The Rise and Fall of Ethnoterritorial Federalism: A Comparison of the Soviet Union (Russia), China,and India

The early Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and independent India inherited vast territories and multi-ethnic populations from the preceding empires. Their maintenance was a political and administrative challenge. The Soviet Union devised an archetype of ethnoterritorial federalism, in which nationality groups were granted their own administrative territories and subnational governments. The PRC and India imitated this system selectively, aware of its dangerous centrifugal tendency. The collapse of the Soviet Union discredited ethnoterritorial federalism, but none of the three countries has since devised a new system of multinational integration to replace it.     

Muslim leaders in Russia's Volga-Urals: Self-Perceptions and Relationship with regional authorities

Islamic politics in Russia's Volga-Urals has been affected by the self-images of some of the regional communities, such as Tatarstan as ‘the cradle of Russian Islam’, Astrakhan as ‘Russia's southern outpost’, and Perm and Buguruslan as remote peripheries of the Islamic world. Moreover, some regional authorities, such as Astrakhan and Orenburg, have tried to use Muslims to stabilise the ethnoconfessional situation of the regions and also make them a bridgehead for economic ventures on the Caspian rims and western Kazakhstan. In contrast, the authorities in highly industrialised and politically stable Saratov and Perm have not been interested in intervening in regional Muslim communities. Thus, Islamic politics in Russia may have much wider and varied political connotations than is usually conceived under the term ethnoconfessional politics.     

半总统制的逻辑原理和后共产主义政治

对半总统制的研究已经成为政治科学中最具活力的一个部分,其原因是绝大多数在"第三次民主化浪潮"中出现的转型国家(即原苏东集团国家和原法国、葡萄牙殖民地)选择了半总统制。在这些国家的政治体制发展中,出现了过渡模式的多样性。即两种最自然的过渡模式(过渡到总统—议会制和议会制)、一种略显波折的过渡模式(过渡到总理—总统制)和两种偏离了原来发展路径的过渡模式——过渡到高度总统制化的半总统制(格鲁吉亚、2005年前的亚美尼亚和2006年前的纳戈尔诺—卡拉巴赫)以及权力分散的半总统制(乌克兰)。根据研究,半总统制在后共产主义国家的频繁出现,共有六个方面的原因:1、半总统制和共产党中央与政府之间的二元权力结构模式之间存在相似性;2、戴高乐主义者(Gaullist)把行政权力分割为战略和管理两部分功能的主张很容易被理解和应用;3、即使宪法赋予议会任命总理的权力,但由于议会选举结果往往并非自动产生多数派,在此情况下,总统就会拥有足够干预总理产生和内阁形成的机会(立陶宛和后橙色革命时期的乌克兰);4、在由选民直选总统体制过渡到议会选举总统体制的过程中往往会伴随着对议会选举产生总统时所设条件的增多(比如,不是简单多数,而是3/5通过方式),而这通常会导致总统长时间的空缺(1990年代的斯洛伐克和2009年以来的摩尔多瓦);5、民选总统看起来更加民主且更能回应选民影响国家政治的愿望;6、最后但同样重要的是,半总统制国家政客们的"演技"使得他们国家的政治能够"娱乐"那些不愿放弃进入"半总统制剧场"门票的民众。