Download or read book The Resource Curse in a Post communist Regime written by Younkyoo Kim and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2003 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As part of an attempt to resolve a larger puzzle - what makes economic reform in Russia difficult - this book examines how one of the major sectors of the economy - energy - has influenced economic growth and political development. It provides an in-depth analysis of the country's export of oil and gas, showing how the energy sector went through the topsy-turvy period of Gorbachev's economic reform and the initial stages of market transition under Yeltsin. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the major oil and gas companies for the functioning of Russian politics.
Download or read book Resource Curse and Post Soviet Eurasia written by Vladimir Gel'man and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the 2000s, the term 'resource curse' had become so widespread that it had turned into a kind of magic keyword, not only in the scholarly language of the social sciences, but also in the discourse of politicians, commentators and analysts all over the world-_like the term 'modernization' in the early 1960s or 'transition' in the early 1990s. In fact, the aggravation of many problems in the global economy and politics, against the background of the rally of oil prices in 2004D2008, became the environment for academic and public debates about the role of natural resources in general, and oil and gas in particular, in the development of various societies. The results of numerous studies do not give a clear answer to questions about the nature and mechanisms of the influence of the oil and gas abundance on the economic, political and social processes in various states and nations. However, the majority of scholars and observers agree that this influence in the most of countries is primarily negative. Resource Curse and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Oil, Gas, and Modernization is an in-depth analysis of the impact of oil and gas abundance on political, economic, and social developments of Russia and other post-Soviet states and nations (such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan). The chapters of the book systematically examine various effects of 'resource curse' in different arenas such as state building, regime changes, rule of law, property rights, policy-making, interest representation, and international relations in theoretical, historical, and comparative perspectives. The authors analyze the role of oil and gas dependency in the evolution and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarian drift of post-Soviet countries, building of predatory state and pendulum-like swings of Russia from 'state capture' of 1990s to 'business capture' of 2000s, uneasy relationships between the state and special interest groups, and numerous problems of 'geo-economics' of pipelines in post-Soviet Eurasia.
Download or read book Are Resources a Curse written by Andrea Gawrich and published by Verlag Barbara Budrich. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy as a Curse The analysis of rentierism in Post-soviet states, which this book presents, underscores the need for further research as rentier state concepts have mainly been applied to “older” rentier states like African, Latin American and Arab countries. An important contribution to a topical discussion. During the last 30 years, many resource-rich countries have experienced economic and political stagnation (“resource curse”). They have developed deficient political systems in which the process of modern state formation is being undercut (“rentier state”) as well as economic structures in which sectors that provide strong incentives for the accumulation of physical and human capital are under-represented (“Dutch disease”). This is very much the same in many of the post-Soviet states with high resource incomes since the mid 1990s. These incomes present opportunities for reducing poverty and promoting economic growth. But instead of taking advantage of these opportunities many of them present authoritarian regimes with high levels of corruption, low political freedom and rent-seeking elites. The book gives a detailed analysis of rentierism in Post-soviet states.
Download or read book The Resource Curse in a Post communist Regime written by Younkyoo Kim and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2003 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As part of an attempt to resolve a larger puzzle - what makes economic reform in Russia difficult - this book examines how one of the major sectors of the economy - energy - has influenced economic growth and political development. It provides an in-depth analysis of the country's export of oil and gas, showing how the energy sector went through the topsy-turvy period of Gorbachev's economic reform and the initial stages of market transition under Yeltsin. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the major oil and gas companies for the functioning of Russian politics.
Download or read book After the Big Bang written by Karla Ruth Hoff and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the collapse of comm ...
Download or read book The Institutions Curse written by Victor Menaldo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'resource curse' is the view that countries with extensive natural resources tend to suffer from a host of undesirable outcomes, including the weakening of state capacity, authoritarianism, fewer public goods, war, and economic stagnation. This book debunks this view, arguing that there is an 'institutions curse' rather than a resource curse. Legacies endemic to the developing world have impelled many countries to develop natural resources as a default sector in lieu of cultivating modern and diversified economies, and bad institutions have also condemned nations to suffer from ills unduly attributed to minerals and oil. Victor Menaldo also argues that natural resources can actually play an integral role in stimulating state capacity, capitalism, industrialization, and democracy, even if resources are themselves often a symptom of underdevelopment. Despite being cursed by their institutions, weak states are blessed by their resources: greater oil means more development, both historically and across countries today.
Download or read book Authoritarian Russia written by Vladimir Gel'man and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia today represents one of the major examples of the phenomenon of "electoral authoritarianism" which is characterized by adopting the trappings of democratic institutions (such as elections, political parties, and a legislature) and enlisting the service of the country's essentially authoritarian rulers. Why and how has the electoral authoritarian regime been consolidated in Russia? What are the mechanisms of its maintenance, and what is its likely future course? This book attempts to answer these basic questions. Vladimir Gel'man examines regime change in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day, systematically presenting theoretical and comparative perspectives of the factors that affected regime changes and the authoritarian drift of the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's national political elites aimed to achieve their goals by creating and enforcing of favorable "rules of the game" for themselves and maintaining informal winning coalitions of cliques around individual rulers. In the 1990s, these moves were only partially successful given the weakness of the Russian state and troubled post-socialist economy. In the 2000s, however, Vladimir Putin rescued the system thanks to the combination of economic growth and the revival of the state capacity he was able to implement by imposing a series of non-democratic reforms. In the 2010s, changing conditions in the country have presented new risks and challenges for the Putin regime that will play themselves out in the years to come.
Download or read book The Siberian Curse written by Fiona Hill and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2003-11-04 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Union's collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy argue that Russia's geography, history, and monumental mistakes perpetrated by Soviet planners have locked it into a dead-end path to economic ruin. Shattering a number of myths that have long persisted in the West and in Russia, The Siberian Curse explains why Russia's greatest assets––its gigantic size and Siberia's natural resources––are now the source of one its greatest weaknesses. For seventy years, driven by ideological zeal and the imperative to colonize and industrialize its vast frontiers, communist planners forced people to live in Siberia. They did this in true totalitarian fashion by using the GULAG prison system and slave labor to build huge factories and million-person cities to support them. Today, tens of millions of people and thousands of large-scale industrial enterprises languish in the cold and distant places communist planners put them––not where market forces or free choice would have placed them. Russian leaders still believe that an industrialized Siberia is the key to Russia's prosperity. As a result, the country is burdened by the ever-increasing costs of subsidizing economic activity in some of the most forbidding places on the planet. Russia pays a steep price for continuing this folly––it wastes the very resources it needs to recover from the ravages of communism. Hill and Gaddy contend that Russia's future prosperity requires that it finally throw off the shackles of its Soviet past, by shrinking Siberia's cities. Only by facilitating the relocation of population to western Russia, closer to Europe and its markets, can Russia achieve sustainable economic growth. Unfortunately for Russia, there is no historical precedent for shrinking cities on the scale that will be required. Downsizing Siberia will be a costly and wrenching proce
Download or read book The State After Communism written by Timothy J. Colton and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet dictatorship was a strong state, committed to dominating and transforming society in the name of a utopian ideology. When the communist regime crumbled and the post-Soviet countries committed to democracy, most observers took for granted that their state structures would be effective agents of the popular will. Russia's experience demonstrates that this assumption was overly optimistic. This book, based on a major collaborative research project with American and Russian scholars, shows that state capacity, strength, and coherence were highly problematic after communism, which had major consequences for particular functions of government and for the entire process of regime change. Eleven respected contributors examine governance in post-Soviet Russia in comparative context, investigating the roots, characteristics, and consequences of the crisis as a whole and its manifestations in the specific realms of tax collection, statistics, federalism, social policy, regulation of the banks, currency exchange, energy policy, and parliamentary oversight of the bureaucracy.
Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Democratization written by Anastassia V. Obydenkova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, the regions of Russia have taken different paths of regime transition. Despite the consolidation of an autocratic regime at national level and the centralization steered by Vladimir Putin’s government, the variation across sub-national regimes persists. Using an innovative theoretical framework, this book explores both causes and consequences of democratization in the regions of Russia. It is the first study in the field to systematically integrate structural and agency approaches in order to account for economic, social, historical and international causes of democratization and to trace its consequences. By focusing on the challenging and under-studied topic of sub-national regimes, the book provides a unique perspective on regime transition and the new theoretical framework contributes to a better understanding of democratization world-wide. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of democratization, sub-national regimes, East European politics, comparative politics, post-communism, and international relations.
Download or read book The Anatomy of Post Communist Regimes written by Bálint Magyar and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-20 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.
Download or read book Oil Is Not a Curse written by Pauline Jones Luong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes two central claims: first, that mineral-rich states are cursed not by their wealth but, rather, by the ownership structure they choose to manage their mineral wealth and second, that weak institutions are not inevitable in mineral-rich states. Each represents a significant departure from the conventional resource curse literature, which has treated ownership structure as a constant across time and space and has presumed that mineral-rich countries are incapable of either building or sustaining strong institutions - particularly fiscal regimes. The experience of the five petroleum-rich Soviet successor states (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) provides a clear challenge to both of these assumptions. Their respective developmental trajectories since independence demonstrate not only that ownership structure can vary even across countries that share the same institutional legacy but also that this variation helps to explain the divergence in their subsequent fiscal regimes.
Download or read book Great Policy Successes written by Paul 't Hart and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Or, a tale about why it's amazing that governments get so little credit for their many everyday and extraordinary achievements as told by sympathetic observers who seek to create space for a less relentlessly negative view of our pivotal public institutions."
Download or read book Natural Resources and Violent Conflict written by Ian Bannon and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research carried out by the World Bank on the root causes of conflict and civil war finds that a developing country's economic dependence on natural resources or other primary commodities is strongly associated with the risk level for violent conflict. This book brings together a collection of reports and case studies that explore what the international community in particular can do to reduce this risk.; The text explains the links between natural resources and conflict and examines the impact of resource dependence on economic performance, governance, secessionist movements and revel financing. It then explores avenues for international action - from financial and resource reporting procedures and policy recommendations to commodity tracking systems and enforcement instruments, including sanctions, certification requirements, aid conditionality, legislative and judicial instruments.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State written by Stephan Leibfried and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook offers a comprehensive treatment of transformations of the state, from its origins in different parts of the world and different time periods to its transformations since World War II in the advanced industrial countries, the post-Communist world, and the Global South. Leading experts in their fields, from Europe and North America, discuss conceptualizations and theories of the state and the transformations of the state in its engagement with a changing international environment as well as with changing domestic economic, social, and political challenges. The Handbook covers different types of states in the Global South (from failed to predatory, rentier and developmental), in different kinds of advanced industrial political economies (corporatist, statist, liberal, import substitution industrialization), and in various post-Communist countries (Russia, China, successor states to the USSR, and Eastern Europe). It also addresses crucial challenges in different areas of state intervention, from security to financial regulation, migration, welfare states, democratization and quality of democracy, ethno-nationalism, and human development. The volume makes a compelling case that far from losing its relevance in the face of globalization, the state remains a key actor in all areas of social and economic life, changing its areas of intervention, its modes of operation, and its structures in adaption to new international and domestic challenges.
Download or read book International Dimensions of Authoritarian Persistence written by Rachel Vanderhill and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the international system has been evolving in an increasingly liberal direction, the level of democratic practice within the post-Soviet region has, on the whole, declined. Two decades after the popular uprisings against communism, many governments in the region have successfully blunted both popular and international pressures for democratic consolidation. Each selection in this volume explores how international factors interact with domestic conditions to explain the persistence of authoritarianism throughout the region. The selections in the volume cover several countries, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Ossetia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; special attention is paid to the Russian Federation since it is both a member of the region and acts as an external actor influencing the political development of its neighbors. This volume is especially relevant as the world again experiences the surprising overthrow of long-running authoritarian regimes. The failure of democratic consolidation among post-Soviet states offers important lessons for policymakers and academics dealing with the recent wave of political transitions in the Middle East and Asia.
Download or read book Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World written by Valerie Bunce and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines in depth three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven different former Communist nations.
