The view from below: Local government and Putin's reforms

Local government reforms in contemporary Russia are placed in the broader contexts of political reform under Putin and the historical relationship between local administration and the state. Reforms of local government thus help illuminate the architecture of contemporary state building in Russia and the degree to which contemporary Russia perpetuates political traditions. This study reviews the antecedent action in local government prior to the Putin era. It then examines the Kozak Commission and the new law on local government, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of these reforms. Finally, this study examines the challenges of implementing the reforms and what these challenges tell us about devolution and centralisation under Putin.     

Reviews

Susan Gross Solomon (ed.), Beyond Sovietology: Essays in Politics and History. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993, 254 pp., £38.00.

Alice H. Amsden, Jacek Kochanowicz & Lance Taylor, The Market Meets Its Match. Restructuring the Economics of Eastern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 250 pp.

Robert E. Ebel, Energy Choices in Russia. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994, xii + 152 pp., $16.95.

Michael Waller, The End of the Communist Power Monopoly. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, viii + 287 pp., £35.00 h/b., £9.99 p/b.

Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 253 pp., £29.95.

William G. Rosenberg & Lewis H. Siegelbaum (eds), Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialisation. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xix + 296 pp., £12.99 p/b.

Taras Kuzio & Andrew Wilson, Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence. Basingstoke: Macmil‐lan Press, 1994, xiv + 260 pp., £40.00.

Russell F. Farnen (ed.), Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Identity. Cross National and Comparative Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction, 1994, xiv + 538 pp., £49.95.

Edwin Thomas Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of Archives. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, xii + 190 pp.

Robert S. Ross, China, the United States and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, x + 204 pp., £42.00.     

The end of the post-colonial state in Africa? Reflections on changing African political dynamics

Examination of the political trajectory of African states sincethe terminal colonial period suggests that, by the 1990s, the‘post-colonial’ label still widely employed waslosing its pertinence. The term acquired widespread currencynot long after independence in acknowledgment of the importationinto new states of the practices, routines and mentalities ofthe colonial state. These served as a platform for a more ambitiousform of political monopoly, whose legitimating discourse wasdevelopmentalism. The colonial state legacy decanted into apatrimonial autocracy which decayed into crisis by the 1980s,bringing external and internal pressures for economic and politicalstate reconfiguration. But the serious erosion of the statenessof many African polities by the 1990s limited the scope foreffective reform and opened the door for a complex web of novelcivil conflicts; there was also a renewed saliency of informalpolitics, as local societies adapted to diminished state presenceand service provision. Perhaps the post-colonial moment haspassed.     

Risk and the Outsourcing of Risk Management Services: The Case of Claims Management

Outsourcing of risk management activities is a well-established practice, involving a range of services from actuarial audits to loss control training to risk financing management to claims administration services. Surprisingly, little work has been done to examine the risks associated with outsourcing risk management activities. This article examines the outsourcing of claims management services by reviewing the research on outsourcing risks and by interviewing leading practitioners. In doing so, the authors draw some provisional observations about risks and risk costs associated with outsourcing claims management services—observations that seem generalizable to all risk management outsourcing.     

The Political-Economic Dimension of Pensions: The Case of Japan

This article examines how pensions are interwoven with the public and private financial system in Japan and the consequences for pension reform. A growing literature focuses on the multifaceted ways in which pensions are interwoven with the larger political economy. This study builds on this literature and finds that (a) public and private pensions have been integrated deeply into Japan's system of developmental finance, (b) this integration has created new economic and political problems as governments have attempted to shift away from its developmental model through deregulation, liberalization, and administrative reform, and (c) because pension reform is intimately linked with these reforms, it involves addressing fundamental issues regarding the role of the state, finance, and firms. These findings collectively illustrate that pension reform is not only driven by issues of fiscal viability and benefit levels, but also by the nature of the way in which pensions are integrated into a country's system of finance.     

Interpersonal Factors in the Risk for Sexual Victimization and its Recurrence during Adolescence

Being a victim of sexual aggression from a peer is a common experience among adolescents and poses a significant risk for various forms of psychopathology. Unfortunately, little is known concerning specific interpersonal factors that increase an adolescent’s risk for experiencing sexual aggression. The current study assessed the contribution made by several interpersonal factors both for the first and repeated experience of becoming a victim of sexual aggression from a peer. Data were collected annually from a longitudinal sample of 200 adolescents over a period of 4 years and were analyzed using multiple-spell, discrete-time survival analysis. Approximately 46% of the adolescents reported experiencing some form of sexual aggression by the end of wave 4. Further, 65% of victims reported experiencing a repeat incident of aggression. Females were at higher risk both for initial and repeated victimization, as were adolescents with more sexual experience and higher levels of rejection sensitivity. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future prevention efforts.