US Atomic Energy Intelligence Against the Soviet Target, 1945-1970

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and its allies mounted a massive atomic energy intelligence effort against the Soviet Union. Long-range, standoff technical systems provided the most data and allowed for successful tracking of many aspects of the Soviet nuclear program. Because of the closed nature of Soviet society and Soviet security and counter-intelligence measures, exploitation of open sources and traditional espionage operations, although important, were less productive. The relative lack of human intelligence made it difficult to understand important developments inside the Soviet nuclear complex and resulted in significant intelligence gaps.     

Voter participation and the redistributive state

The redistributive theory of the state implies that voter participation rates should be highest among those who have the most to gain or lose or a V-shaped relationship between income and voting participation should exist. We use a data set that contains nearly 21,000 observations on individual survey responses about voting behavior in the U.S. between 1972 and 1993 to show that the participation rate generally rises monotonically with income, perhaps except at very high income levels. It does report other findings consistent with an economic theory of voting based on returns to association and with the hypothesis that public employees vote more.     

Russian Politics in Transition: Political Parties and Organizations in Russia and the Murmansk Region

In this article the development of new political organizations in Russia is discussed. The authors acknowledge the fact that the new parties and organizations are still weak and not well organized. bur they nevertheless play a significant role in the preservation of democracy in Russia. Several stages in the party creation process can be discerned. Before the 1991 attempted coup d'état the Communist Party of the Soviet Union still played a dominant role, while a number of smaller political organizations emerged. After the dissolution of the CPSU. the centre groupings dominated the political scene. Gradually. the level of political polarization increased. as evidenced by the 1993 elections which spelled victory for the post-communists and ultra-nationalists. Using sartori's definitions, the authors analyse the party and organizations with the help of a left-right continuum, which portrays some differences in Russian politics without covering all cleavages. The important regional differences in party formation are illustrated with empirical data from the Murmansk region. During the Gorbachev period a number of informal organizations emerged which gradually developed into parties critical of the CPSU. Initially, social democratic organizations were strong on the Kola Peninsula, but they declined in importance due to internal disagreement. In the 1993 elections, the largest parties in this region were the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and the market-oriented Russia's Choice. In Russia as a whole, the post-election period manifested itself in increasing political polarization and successive retreat from the marker-reform policies. Clearly, the road to a well-functioning system of parties in Russia is still a long one.     

Endogenous choice of amendment agendas: types of voters and experimental evidence

A stylized model of three parties choosing an amendment agenda and voting over three policy alternatives is analyzed. The analysis yields a classification of five types of voters: random, sincere, strategic, risk-averse, and EUS (expected utility sophisticated) proposed by Enelow (J. Polit. 43:1062–1089, 1981). Laboratory experiments suggest that the choice of agendas can be partially explained by the sincere voting model (26% of voters) and strategic voting model (47% of voters), even when players’ preferences are common knowledge. Risk-aversion may explain choices of up to 56% of the voters. Finally, the EUS voting model explains up to 73% of the observed voting behavior.     

Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation,No. 1223 of November 5, 1999, "On Measures to Prevent Penetration of the Territory of the Russian Federation by Members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Importation of Weaponry and Means of Sa

The distinctive characteristic of regional budgets for the coming year is the entry into force of federal law No. 131 on local self-government. In all of the oblasts elections have occurred and new bodies of local self-government have appeared that are supposed to have the corresponding treasury to fulfill all of the functions assigned to them.     

Re-scaling the debate on Russian economic growth: Regional restructuring and development asynchronies

This article provides a critique of the literature on Russian economic growth and argues that broadening the growth debate to include regional perspectives may cast new light on economic processes at work in the varied geographical context of Russia. The article shows that growth in Russia's regions is much more comprehensive than often realised in the West and is closely associated with rising levels of industrial production in the overwhelming majority of regions. This contradicts the perception that resource dependency is the only formula of success within Russia. The author also provides a close examination of Leningrad oblast', once declining but recently one of the fastest growing regions in the Russian Federation. However, although the general vector of development has changed radically, the case of Leningrad oblast' demonstrates that the growing economy perpetuates the landscape of unevenness. New technologically intensive loci of development have paralleled ‘underinvested’ areas—despite being situated within the same administrative and political context. Nevertheless, growth continues to trickle down to less advantageous areas, both buttressing and spurring national growth as a whole.