Author: Ute Lanzendorf
Publisher: kassel university press GmbH
ISBN: 3899584694
Category : Education, Higher
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description

Author: Leonid
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 3838263367
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
The global economic crisis of 2008/2009 has had a broad impact far beyond economic concerns. Most importantly, it has been seen as a crisis of governance and debates have not just questioned specific regulations, e.g. of global financial markets, but have additionally challenged the appropriateness of underlying governance concepts not only in global markets, but also at the national level. For the post-socialist countries, which adopted market-oriented governance mechanisms less than two decades ago, the global crisis was the first stress test after the post-socialist recovery. The contributions in this book focus on the impact of the crisis and related reform attempts in two important areas. The first area is financial and monetary policy, which is at the core of the global crisis of 2008/2009. The second area is relations between business and state actors, where corruption and weak institutional frameworks can both seriously hamper reform attempts. The volume comprises essential contributions on how the post-socialist countries have tried to cope with the first global economical crisis they saw themselves confronted with.

Author: Tima T. Brewer, Gene A. Kellough, J. Edward Moldogaziev
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215354
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
After the break-up of the USSR, the former Soviet countries took different paths. While many of them face severe economic problems or have become only questionably democratic, Georgia’s socio-political development has become a relatively successful post-Soviet transition story. A deeper understanding of Georgia can offer insights that are also useful for other transitional and developing states. Many of the good governance implications of the research papers assembled in this volume are highly relevant to the broader Caucasus region and other post-Communist countries. The contributions deal with central issues pertinent to Georgian public policy, administration, and politics, as well as to Georgia’s ongoing struggle for independence and democracy. The collection illustrates a particularly revealing case in the comparative study of modern governance.

Author: John B. Dunlop
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 383821188X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The book provides a detailed description of “the Russian crime of the twenty-first century” as well as a thorough examination of the eighty sessions of the nine-month-long trial (during 2016-2017) of Boris Nemtsov’s alleged killers. It directs attention to the chief obstacle in determining what precisely happened shortly before midnight on February 27, 2015, on a bridge located a mere stone’s throw away from the Kremlin, in an area under the active surveillance of the Russian Federal Protective Service. The glaring absence of closed circuit videos from this most heavily guarded site in Russia is underscored. Given the absence of such key evidence, those seeking to investigate the murder have been akin to blind people stumbling about in obscurity. The attempts to penetrate this man-made fog undertaken during the course of the trial by the Nemtsov family attorneys, Vadim Prokhorov and Olga Mikhailova, as well as by numerous tenacious analysts of the crime, such as former deputy Russian energy minister Vladimir Milov, former Russian presidential economics advisor Andrei Illarionov, and leading mathematician Andrei Piontkovskii, are covered in full. The uneven case mounted by the prosecution and the scrappy defense effort of the attorneys for the alleged killers, many of them ethnic Chechens, are highlighted, as is the non-unanimous verdict which was reached by the twelve jurors. The findings of this study are in agreement with those of a number of commentators who contend that the actual organizers of the crime remain at large as does the assassination’s shadowy mastermind.

Author: Sanna Aitamurto, Kaarina Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka Turoma
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838213467
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The 2010s saw an introduction of legislative acts about religion, sexuality, and culture in Russia, which caused an uproar of protests. They politicized areas of life commonly perceived as private and expected to be free of the state's control. As a result, political activism and radical grassroots movements engaged many Russians in controversies about religion and culture and polarized popular opinion in the capitals and regions alike. This volume presents seven case studies which probe into the politics of religion and culture in today's Russia. The contributions highlight the diversity of Russia's religious communities and cultural practices by analyzing Hasidic Jewish identities, popular culture sponsored by the Orthodox Church, literary mobilization of the National Bolshevik Party, cinematic narratives of the Chechen wars, militarization of political Orthodoxy, and moral debates caused by opera as well as film productions. The authors draw on a variety of theoretical approaches and methodologies, including opinion surveys, ethnological fieldwork, narrative analysis, Foucault's conceptualization of biopower, catachrestic politics, and sociological theories of desecularization. The volume’s contributors are Sanna Turoma, Kaarina Aitamurto, Tomi Huttunen, Susan Ikonen, Boris Knorre, Irina Kotkina, Jussi Lassila, Andrey Makarychev, Elena Ostrovskaya, and Mikhail Suslov.

Author: Oksana Huss
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838214307
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Leaders of hybrid regimes in pursuit of political domination and material gain instrumentalize both hidden forms of corruption and public anti-corruption policies. Corruption is pursued for different purposes including cooperation with strategic partners and exclusion of opponents. Presidents use anti-corruption policies to legitimize and institutionalize political domination. Corrupt practices and anti-corruption policies become two sides of the same coin and are exercised to maintain an uneven political playing field. This study combines empirical analysis and social constructivism for an investigation into the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005), Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010), and Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014). Explorative expert interviews, press surveys, content analysis of presidential speeches, as well as critical assessment of anti-corruption legislation are used for comparison and process tracing of the utilization of corruption under three Ukrainian presidents.

Author: Anna Kutkina
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215060
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
On 8 December 2013, Ukraine’s central Lenin monument in Kyiv was pulled down. In the following months, in what became known as the “Leninfall,” Ukraine swept away hundreds of communist monuments, expressing an explicit desire to break away from the Soviet past and, implicitly, from Russia. This book examines the evolution of post-Euromaidan de-Sovietization beyond the issues of toppling of old statues and implementation of new anti-totalitarian laws. It explores decommunization as both a political and cultural phenomenon that exposes the multivocality of the Ukrainian population and involves various forms of dialogical interaction between ordinary citizens and the state. Posters, graffiti, or street names are physical and discursive canvases where old meanings are being contested and re-articulated, and where new political symbols that combine nationalist and democratic elements are being defined.

Author: Vasile Rotaru
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838211340
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Even before the Ukrainian crisis, neither Russia nor the EU were content with their relationship. Despite economic interdependence, strategic partnership, official declarations of belonging culturally and historically to the same ‘European family’ and in spite of Russia’s stated interest in establishing an economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, the two actors found it difficult to agree on important issues. The conflictual atmosphere between the EU and Russia has three main dimensions: the normative issue, energy relations, and the shared neighbourhood with the latter being particularly salient after the launch of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) in 2009. The former Soviet space is at the core of Russian foreign policy. Moscow’s special interest in this area results from economic factors, diaspora issues, and, most importantly, from its perceived security need. Obsessed by a fear of being encircled by enemies, Russia sees its hegemony over the former Soviet republics as paramount to the protection of its own borders. Therefore, the rapprochement of any other actor towards this region is regarded with high suspicion. Against this background, Vasile Rotaru analyzes EU-Russia relations with a particular emphasis on the impact of the EaP on Moscow’s relations with Brussels. He argues that the EaP represented a turning point in EU-Russia relations, determining Moscow to revise its attitude towards the Union. Rotaru explains that, even if the EaP was Brussels’ initiative, the Partnership met the aspirations of the six former Soviet republics. Moreover, despite its opposition towards the EU’s initiative, Russia itself acted involuntarily as a propeller of the EaP. By aiming to keep the former Soviet republics close, Moscow often conducts an assertive, aggressive policy in the ‘near abroad.’ This strategy, however, had mostly opposite effects, causing Russia’s neighbors to look elsewhere for support of their sovereignty. From this perspective, the rapprochement of Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, and the three Caucasus republics with the EU has not been determined only by Brussels’ prosperity and soft-power attractiveness but also by existential fears in the former Soviet republics. The book appeals to a wide range of students, researchers, and professors specializing on Russia, the EU, and the former Soviet space in the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Security Studies as well as to think-tank analysts and policy makers.

Author: Pawel Mink, Georges Reichardt, Iwona Reichardt, Adam Kowal
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838213238
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 798

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Book Description
The second part of this multi-volume project assembles a series of recollections and debates on the Ukrainian revolutions of 1990, 2004, and 2013–2014. After an introduction to the methodology of oral history, it presents twenty interviews with participants and eyewitnesses of the events in Ukraine, and documents a series of workshop discussions conducted at a symposium held in 2017. In these workshops, activists and observers of each of the three revolutions exchanged and compared their memories, analyses, and evaluations. This volume thus not only provides a comprehensive collection of firsthand accounts of the three historic Ukrainian upheavals, but also reveals the interrelations between them. The volume documents assessments from Barbara Krauz-Mozer, Markiyan Ivashchyshyn, Natalia Klymovska, Vakhtang Kipiani, Mykola Kniazhycki, Natalyia Zubar, Yulia Tymoshenko, Aleksander Kwaœniewski, Viktor Taran, Markiyan Matsekh, Yulia Tychkivska, Leonid Findberg, Yulia Mostova, Oksana Zabuzhko, Eduard Drach, Michailo Cherenkoff, Andriy Dudchenko, Oleg Mahdych, Rebecca Harms, Herman van Rumpoy, and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.

Author: Daria Minakov, Mikhail Sasse, Gwendolyn Minakov, Mikhail Isachenko
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215389
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The USSR’s dissolution resulted in the creation of not only fifteen recognized states but also of four non-recognized statelets: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria. Their polities comprise networks with state-like elements. Since the early 1990s, the four pseudo-states have been continously dependent on their sponsor countries (Russia, Armenia), and contesting the territorial integrity of their parental nation-states Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. In 2014, the outburst of Russia-backed separatism in Eastern Ukraine led to the creation of two more para-states, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), whose leaders used the experience of older de facto states. In 2020, this growing network of de facto states counted an overall population of more than 4 million people. The essays collected in this volume address such questions as: How do post-Soviet de facto states survive and continue to grow? Is there anything specific about the political ecology of Eastern Europe that provides secessionism with the possibility to launch state-making processes in spite of international sanctions and counteractions of their parental states? How do secessionist movements become embedded in wider networks of separatism in Eastern and Western Europe? What is the impact of secessionism and war on the parental states? The contributors are Jan Claas Behrends, Petra Colmorgen, Bruno Coppieters, Nataliia Kasianenko, Alice Lackner, Mikhail Minakov, and Gwendolyn Sasse.