Download or read book Property Rights in Post Soviet Russia written by Jordan Gans-Morse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at how top-down efforts to strengthen property rights are unlikely to succeed without demand for law from private firms.
Download or read book Property Rights in Post Soviet Russia written by Jordan Gans-Morse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The effectiveness of property rights - and the rule of law more broadly - is often depicted as depending primarily on rulers' 'supply' of legal institutions. Yet the crucial importance of private sector 'demand' for law is frequently overlooked. This book develops a novel framework that unpacks the demand for law in Russia, building on an original enterprise survey as well as extensive interviews with lawyers, firms, and private security agencies. By tracing the evolution of firms' reliance on violence, corruption, and law over the two decades following the Soviet Union's collapse, the book clarifies why firms in various contexts may turn to law for property rights protection, even if legal institutions remain ineffective or corrupt. The author's detailed demand-side analysis of property rights draws attention to the extensive role that law plays in the Russian business world, contrary to frequent depictions of Russia as lawless.
Download or read book The Post Soviet Potemkin Village written by Jessica Allina-Pisano and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s, as the Soviet Empire lay in ruins, the Russian and Ukrainian governments undertook a project to dismantle the collective farm system that was created under Stalin and in the process privatize an expanse of farmland larger than Australia. Ordinary people were supposed to benefit from the reform, but local government leaders quietly rebelled against it. The end result was the dispossession of millions of rural people. This is the first book to explain why and how this happened through the perspective of a firsthand observer in the Black Earth region.
Download or read book Russia and the Right to Self Determination in the Post Soviet Space written by Johannes Socher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The right to self-determination is renowned for its lack of clear interpretation. Broadly speaking, one can differentiate between a 'classic' and a 'romantic' tradition. In modern international law, the balance between these two opposing traditions is sought in an attempt to contain or 'domesticate' the romantic version by limiting it to 'abnormal' situations, that is cases of 'alien subjugation, domination and exploitation'. This book situates Russia's engagement with the right to self-determination in this debate. It shows that Russia follows a distinct approach to self-determination that diverges significantly from the consensus view in international state practice and scholarship, partly due to a lasting legacy of the former Soviet doctrine of international law. Against the background of the Soviet Union's role in the evolution of the right to self-determination, the bulk of the study analyses Russia's relevant state practice in the post-Soviet space through the prisms of sovereignty, secession, and annexation. Drawing on analysis of all seven major secessionist conflicts in the former Soviet space and a detailed study of Russian sources and scholarship, it traces how Russian engagement with self-determination has changed over the past three decades. Ultimately, the book argues that Russia's approach to the right of peoples to self-determination should not only be understood in terms of power politics disguised as legal rhetoric but in terms of a continuously assumed regional hegemony and exceptionalism, based on balance-of-power considerations.
Download or read book Housing the New Russia written by Jane R. Zavisca and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Housing the New Russia, Jane R. Zavisca examines Russia's attempts to transition from a socialist vision of housing, in which the government promised a separate, state-owned apartment for every family, to a market-based and mortgage-dependent model of home ownership. In 1992, the post-Soviet Russian government signed an agreement with the United States to create the Russian housing market. The vision of an American-style market guided housing policy over the next two decades. Privatization gave socialist housing to existing occupants, creating a nation of homeowners overnight. New financial institutions, modeled on the American mortgage system, laid the foundation for a market. Next the state tried to stimulate mortgages-and reverse the declining birth rate, another major concern-by subsidizing loans for young families. Imported housing institutions, however, failed to resonate with local conceptions of ownership, property, and rights. Most Russians reject mortgages, which they call "debt bondage," as an unjust "overpayment" for a good they consider to be a basic right. Instead of stimulating homeownership, privatization, combined with high prices and limited credit, created a system of "property without markets." Frustrated aspirations and unjustified inequality led most Russians to call for a government-controlled housing market. Under the Soviet system, residents retained lifelong tenancy rights, perceiving the apartments they inhabited as their own. In the wake of privatization, young Russians can no longer count on the state to provide their house, nor can they afford to buy a home with wages, forcing many to live with extended family well into adulthood. Zavisca shows that the contradictions of housing policy are a significant factor in Russia's falling birth rates and the apparent failure of its pronatalist policies. These consequences further stack the deck against the likelihood that an affordable housing market will take off in the near future.
Download or read book The Piratization of Russia written by Marshall I. Goldman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-04-10 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, a small group of Russians emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union and enjoyed one of the greatest transfers of wealth ever seen, claiming ownership of some of the most valuable petroleum, natural gas and metal deposits in the world. By 1997, five of those individuals were on Forbes Magazine's list of the world's richest billionaires.
Download or read book Freedom Repression and Private Property in Russia written by Vladimir Shlapentokh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study demonstrates how the emergence of private property and a market economy after the Soviet Union's collapse enabled a degree of freedom while simultaneously supporting authoritarianism. Based on case studies, Vladimir Shlapentokh and Anna Arutunyan analyze how private property and free markets spawn feudal elements in society. These elements are so strong in post-Communist Russia that they prevent the formation of a true democratic society, while making it impossible to return to totalitarianism. The authors describe the resulting Russian society as having three types of social organization: authoritarian, feudal and liberal. The authors examine the adaptation of Soviet-era institutions like security forces, the police and the army to free market conditions and how they generated corruption; the belief that the KGB was relatively free from corruption; how large property holdings merge with power and necessitate repression; and how property relations affect government management and suppression.
Download or read book Property Rights and Property Wrongs written by Timothy Frye and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secure property rights are central to economic development and stable government, yet difficult to create. Relying on surveys in Russia from 2000 to 2012, Timothy Frye examines how political power, institutions, and norms shape property rights for firms. Through a series of simple survey experiments, Property Rights and Property Wrongs explores how political power, personal connections, elections, concerns for reputation, legal facts, and social norms influence property rights disputes from hostile corporate takeovers to debt collection to renationalization. This work argues that property rights in Russia are better seen as an evolving bargain between rulers and rightholders than as simply a reflection of economic transition, Russian culture, or a weak state. The result is a nuanced view of the political economy of Russia that contributes to central debates in economic development, comparative politics, and legal studies.
Download or read book Stubborn Structures written by Bálint Magyar and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The editor of this book has brought together contributions designed to capture the essence of post-communist politics in East-Central Europe and Eurasia. Rather than on the surface structures of nominal democracies, the nineteen essays focus on the informal, often intentionally hidden, disguised and illicit understandings and arrangements that penetrate formal institutions. These phenomena often escape even the best-trained outside observers, familiar with the concepts of established democracies. Contributors to this book share the view that understanding post-communist politics is best served by a framework that builds from the ground up, proceeding from a fundamental social context. The book aims at facilitating a lexical convergence; in the absence of a robust vocabulary for describing and discussing these often highly complex informal phenomena, the authors wish to advance a new terminology of post-communist regimes. Instead of a finite dictionary, a kind of conceptual cornucopia is offered. The resulting variety reflects a larger harmony of purpose that can significantly expand the understanding the “real politics” of post-communist regimes. Countries analyzed from a variety of aspects, comparatively or as single case studies, include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.
Download or read book Post Soviet Russia written by Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's best-known Russian scholars and a former consultant to both Gorbachev and Yeltsin analyzes the events that have transpired in the Russian federation since late August 1991, from the drastic liberalization of prices and "shock therapy" to the privatization of state owned property and Yeltsin's resignation and replacement by Vladimir Putin.
Download or read book The Tragedy of Property written by Maxim Trudolyubov and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian novels, poetry and ballet put the country squarely in the European family of cultures and yet there is something different about this country, especially in terms of its political culture. What makes Russia different? Maxim Trudolyubov uses private property as a lens to highlight the most important features that distinguish Russia as a political culture. In many Western societies, private property has acted as the private individual’s bulwark against the state; in Russia, by contrast, it has mostly been used by the authorities as a governance tool. Nineteenth-century Russian liberals did not consider property rights to be one of the civil causes worthy of defending. Property was associated with serfdom, and even after the emancipation of the serfs the institution of property was still seen as an attribute of retrograde aristocracy and oppressive government. It was something to be destroyed – and indeed it was, in 1917. Ironically, it was the Soviet Union that, with the arrival of mass housing in the 1960s, gave the concept of private ownership a good name. After forced collectivization and mass urbanization, people were yearning for a space of their own. The collapse of the Soviet ideology allowed property to be called property, but not all properties were equal. You could own a flat but not an oil company, which could be property on paper but not in reality. This is why most Russian entrepreneurs register their businesses in offshore jurisdictions and park their money abroad. This fresh and highly original perspective on Russian history will be of great interest to anyone who wants to understand Russia today.
Download or read book Property and Freedom written by Richard Pipes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A superb book about a topic that should be front and center in the American political debate" (National Review), from the acclaimed Harvard scholar and historian of the Russian Revolution An exploration of a wide range of national and political systems to demonstrate persuasively that private ownership has served over the centuries to limit the power of the state and enable democratic institutions to evolve and thrive in the Western world. Beginning with Greece and Rome, where the concept of private property as we understand it first developed, Richard Pipes then shows us how, in the late medieval period, the idea matured with the expansion of commerce and the rise of cities. He contrasts England, a country where property rights and parliamentary government advanced hand-in-hand, with Russia, where restrictions on ownership have for centuries consistently abetted authoritarian regimes; finally he provides reflections on current and future trends in the United States. Property and Freedom is a brilliant contribution to political thought and an essential work on a subject of vital importance.
Download or read book Privatizing Russia written by Maxim Boycko and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997-01-22 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privatizing Russia offers an inside look at one of the most remarkable reforms in recent history. Having started on the back burner of Russian politics in the fall of 1991, mass privatization was completed on July 1, 1994, with two thirds of the Russian industry privately owned, a rapidly rising stock market, and 40 million Russians owning company shares. The authors, all key participants in the reform effort, describe the events and the ideas driving privatization. They argue that successful reformers must recognize privatization as a process of depoliticizing firms in the face of massive opposition: making the firm responsive to market rather than political influences. The authors first review the economic theory of property rights, identifying the political influence on firms as the fundamental failure of property rights under socialism. They detail the process of coalition building and compromise that ultmately shaped privatization. The main elements of the Russian program -- corporatization, voucher use, and voucher auctions -- are described, as is the responsiveness of privatized firms to outside investors. Finally, the market values of privatized assets are assessed for indications of how much progress the country has made toward reforming its economy. In many respects, privatization has been a great success. Market concepts of property ownership and corporate management are shaking up Russian firms at a breathtaking pace, creating powerful economic and political stimuli for continuation of market reforms. At the same time, the authors caution, the political landscape remains treacherous as old-line politicians reluctantly cede their property rights and authority over firms.
Download or read book The Unmaking of Soviet Life written by Caroline Humphrey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Unmaking of Soviet Life brings together ten essays from award-winning author Caroline Humphrey. Humphrey explores such topics as the mafia, barter, bribery, and the new shamanism, locating them in the experiences of a wide range of subjects.
Download or read book Sovereignty After Empire written by Galina Vasilevna Starovotova and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Resisting the State written by Kathryn Stoner-Weiss and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-19 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do new, democratizing states often find it so difficult to actually govern? Why do they so often fail to provide their beleaguered populations with better access to public goods and services? Using original and unusual data, this book uses post-communist Russia as a case in examining what the author calls this broader 'weak state syndrome' in many developing countries. Through interviews with over 800 Russian bureaucrats in 72 of Russia's 89 provinces, and a highly original database on patterns of regional government non-compliance to federal law and policy, the book demonstrates that resistance to Russian central authority not so much ethnically based (as others have argued) as much as generated by the will of powerful and wealthy regional political and economic actors seeking to protect assets they had acquired through Russia's troubled transition out of communism.
Download or read book Russia After Communism written by Anders Åslund and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia After Communism provides an overall assessment of the first five years after the Soviet Unions' collapse, what has been accomplished and what has failed to date, and where Russia is heading. In a unique collaborative effort, the book features chapters on major issues written by pairs of leadi
