United Russia’s Primaries and the Strength of Political Machines in the Regions of Russia: Evidence from the 2016 Duma Elections

Abstract

The primary elections of the United Russia party serve as a tool for party organisation and voter mobilisation. In this study, we employ United Russia’s capacity to mobilise voter turnout in the 2016 primary elections as an indirect indicator of the strength of party-controlled regional political machines. Our analysis of the results of the 2016 Duma elections in 83 regions of Russia demonstrates that voter turnout in the spring 2016 party primaries of United Russia to a significant extent explains cross-regional variation in party success.     

The Role of Power in EU–Russia Energy Relations: The Interplay between Markets and Geopolitics

Abstract

Energy trade is an essential factor in EU–Russia relations. This essay argues that Russia and the European Union have deployed two types of power in their post-Cold War energy relationship. Russia has predominantly exerted geopolitical power through the sale of its vast energy resources and selected strategies to channel them to partners. With a large market but lacking fossil fuels, the EU attempted to achieve its aims mostly through regulatory power. However, both the Russian and the EU external energy policy strategies have recently become more nuanced. This evolution in their approaches has resulted in Russia’s gradual acceptance of the regulatory and market principles promoted by the EU.     

Party Reforms and the Unbalancing of the Cleavage Structure in Russian Regional Elections, 2012–2015

This study analyses the influence of the party reforms of 2012 and the ‘counter-reforms’ of 2013–2014 on the Russian party system, and the structure of political and electoral cleavages in Russian regions. The emergence of new political parties in 2012–2013 led to a temporary increase in electoral competition, an augmentation of the political space, and a rise in the number of electoral cleavages, but these developments did not weaken the domination of United Russia. The trend towards an ever greater tightening up of entry requirements for contestation in the elections led to a lowering of the number of political and, consequently, electoral cleavages, in addition to a reconfiguration of the political space. The study shows that there was an unbalancing of the political cleavage structure in 2012–2015: the socioeconomic political cleavage, whose primary place is a key determinant of equilibrium, ceded the top position to the authoritarian–democratic cleavage in 2012–2013, and to the ‘Ukrainian’ (systemic) cleavage in 2014–2015.     

The Critical Movement Against the 2010–2012 Education Reform in Russia: Networks,Organisations and Parties

Abstract

In 2010, Russian authorities presented a new draft law on education, which immediately became controversial. The essay examines whether user groups (parents) and low-ranking sector employees (teachers) were active in the movement critical of the reform, and how the state responded to the anti-reform movement. The movement consisted of several networks and organisations with no central node. It included teachers, parents and activists from both non-systemic groups and systemic opposition parties. Pressure from below by networks and organisations was combined with pressure from actors situated above in the political system, that is, in the Duma. Since the movement was welfare-oriented rather than fundamentally regime-critical, the Russian authorities tolerated open criticism both from civil society and inside the Duma. Some gains for teachers were won, but the movement’s proposed amendments and demands were generally rejected or only introduced in revised form.     

The Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: The Role of Partner’s Attitudes and Participation in Microcredit Programmes

This paper employs data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2004) to explore how women’s empowerment is related to partner’s attitudes, participation in microcredit programmes and a set of other socio-economic factors. We use a structural equation model with categorical observed variables. We get that participation in microcredit programmes has a positive impact on both the empowerment’s dimensions considered, while partner’s attitudes effect is weaker, proving that gender community norms are likely to be rooted in women’s minds regardless of the partners’ perceptions of women’s status.     

Russian NGOs and Their Struggle for Legitimacy in the Face of the ‘Foreign Agents’ Law: Surviving in Small Ecologies

Abstract

The essay investigates the survival strategies of foreign-funded Russian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the face of the so-called ‘foreign agents’ law of 2012. Conceptualising NGOs as autonomous social systems and drawing on two qualitative case studies of Russian NGOs in the fields of human rights protection, we show how these organisations manage to cope with the state’s withdrawal of legitimacy by creatively handling their diverse environmental dependencies. Through shifting the relative importance of different audiences and generating new sources of legitimacy, they have eventually created and maintained small supportive ecologies within the overall environment of a political regime that does not tolerate them.     

Mastering space in Eurasia: Russia’s geopolitical thinking after the Soviet break-up

This essay assumes the significance of spatial imagination in shaping the political and cultural boundaries of the post-Soviet Eurasia and reviews the newly emerged geopolitical arguments in Russia. Rather than perceiving Eurasianist views in Russia as relatively homogeneous, I argue that such thinking is highly diverse and varies from West-friendly versions to those that are openly isolationist and expansionist. To support my argument, I select six recently published Russian volumes and group them into five distinct schools of Russia’s geopolitical thinking, each with their own intellectual assumptions, worldviews, and bases of support in the society. While writing on the same subject of the Eurasian geopolitics, each author proposes principally different solutions to the problems that emerged over the 10 years of Russia’s post-communist experience. The argument invites us to rethink the nature of Russia’s spatial thinking and activities in Eurasia and to seriously consider engaging Russia as an equal participant in a larger collective security-based arrangement in the region.

Geography may ‘matter’ … only as the moment in which abstract universal social processes, such as social stratification, state-building, and ideological hegemony, are revealed in space.

John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space (1995, 13)     

The Baltic Republics and the Crisis of 2008–2011

This essay explores how the Baltic republics responded to the crisis of 2008–2011. We argue that while there are significant differences in how the Baltic economies responded to the crisis, these responses not only remain within the neo-liberal policy paradigm characteristic of the region from the early 1990s, but that the crisis radicalised Baltic economies and particularly their fiscal stance. We show that there are a number of unique features in all three Baltic republics' political economies that made such a radicalisation possible. However, these unique features make it almost impossible for the Baltic experience to be replicable anywhere else in Europe.     

Cold War redux in US–Russia relations? The effects of US media framing and public opinion of the 2008 Russia–Georgia war

This paper examines the Cold War rhetoric in US–Russia relations by looking at the 2008 Russia–Georgia war as a major breaking point. We investigate the links between media, public opinion and foreign policy. In our content analysis of the coverage in two major US newspapers, we find that the framing of the conflict was anti-Russia, especially in the initial stages of the conflict. In addition, our survey results demonstrate that an increase in the media exposure of US respondents increased the likelihood of blaming Russia exclusively in the conflict. This case study helps us understand how media can be powerful in constructing a certain narrative of an international conflict, which can then affect public perceptions of other countries. We believe that the negative framing of Russia in the US media has had important implications for the already-tenuous relations between the US and Russia by reviving and perpetuating the Cold War mentality for the public as well as for foreign policymakers.     

Public Administration Research in Contemporary Russia: An Analysis of Journal Publications, 2010–2014

This study examines the latest tendencies in Russian research on public administration (2010–14) as it appears in Russian academic journals. The study considers the subjects of articles, their methodological features, and the characteristics of contributors. Revealing problems in public administration research in Russia contributes both to the development of Russian science and to the ongoing international discussion regarding the need for better research on public administration and state policy. By drawing attention to the shortcomings and weaknesses of Russian public administration research, the study is meant to advance the current discussion on ways to strengthen the quality of policy research around the world.     

The Impact of ‘Boss’ Candidates and Local Political Machines on Elections in Ukraine

The business sector has strongly influenced Ukrainian electoral campaigns since the founding post-communist elections. This article investigates the role of influential, local business-sector candidates, whom we label ‘boss’ candidates, in illicit campaign activities, using unique biographical, electoral, and crowd-sourced data from the 2012 parliamentary elections. The analysis shows that higher levels of competition among candidates with ‘boss’ characteristics are associated with elevated reports of voter manipulation, specifically vote buying. The findings add to extant research on election integrity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, presenting quantitative empirical evidence that is consistent with narratives about Ukrainian electoral corruption.     

Russia’s local government in the process of authoritarian regime transformation: incentives for the survival of local democracy

In 2003, the authorities of Russia launched a comprehensive reform of local government. One of the elements of this reform was the replacement of the previously predominant form of local government, characterised by the presence of directly elected mayors, with the council-manager model. While originally motivated largely by the desire to enhance the efficacy of local government, the reform was implemented concurrently with Russia’s transition to electoral authoritarianism, with the council-manager model emerging as a major tool of authoritarian transformation. This study uses the data from 79 capitals of Russia’s regions in order to identify those factors that facilitated the survival of directly elected mayors in these cities. The analysis reveals that the past trajectories of regime transitions at the regional level in the form of elite settlement, economic resourcefulness, and the lack of politically motivated deference to the federal authorities contributed to the survival of local democracy in Russia.     

“Orbiting the Core”: Politics and the Meaning of Dialect in Chinese Linguistics, 1927–1957

In 1956, the Chinese Communist state launched its official language policy, which included the promulgation of a standard spoken language, called Putonghua. Their justification for this policy and their methods for implementation were guided by intellectual and ideological frameworks that formed during decades preceding the policy's rollout. In particular, Communist language reform was predicated on the conceptualization of Putonghua as a holistic language meant to serve the national body—and of local dialects, called fangyan in Chinese, as dependent on Putonghua for their very definition. This article interrogates the history of this framework. Focusing on dialect surveys from the 1930s, Chinese interpretations of Marxist linguistic theory in the early years of the Communist state, and methods of Putonghua promulgation in the late 1950s, this article reconstructs the epistemological regimes that gave meaning to the concept of independence and autonomy as they related to language in modern China.     

Russia’s Power Politics in Ukraine and Syria: Status-seeking between Identity,Opportunity and Costs

Abstract

This article looks at Russia’s exercise of power politics in Ukraine and Syria as a way of improving its international status. Russia’s recent willingness to use power and coercion is theoretically counterintuitive as it appears to be in dissonance with the prevalent characterisation of the country as a status-overachieving inconsistent power. We argue that this behaviour is not the result of a consistent weighing of status against capabilities, but rather reflective of both internal and external dynamics. We analyse issues of identity, opportunity and costs as factors that influence Russian foreign action, showing that power politics will not solve Russia’s status-inconsistency problem in the long run.