Putin's Silovarchs

Since the late 1990s, most of Boris Yeltsin's oligarchs have left the political stage. In their place, a new business elite has sprung up, most from the network of security service and law enforcement veterans known as the siloviki (roughly, “power agents”) who form the backbone of President Putin's administration. Indeed, the security forces’ takeover of corporate boardrooms is coming to define Putin's regime. Silovarchs can deploy intelligence networks, state prosecutors, and armed force to intimidate or expropriate business rivals. Their temptation to use secret service tools and techniques predisposes the regime toward authoritarian politics. Western policy towards Russia will have to recognize these realities. The most promising path toward authentic democracy in Russia involves the cooptation of leading siloviki into the international business world.     

New Carrots and Sticks: Proposals for Reform of CPR Part 36

Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules is an important component of English civil procedure's costs apportioning mechanism and its primary means of encouraging early settlement. Two changes to make Part 36 more attractive to defendants have been proposed. Firstly, public and insured defendants would be exempted from the requirement of payment into court. Secondly, the costs protection given to a claimant that betters its Part 36 offer at trial – indemnity costs assessment and enhanced interest – would apply to defendants' offers. It is argued that the payment into court requirement should be abolished. Claimants do not reject settlement offers over doubts as to the defendant's solvency as this risk remains throughout the litigation. The requirement only deters defendants from using Part 36. Awarding indemnity costs under Part 36 creates perverse incentives. Where bettering a Part 36 offer weakens costs scrutiny there is an additional incentive to expend disproportionate resources in achieving a better result.     

Aligning the Interests of Lawyers and Clients

The potential conflict of interest between lawyers and clientsis well known. If a lawyer is paid for his time regardless ofthe outcome of the case, the lawyer may wish to bring the caseeven when it is not in the best interest of the client, mayspend more hours working on the case than the client would want,and may reject a settlement when the client would be betteroff if it were accepted. Alternatively, if the lawyer is compensatedaccording to the conventional contingent fee arrangement—underwhich he is paid a fraction of any trial award or settlementbut bears all of the cost of litigation—the lawyer mayhave an insufficient incentive to bring the case, may spendtoo little time working on it if it is brought, and may encouragea settlement when the client would be better off going to trial.In this article we propose a method of compensating lawyersthat overcomes the conflict of interest between the lawyer andthe client. Our system is a variation of the conventional contingentfee system, but, in contrast to that system, we would have thelawyer bear only a fraction of the cost of litigation—thesame fraction that the lawyer obtains of the award or settlement.We demonstrate that when the fraction of the cost that the lawyerbears equals the fraction of the award or settlement that heobtains, he will have an incentive to do exactly what a knowledgeableclient would want him to do with respect to accepting the case,spending time on the case, and settling the case. Under ourmodified contingent fee system, a third party would compensatethe lawyer for a certain fraction of his costs, in return forwhich the lawyer would pay that party an up-front fee. In thisway, the client would not bear any costs, even if the case werelost, just as under the conventional contingent fee system.     

Decentralization and municipal governance: Suggested approaches for cross-regional analysis

The study of decentralization and municipal governance has captured much scholarly attention. This article highlights the importance of factors that have been generally ignored, and, in the process, suggests dimensions that facilitate comparison, including at the cross-regional level. First, regarding the creation and reform of decentralization policy, scholars may compare cases based on thehorizontal andex-post vertical political processes of reform. Second, cases can be compared based on the degree of center-statepolicy fluctuation, i.e., the institutions and incentives generating continual policy change and delayed outcomes, over time. Finally, I encourage scholars to scale down to the municipal level, comparing cases based on the following variables: historical state-municipal fiscal relations, institutional innovations, and the policy-making process. I close by explaining the various benefits associated with these approaches and the new research questions and challenges that they pose for comparative scholars. Eduardo J. Gómez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Brown University. His research interests are in federalism, decentralization, and the politics of economic and welfare reform in developing nations. I would like to thank James Mahoney, Richard Snyder, Melanie Cammett, Jonathan Rodden, Kent Eaton, Tyler Dickovick, Steven Webb, Stephan Haggard, Philip Oxhorn, William McCarten, Thomas Bossert, Javier Corrales, and four anonymous reviewers for excellent comments and suggestions.