Geopolitical Priorities in Russia's Regional Policies

State regional policies are generally based either on the goal of stimulating the development of specific regions or of equalizing the level of development among the regions. The first path is generally pursued by developing states while rich states favor the second path. Russia has in the past experimented with both vectors of regional policy. Since the annexation of Crimea, a third factor has come to dominate: geopolitics. The main goal of Russia's regional policy is securing control of geopolitically significant territories. The high expense of such a policy makes it unsustainable during a period of economic retrenchment.     

Regional integration in Central Asia

This paper analyses the interaction of regionalism and multilateralism in the five Central Asian countries’ trade policies. The basic question is why have leaders been willing to sign so many regional agreements, which often include visions of regional trading arrangements (RTAs), and yet so unwilling to implement any preferential trading arrangements? The paper examines the durability of multilateralism and the added incentives for joining the World Trade Organization in light of China’s WTO accession in 2001 and Russia’s expected accession. The final section draws together arguments for multi-dimensional (bilateral, plurilateral, and regional) regional cooperation within a WTO framework.     

Regional disparities and economic growth in Russia: new growth patterns and catching up

The regional disparities in Russia are increasing since transition started in the 1990s, as result of the structural processes of reorganisation and reallocations of resources taking place in the territory. The scopes of this contribution are two folds: to clarify the theoretical and policy background in analysing regional development in the transition and in particular in Russia, and to analyse the specificity of the spatial development and the regional disparities patterns in Russia. The economic geography is recognised among the different theories, very useful for helping to understand in particular the recent phenomena of new concentration pattern in Russia, giving a key of analysis of new polarisation trends: new trends toward urban concentrations in the Western regions, de-population of the Eastern regions, rural decline in those regions faraway from large urban agglomerations. In fact the empirical analysis indicates two dominant phenomena in the up-surging of regional disparities: the increasing weight of the capital city, Moscow as agglomeration effects brings the polarisation phenomena; and the strengthening of the natural resources and energy endowed regions. There is the question whether Russia, at this stage of development, can pursue an active regional policy toward equity targets or whether, for the target of sustaining macro-economic growth, there is the urgency to keep selected priorities based on the best performing poles. A difficult balance between the two targets would be the most suitable answer.     

Federalism with a Russian face: regional inequality, administrative capacity and regional budgets in Russia

The paper reviews fiscal federalism in Russian practice. Central control over sub-national budgets has tended to increase. In the classic literature on fiscal federalism such centralisation is potentially damaging to both static efficiency and growth. The paper reviews the propositions in that literature and the assumptions made in it, and notes that weak administrative capacity at sub-regional level, weak electoral competition and extreme unevenness of economic development across regions may provide grounds for greater central control than is treated as desirable in the established literature. The patterns of budgetary transfers from national to regional level are analysed and conclusions drawn about the effectiveness of the evolving fiscal-federal system in Russia.     

Post-colonial trade between Russia and former Soviet republics: back to big brother?

We examine the developments in trade patterns between the former Soviet republics in the years following the initial breakup shock. After a huge fall following the Soviet breakup of the early 1990s, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) trade with Russia began improving, and there have been recent formal efforts at Eurasian Economic Integration. This might be taken, a priori, as contrary to the hypothesis of gradual decline in Head, Mayer and Ries (HMR in J Int Econ 81(1):1–14, 2010)—or perhaps as evidence of the power of restored trade agreements, such as the incipient Eurasian Economic Union. We decompose the region’s trade into theory-consistent ‘gravity’ components, in order to analyze dynamic changes in the components since the Soviet era. Despite the sharp falls after 1991, trade in 1995 still shows strong ties, consistent with high dyadic (country pair) components linked to trade specialization. By contrast, in the second decade, the ties (dyads) began to weaken significantly and calibrated trade costs tend to rise, despite attempts at renewed integration. Rather, the sharp improvement in trade volumes was mainly due to the sharp recoveries in GDP levels for both Russia and many of the Central Asian Countries, associated with improvements in the global economy and economic ties with the World (especially with EU and China). We would therefore conclude that the recovery in trade between Russia and Central Asia reflects monadic factors (i.e., the regional economic recovery) and does not contradict the HMR (2010) hypothesis. Nevertheless, further, dynamic analysis shows that there are strong long-run ties within the CIS and Russia, which are not declining, and that sticky post-colonial adjustment does not appear set to eliminate the current bias of trade between these republics.

     

Social support and homicide in transitional Russia

Like the United States, Russia is a large industrialized nation with high violence rates. Although its overall homicide rate is among the highest in the world, however, local rates of crime vary widely. Similarly, the level of social support provided by the state varies throughout Russia due to former Soviet policies, the differential pace of political and economic change, and the level of development. Relying upon recent criminological literature on social support theory, this study tested the hypotheses that areas with higher levels of social support will have lower homicide rates and that the effects of negative socioeconomic change on homicide rates will be moderated by levels of social support. Utilizing data from Russian regions (n = 78) and controlling for other structural covariates, negative binomial regression was employed to estimate the effects of social support on regional homicide rates. As expected, negative socioeconomic change was associated with higher homicide rates, but the results provided no support for direct or conditioning effects of social support on homicide. The findings are discussed in the context of Russia-specific conditions and of the meaning of these findings for recent research on social support and crime.     

Reconstituting Paradise Lost: Temporality, Civility, and Ethnicity in Post-Communist Constitution-Making

This article focuses on constitutional developments and legal policies in Central Europe since 1989 and elaborates on their temporal analysis with special emphasis on the distinction between demos and ethnos in the political and legal discourse. Using various social theories of time, identity, and codification of social traditions, I argue that the difference between civility and ethnicity does not involve simply a conflict between liberal democratic aspirations and ethno-nationalist myths of authoritarian politics, but rather represents two distinct traditions manipulated by political agents and codified in the process of recent constitution-making. The process of selecting different traditions and political manipulations of the past is reflected at the level of both constitutional symbolism and specific governmental policies in post-Communist Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The final part of the text analyzes relations between the abstract symbolic language of constitutional documents and concrete, "ethnos-" based legal policies implemented in these countries of Central Europe.     

Social Inequality and the Perceived Income Justice Gap

This paper attempts to answer the question whether justice evaluations of income inequality in a society are determined more by country differences or by the social position an observer occupies. In very general terms what we study is whether, in shaping justice beliefs, cultural factors are more important than social-structural ones, or vice versa. In view of transformation societies, country differences are conflated with differences in the transformation processes the countries are experiencing. This is why we distinguish different types of transmations with regard to the postcommunist countries of Eastern and Central Europe testing empirically whether these transformation types exert influence on the justice beliefs, and how this influence compares to that of positional effects. With International Social Justice Project (ISJP) data of 1991 and 1996, we study the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, East Germany, and—as a western referent society—West Germany. Main results are that in the early phase of transformation the different transformation types as well as social positions matter in shaping justice evaluations, over time, however, the types of transformation clearly lose influence. In 1996, compared to 5 years earlier, the countries have become similar in that most of the variation in the perception of the income justice must now be attributed to the positional differences of individuals. We conclude that the characteristics of the transformation processes decrease in importance for determining public views about social justice. In this respect, the transformation societies of Eastern and Central Europe may well be on the route to becoming more like western societies.     

巴西乡村发展政策法规特征研究

巴西是拉丁美洲面积最大的国家,近年来经济发展迅猛,已经成为“金砖四国”之一,其国内的政治、经济、法律制度日益引起国际社会的广泛关注。巴西在乡村发展方面所制定的政策和法规,为巴西乡村社会的发展起到了指引和规范作用。我国的乡村发展模式与巴西有所不同,我国在乡村发展法制建设方面应特别关注农村地区土地兼并问题,应通过集约化经营和统分结合的双层经营体制,来保证我国乡村地区社会和经济发展的稳定性。     

清帝《逊位诏书》在中华民族统一上的法律意义

辛亥革命南北议和的结果是清帝逊位,以禅让模式终结当时统治中国的清帝国。清帝《逊位诏书》成为帝国主权转移至民国的重要合法性文献,对中华民国建政意义深远。作为原帝国所辖领土的辽阔的边疆民族地区因此被当然合法地纳入民国法统之下,中华民族成为一个统一的政治实体,一个完整继承清帝国的主权国家。然而西方列强及国内少数分裂主义分子图谋瓜分、分裂中国的野心不死。因此,在辛亥革命中,中央、边疆民族与列强及分裂主义之间展开了关于中华民族宪政合法性及国际承认的政治博弈,虽然最终我们基本捍卫了领土主权完整,但仍需保持警惕,应建构我们自己的理论话语以应对西方的理论挑战。     

统一多民族国家的宪制建构——新中国成立初期民族区域自治制度的奠基历程

对于民族区域自治制度在我国的确立,《共同纲领》的宪政宣示尽管具有最为重要的合法性确认意义,但这一基本宪政制度的真正奠基,则有赖于民族识别、民族干部培养、少数民族地方民主改革等一系列相关政治实践。这其中,少数民族地方民主改革可视为我国民族区域自治制度奠基的关键,它直接决定了新中国的民族治理制度是否坚持和贯彻了社会主义方向这一民族区域自治制度的最实质所在。同时,新中国通过将民族区域自治制度作为我国民族治理的基本宪政制度,也实现了清末以来多民族大国的民族—国家建构的真正飞跃。     

A Design for Russia

Occupying as it does an intermediate position between East and West, Russia from time to time finds it necessary to reexamine its status as a civilized country: it perpetuates itself in history by changing its civilizational orientations—by searching for a new balance between Western and Eastern impulses. Any reform in Russia weakens the screws that "fasten" the country firmly to a specific point on the axis between East and West, thus creating the danger of destabilization. Most countries, both Eastern and Western, are part of more or less stable civilized systems: a cupola over them protects them from the chaos of history. Russia, however, is its own civilizational system, yet a more fragile and mobile one owing to its intermediate position. State power and civilizational fragility—such is the antinomy of Russia's destiny, something our social reformers frequently forget.     

Legacies of a culture of inequality: The Janus face of crime in post-communist countries

This paper explores the role of the specific structure and culture of inequality of the communist and post-communist countries in the simultaneouswave of elite crime and violent crime in Central and East Europe. Under thelayer of homogeneity, which had been imposed on the region by ethnic cleansingduring and after World War II and by the continuous policies of communistregimes, a substructure and subculture of inequality emerged, which becamedominant during the transition phase. Among the consequences of the ``hour-glass' society (Rose) and feudalization of society are closely knit networks at the top and the bottom of society, clientelism as a pattern of linking them, and non-egalitarian and collectivist value patterns. This specific cluster combines factors that contribute to both high-level corruption and violence. Pathways of development during the transition periodindicate a bi-partition of the ``geography of crime' in the region. The relative ``success stories' of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic withboth declining rates of corruption and lethal violent crime (homicide) are in stark contrast to many of the successor states of the Soviet Union. It is argued that strong institutions based on civil rights and the rule of law areimportant factors responsible for this difference.     

中国区域产业协同发展与《区域产业结构调控法》的制定

区域产业结构趋同是我国区域经济发展中的一个重要问题。这种趋同的根本原因是区域主导产业的选择和布局不是建立在资源禀赋和比较优势上,而是基于地方政府和官员的价值目标和地方利益。区域产业结构的同化,一方面使得各区域产业缺乏规模效益,加剧市场的恶性竞争,另一方面又使得本已匮乏的资源进一步恶化,激化了人与资源的矛盾,阻碍了我国经济进一步协调发展。中央政府先后出台了一系列产业调控与协调发展的政策,旨在扭转失衡的区域产业结构,但效果并不明显。本文分析了我国区域产业结构趋同的深层次原因,认为要从根本上解决这一问题,不仅要制定一系列调控区域产业结构的政策,更应适时地使一部分成熟的政策上升为法律,并在对我国区域产业实证分析的基础上,就制定《区域产业结构调控法》的重要性、调整对象、基本原则、主要内容提出了看法。     

Legal Issues Involved in Fighting Spam as a Means of Waging an Information War

While other countries, both those that border on the Arctic Circle and those that do not, rush to establish footholds in the polar regions, Russia has taken a lackadaisical attitude toward restoring and strengthening its influence along the Northern Sea Route even though one-quarter of its energy reserves lie in that region. Russia must reexamine its policy, and quickly, if the country is not to lose out in an intensified global contest over natural resources.     

Spousal Violence Among Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union—General Population and Welfare Recipients

This study examines psychological and marital risk factors of 322 immigrant FSU couples in Israel. The research focuses on two populations: the general immigrant population and the welfare immigrant population; the latter group is comprised of couples treated in welfare service departments. The dependent variable is spousal violence. The independent variables are: education level, gender, symbolic loss, psychological adjustment (both positive and negative emotions) and the “cultural–familial gap”. Surprisingly, it was found that the welfare immigrant population reports less spousal violence than the regular immigrant population. In addition, a correlation was found between spousal violence and the following factors: higher education, lower level of psychological adjustment and greater familial-cultural gap between the country of origin and Israel. The discussion focuses on the characteristics of FSU immigrants—educational level and orientation towards cultural preservation—within the Israeli context that connects to psychological responses which, in turn, creates spousal violence.     

Quantitative indices for anti-human trafficking policies: based on reports of the U.S. State Department and the Council of Europe

Quantitative ratings of policies of national governments are an important tool for the monitoring of compliance with international standards in many domains. In this article we present a global index of anti-human trafficking policies developed by a research consortium using the TIP country reports of the U.S. State Department (the 3P index) and an index based on the reports of the monitoring body of the Council of Europe Convention against Human Trafficking (GRETA). Although the global 3P index gives more favorable ratings to most European countries than the GRETA-based index, a moderately strong correlation was found between the two indices. This is an encouraging result lending support to the validity of the assessments of both monitoring mechanisms as well as to their transformation into quantitative scores. We also demonstrate that the detailed GRETA-based index can be used to identify best practices in anti-trafficking policies and specific areas where these policies are most in need of improvement, e.g. legal aid and compensation for victims. Our analyses of the relationships between the various items of the index revealed positive correlations between the existence of units of specialized prosecutors and the numbers of convictions of traffickers. Our paper, then, demonstrates the potential of quantitative indices of counter human trafficking policies as tools for both effective monitoring of the implementation of international standards and for analytical purposes.     

Lethal poisoning with ethyl alcohol and its surrogates in various regions of the Russian Federation

The index of lethal poisoning with ethyl alcohol and its surrogates in Russia remains one of the highest in the world. It is explained by high alcohol consumption in Russia (about 15 liters of pure alcohol per capita annually), consumption of mainly strong beverages (about 80%), extensive sales of adulterated strong alcoholic beverages (more than 25%), virtually no preventive work in the population, and other causes. The index of lethal poisoning with alcohol and its surrogates in the country and its regions is one of the most important parameters in evaluation of the socioeconomic well-being of the population.     

Perception of white-collar crime among immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel

This study examines how immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who have lived in Israel for an average of 10 years perceive white-collar crime. After a survey of the literature about the Soviet economy and how Soviet society regarded white-collar crime, we examine the relationship between FSU immigrants’ tolerance of white-collar crime (relative to their Israeli counterparts) and the degree of their involvement in Russian culture and society. This involvement was analyzed using a system of variables that indicate the subjects’ affinity for Russian culture and society and rejection of (isolation from) Israeli society. The study’s 1,028 participants are a representative sample of the olim (immigrants to Israel) from the FSU between 1990 and 2005. Our findings reinforced the hypothesis that the more involved these immigrants are in Russian culture and society, and the more alienated they are from Israeli society, the more permissive their view of white-collar crime. Nonetheless, our study explains 27 % of the variance in their view of white-collar crime. Hence the question requires further research. Our findings are discussed in terms of the decisive impact of the Soviet process of socialization on the values, perspectives, and behavior patterns of Post-Soviet man and its ramifications for the rule of law and their conception of Israeli democracy.