Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics最新文献

{"title":"Introduction: Perspectives on Putin","authors":"R. J. Hill","doi":"10.1080/13523270802510461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802510461","url":null,"abstract":"This collection of essays devoted to the two terms of Vladimir Putin as president of the Russian Federation is based on contributions to a small working conference held in Naples, Italy, on 8–9 May 2008, coinciding precisely with the transfer of the office of president to Dmitrii Medvedev. Papers presented at that conference have been reworked and augmented by further contributions from scholars who were unable to attend, or who were invited to explore dimensions not covered at the conference. It is presented as a collection of views and interpretations of Putin in office from January 2000, when he assumed the position of acting president following the abrupt resignation of his patron, Boris Yeltsin, until his constitutionally required resignation from the post of president in favour of his own chosen successor – endorsed by the electorate on 2 March 2008 – under whose presidency Putin continues to function as prime minister. No attempt was made by the organizers of the conference or the editors of this collection to impose any particular methodological approach or to guide contributors in their analysis or interpretation. The results, therefore, constitute an eclectic range which, it is hoped, will allow readers to gain insight into Putin and his role in developing post-communist Russia to a new stage. Putin’s achievements and the record of his presidency must be judged according to the legacy that he inherited from his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, during whose tenure the country experienced one of the most tumultuous decades in its recent history. At the beginning of the 1990s the Soviet Union still existed. It had certainly changed enormously in the five years since Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1985 – indeed, in many ways, the country was barely recognizable. Under pressure of economic slowdown and potential failure, Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika had permitted elements of the market and private enterprise, while glasnost’ had transformed the political scene by allowing freedom of expression to a degree not permitted since the 1920s; democratization had transformed the electoral system and thereby","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129505336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Big Money as an Obstacle to Democracy in Russia","authors":"Vladimir Shlapentokh","doi":"10.1080/13523270802510479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802510479","url":null,"abstract":"Established Western social science theory equates democratization with rising levels of wealth and the associated establishment of a middle class that has an interest in the peaceful resolution of conflict through a political process. The case of Russia under Putin suggests that there is no necessary link between wealth as such and democratization. During his two terms as president, Putin benefited enormously from the rapid rise in world oil prices, but this economic security did not translate into liberal democratic political practices – quite the reverse. Indeed, the swift pace of economic growth and rising standard of living has not pushed Russia's rulers in the direction of democracy but rather, has encouraged a form of authoritarianism that in its use of rewards for favourites and supporters is reminiscent of aspects of feudal rule. The Russian middle class, secure in its wealth, is not a bulwark of democratic values, and those who have spoken out – and, more importantly, acted – in support of democratization have been silenced. It is Russia's poor, rather than the wealthy elite, who are critical of Putin's anti-democratic actions. The transfer of office from Putin to Medvedev in May 2008 is unlikely to change this tendency.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133242934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Cottages in Suburban Moscow: A New Lifestyle for the Wealthy","authors":"Y. Toda, N. Nozdrina","doi":"10.1080/13523270802267989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802267989","url":null,"abstract":"The success of the Russian economy since 1998 has led to the development of a strong market in homes on the periphery of Moscow, alongside a dilapidated housing stock in the city's residential areas. The new middle class, including migrants from the energy-rich regions, is sufficiently wealthy to own a car, which gives access to newly developed residential settlements close to the main arteries from the city and in the vicinity of the main ring road (beltway), the MKAD. Despite high prices, a trend towards ‘suburbanization’ is evident, embracing ‘cottages’, townhouses and individual houses, with particularly popular districts commanding premium prices, especially in the west, south-west and north-west, where prestigious mansions also form part of the housing stock. Amenities such as the availability of forests and other recreational facilities and the existence of upgraded transport infrastructure, plus a tendency towards the use of superior building materials and fitments, are leading to a distinct lifestyle in these wealthy suburbs.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121498065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Virtuous Circles of Western Exposure in Russian Regions: A Case for Micro-Polity Analysis of Democratic Change","authors":"Tomila Lankina, Lullit Getachew","doi":"10.1080/13523270802267872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802267872","url":null,"abstract":"Exposure to democratic values has been regarded as a significant factor in the diffusion of democracy, and has also been linked through conditionality to assistance from Western agencies. Diffusion and the targeting of such assistance in a country of the size of Russia is likely to be uneven, however, implying uneven effects, as public authorities, private businesses and the broader citizenry are exposed to varying levels of influence according to the level of diffusion and assistance applied in particular regions. Statistical analysis shows regional exposure levels to be higher in regions that lie in closer proximity to the West, even when urbanization, gross regional product and other domestic variables are held constant. This further implies that methodological approaches to democratization based on assessing the ‘whole nation’ miss the significance of geographical factors in post-communist political change, which will need to be addressed in future analyses.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"92 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132954778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"National and International Dimensions of British Communist History","authors":"J. Callaghan","doi":"10.1080/13523270802268011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802268011","url":null,"abstract":"Andrew Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–43 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); pp. xi þ 308; ISBN 0719053129; no price available. Matthew Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain Between the Wars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002); pp.256; ISBN 1860647472; £39.50. Geoff Andrews, Endgames and New Times: The Final Years of British Communism, 1964–1991 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2004); pp.256; ISBN 0853159919 (hb), 0853159912 (pb); £15.99 (pb). Kevin Morgan, Gidon Cohen and Andrew Flinn (eds.), Agents of the Revolution: New Biographical Approaches to the History of International Communism in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005); pp.319; ISBN 3039100750 (hb), 0820468916 (pb); £41.90 (pb). Raphael Samuel, The Lost World of British Communism (London: Verso, 2006); pp.224; ISBN 1844671038 (hb); £19.99. Kevin Morgan, Labour Legends and Russian Gold: Bolshevism and the British Left, Part 1 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2006); pp.315; ISBN 1905007256 (pb); £19.99. Kevin Morgan, The Webbs and Soviet Communism: Bolshevism and the British Left, Part 2 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2006); pp.263; ISBN 1905007264; £18.99. Ben Harker, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl (London: Pluto Press, 2007); pp.348; ISBN 0745321660 (hb), 0745321653 (pb); £55.00 (hb), £15.99 (pb).","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"59 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131727668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Birth of a Bipolar Party System or a Referendum on a Polarizing Government? The October 2007 Polish Parliamentary Election","authors":"A. Szczerbiak","doi":"10.1080/13523270802267955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802267955","url":null,"abstract":"The 2007 Polish parliamentary election is best understood as a plebiscite on the polarizing government led by the right-wing Law and Justice party and its controversial ‘Fourth Republic’ political project. The liberal-conservative Civic Platform opposition won because it was able to persuade Poles that voting for them was the most effective way of removing this government from office. The election also indicates that the ‘post-communist divide’ that dominated and provided structural order to the Polish political scene during the 1990s is passing into history and certainly means a more consolidated Polish party system. However, Poland still has very high levels of electoral volatility and low electoral turnout, together with low levels of party institutionalization and extremely weak links between parties and their supporters. This means that it is too early to say whether the election also marks the emergence of a stable Polish party system based on a new bipolar divide between two big centre-right groupings with the confinement of the left to the status of a minor actor.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"152 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122983404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electoral Mandate and Party Cohesion: Does It Matter in Lithuania?","authors":"T. Clark, Žilvinas Martinaitis, Ramūnas Dilba","doi":"10.1080/13523270802267864","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802267864","url":null,"abstract":"Legislators elected on a party list vote (proportional representation system) are ostensibly more disciplined than those elected in single-seat district contests. However, previous efforts to test this hypothesis in cross-national studies have led to ambiguous results, as contextual factors were found to be at least as important as the type of mandate. In the case of Lithuania, which has adopted a mixed electoral system, the behaviour of elected deputies in 962 roll-call votes between 2003 and 2006 reveals that deputies from single-seat constituencies, rather than deputies on party lists, are more disciplined in the Lithuanian Seimas. This unexpected finding may be related to the peculiar dynamics of mixed electoral systems.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130489670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Spheres of Influence to Energy Wars: Russian Influence in Post-Communist Romania","authors":"Theodor Tudoroiu","doi":"10.1080/13523270802267922","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802267922","url":null,"abstract":"Since the fall of communism and its replacement with a pro-Moscow neo-communist regime in December 1989 the question of Russian influence has been a sensitive matter for most Romanians. Accession to NATO (2004) and the European Union (2007) seemed to distance Romania from the Russian sphere of influence. However, the bitter dispute between President Traian Băsescu and Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu that led to the breakdown in 2007 of Romania's ruling coalition is in part a direct consequence of Russia's new energy-based offensive in Europe. The importance of individual politicians' choices in determining foreign policy remains a key factor in Romania's relations with Russia and with the West, and the Kremlin's new approach likewise has an important impact.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124828812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Media Use in Putin's Russia","authors":"Jukka Pietiläinen","doi":"10.1080/13523270802267906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802267906","url":null,"abstract":"During the past 15 years Russia has been transformed from a newspaper-reading country to a mainly television-watching country. Entertainment channels have increased their audience recently and regularly reach almost half of the population in towns and cities. Survey results collected in February 2007 suggest that the Internet is taking the place of newspapers, especially among the educated, high-income elites and youth. Newspapers do not appear to be responding to the needs of the middle-class audience, while magazines and the Internet are becoming more important media. In general, those media that have modelled themselves on their Western counterparts have had more success at keeping and even increasing their audience.","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124180852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Price of Prejudice: The Tradition of Western Failure in the Balkans","authors":"M. Hoare","doi":"10.1080/13523270802003137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270802003137","url":null,"abstract":"Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, The Balkans: A Post-Communist History (London: Routledge, 2007). Pp. xx þ 620. ISBN 978 0 415 22962 3, £75.00 (hb), 978 0 415 22963 0, £24.99 (pb). Tom Gallagher, Outcast Europe: The Balkans, 1789–1989: From the Ottomans to Milošević (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). Pp. xx þ 314. ISBN 978 0 415 27089 8, £80.00 (hb), 978 0 415 37559 7, £19.99 (pb). Tom Gallagher, The Balkans After the Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). Pp. 256. ISBN 978 0 415 27763 1, £80.00 (hb), 978 0 415 37560 3, £19.99 (pb). Tom Gallagher, The Balkans in the New Millennium: In the Shadow of War and Peace (London and New York: Routledge, 2005). Pp. xx þ 232. ISBN 978 0 415 34940 6, £80.00 (hb), 978 0 415 46001 9, £20.00 (pb).","PeriodicalId":206400,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114750420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}