their mother tongue. This article argues that the European Union, OSCE and Council of Europe played a role, at timed key and at times mediated, in Estonia policy transformation. Whereas EU material incentives triggered Estonia's willingness to embark on policy change, the dialogue conducted by OSCE and COE representatives helps explain the content and trajectory of the changes introduced thereafter.     

The Welfare Agenda of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe: Combining Welfare Chauvinism,Producerism and Populism*

Recent scholarship on the populist radical right tends to imprecisely describe the welfare agenda of this party family with reference to its key ideological characteristics of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. We propose an alternative analytical framework that considers the multidimensionality of welfare state positions and the “deservingness criteria” that underlie ideas about welfare entitlement. Applying this framework to a sample of four European populist radical right parties, we conclude that three interrelated frames inform their welfare agenda. These parties, we argue, advocate social closure not only on the basis of the deservingness criterion of identity (welfare chauvinism), but also on criteria of control, attitude, and reciprocity (welfare producerism) and on an antagonism between the people and the establishment (welfare populism). Understanding the welfare agenda of the populist radical right requires us to move beyond welfare chauvinism and to reconsider the concept of welfare producerism and its interaction with welfare chauvinism.     

Civil and civic death in the new authoritarianisms: punishment of dissidents through juridical destruction,ethical ruin,and necropolitics in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since the Turkish government’s recent turn to authoritarianism, tens of thousands of public dissidents and government critics have been subjected to dismissals and revocation of civic rights via emergency decrees. The victims call this process ‘civil death’. We aim to understand the logic behind this form of punishment in Turkey by examining the differential genealogy of civil death in the work of Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Ogilvie, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe. We demonstrate that a later form of civil death was used by totalitarian regimes in a process leading to the reduction of targeted individuals as ‘superfluous’ and as ‘living corpses’ in concentration camps. In these contexts, death became an instrument of biopolitical and necropolitical powers. We propose that although contemporary punishment of public dissidents in Turkey shares some similarities with these forms of civil death, it may more fittingly be identified as civic death. We argue that while civil death is based on the classical political right of the sovereign to ‘make die’ after first reducing targeted individuals to little more than living corpses, civic death is linked to the power of the sovereign to ‘let die’ through the exclusion of public dissidents from economic, social, and political life.     

世纪之交的美、欧、日关系新走向

在新的世纪来临之际 ,新的国际秩序正逐步形成。世界各国正加紧其战略调整 ,大国间的关系将在更高的层次和更广的范围里展开 ,尤其引人注目的是美、欧、日之间的关系在调整变化过程中出现的新特点 :既相竞争 ,更多的相互协调。     

Uhlin,Anders. Post-Soviet Civil Society: Democratization in Russia and the Baltic States. London and New York,Routledge, 2006, ISBN: 0-415-36804-9.

The Baltic German politician and political thinker Paul Schiemann (1876–1944) is widely recognized as the most prominent defender of liberalism in the Baltic states during the interwar period. However, his liberal ideas have rarely been interpreted in their own right. This article explores the main presuppositions of Schiemann's liberalism: his conceptions of individual freedom, democracy, and cultural development. Although Schiemann's main intentions are liberal, his theory of the anational state includes significant Marxist elements, which call into question the potential of the democratic state. In my conclusions, I will argue that Schiemann's ideas still have theoretical relevance, which must be further explored in the context of contemporary liberal theory.     

俄罗斯战略性主导产业增长方式:能源工业的实证分析

对经济转轨以来俄罗斯能源工业的研究表明,作为战略性主导产业的能源工业在俄罗斯经济转轨中发挥了巨大作用.在俄罗斯转轨危机中,能源工业一直保持了较高的增长速度,并率先走出经济危机.对经济转轨前俄罗斯能源工业的回顾表明,计划经济体制下粗放式开采是制约苏联油气开发后劲的根本原因.对此我们要给予充分客观的认识.本文从设计采收率、劳动生产率等方面论述了经济转轨以来俄罗斯能源工业的粗放式经济发展方式的进一步加强.深入分析了俄罗斯能源工业的粗放式经济发展方式加强的原因.本文指出,经济转轨中俄罗斯能源工业的经济发展方式的转变,关系到整体经济发展方式、经济增长速度和经济结构调整.