RUSSIAN REGIONS
Federalism: Whether the "Second Breath"?
After the collapse of the USSR the threat of potential disintegration of the Russian Federation did not disappear. The very structure of the Federation inherited from the past and inadequate to modern reality is still a long-term factor of disintegration. The author sees an approach to the solution of the problem in integrational policy, in the orientation on the Association of inter-regional economic cooperation that potentially can be much more influential than it is now. The implementation of these measures would allow Russia to pass through the Scylla of preserving the "status quo" and Charybdis of the "administrative reform" that spells the danger of the new spring of the political struggle.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-5-19
Pages: 5-19
Natalia Lapina, Alla Ñhirikova
Political Orientations of Regional Elites
Proceeding from the results of sociological research conducted in a number of regions of Russia in 1996-1998 the authors analyze political orientations of the three regional elite groups: representatives of regional authorities, business-elite and the directors' corps. The aim of the research was to define what criteria the regional elites take into consideration when developing the strategy of behavior and making their political choice.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-20-30
Pages: 20-30
Center - Regions: the Role and Models of the Treaty-base Relations
The article is devoted to the treaty-base relations on the distinction of responsibilities concluded between the federal bodies of the Russian Federation and its subjects; the author considers such treaties as a normative base for the on-going institutionalization of relations between the center and the regions. The author shows that despite the numerous shortbacks of the treaty-based relations models (the conservation of the asymmetrical nature of the federation, the vague juridical nature of the treaties and the undefined place of the letter in the hierarchy of the legal normative acts, the lack of the clear-cut legitimization, etc.) they lay the basis for a productive dialogue between the center and the regions on different questions, including the most painful ones.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-31-40
Pages: 31-40
THE LEGAL SUCCESSION IN RUSSIA: DISCUSSION
Legitimacy, Monarchy, Democratization
The author shares the opinion that after the overthrow of monarchy in Russia in February 1917, no authority in Russia has ever been legitimate. The autocratic and popular monarchy when the supreme authority belongs to the autocratic monarch and all the managerial authority - to the people is the best, historically determined form of the state organization for Russia. The monarchy can be restored only through the restoration of the juridical succession with the Russian state founded in 862 in Novgorod by Ruric. It would call for the amendment of the Constitution by the Zemski Sobor, in the composition of which there would be representatives of the three main estates as well as those of the church and the military. The author believes that the Zemsky Sobor would be authorized to solve the problems connected with the restoration of the succession in Russia.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-41-63
Pages: 41-63
"Civilized Patriotism" and Modern Political Consciousness
The article analyses the attitudes of the citizens of Russia to the old Russia, to the modern West and to the Soviet regime. As a result of the 80-years long isolation from the organic legal tradition today the prevailing types of the patriotic consciousness are not connected with the conservative tradition of the historic Russia: "the new Russian nationalism" (ethnocratic patriotism) and national Bolshevism. The present regime is genetically connected not with the pre-Revolutionary Russia, but with the Soviet communist regime and thus its ideology based on the "unity of the pre-Soviet and Soviet heritage" postulate objectively merges into national bolshevism. All this makes it quite possible that a nationally orientated regime of the socialist type will develop in future. The only alternative to it is a so-called "civilized patriotism" that cannot develop without the renunciation to the Soviet State heritage and a return to the historic traditions of Russia.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-64-80
Pages: 64-80
Historic Succession, Totalitarism, Modernization
The grasp of power by Bolsheviks in Russia, fascists in Italy and national socialists in Germany marked a brake in historic succession in the European and international development and the emergence of an unprecedented reality. This brake in Russia was deeper and of a greater scale than those in Italy and Germany and it had lasted for a much longer period – the lifetime of three generations. Nationalism in Italy and Germany seems to have been less harmful for cultural regional and civic traditions than internationalism and Soviet "patriotism" that has falsified the historic past of the Russian people. That is why it is especially difficult to restore the historic succession in Russia. "The Russian" (post-Soviet) means of implementing democracy cannot ignore the fact that the latter with all its national peculiarities has to correspond to the universal criteria. The Russia of the future has to be national both within its own multi-ethnical and multi-cultural community and within a still more complicated European and international community.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-81-87
Pages: 81-87
DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRATIZATION ON THE EVE OF THE NEW CENTURY
Globalization: Perspectives of Democracy
The article discusses whether the democracy is a product of exclusively a particular (Western) form of civilization or an essential stage of political development of any society on a certain stage of its modernization. The author in particular stresses the fact that the process of democratization in different regions of the world is asymmetric. If Western societies today are facing a problem of disfunctions of a representative democracy, a problem of bringing its institutions in accordance with a realities of the post industrial era, the societies of the South and the East will have to take up a most complicated process of working out and "mastering" a democratic practice that would be adequate to their conditions. Various "scenarios of the future" are possible: principally new phases of the democratic process in one region and its stagnation in the others; an "interaction" and mutual enrichment of its different streams. Even if there is one universal democratic civilization, by all probability, it would not be of the same type everywhere.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-88-93
Pages: 88-93
Universal Civilization: the Crisis of Growth and Its Symptoms
The article analyses theoretical aspects of the process of globalization in the context formed by the disintegration of the world socialist system and the collapse of the USSR. Political science reacted to the challenges of the post communist world by two different geostrategic concepts: of the "clash of the civilizations" and of the unipolar world. The conflict of these two concepts reveals a dual nature of the Western civilization, predetermined by a unique character of its evaluation when the modernization became a sort of a "mulinatation" of the civilization process, in other words – the process of transformation of a traditional civilization into some form of a universal civilization (the civilization of technology and industrial capitalism, of intensively renewing technologies and cultural unification). The progress and international expansion of the letter, according to the author, makes up the essential content of the process of the globalization.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-94-98
Pages: 94-98
"A Corporate Coup" and the Future of the Democracy
The article analyses the impact of the intercompany relations of the corporate sector on the state of democracy in the countries of the West and in Russia. Two models of these relations are analyzed – "the shareholders’ democracy" model and the "stakeholders' democracy" model. The first model stimulates the enhancement of a purely electoral model of political democracy based on episodical participation of the masses in political process, while the second model promotes the development in the direction of the "shareholders' society". The author gives preference to the second model but believes that the modern state of the corporate sector does not give enough reason for an indubitable conclusion about the direction of the development of intercompany relations. However, analysing the situation in one of the most "advanced" Russian corporations, "the LUKOIL" company, one can predict good chances for the development of these or those forms of the "stakeholders' democracy" in Russia.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-99-104
Pages: 99-104
"Global Democratization" and Russian Transit
A proper assessment of the recent stage of transformations in Russia to a greater extend depend on a definition of the essence of the universal tendencies of "global democratization". Traditional interpretation of these tendencies is based on a simplified idea of a so-called leveling of the international political landscape in accordance with the standards of classical liberal democracies of the Western type. This understanding of the phenomena of the post authoritarian transformations of the "third wave" brings some political scientists to a pessimistic conclusion about a failure of democratic transformations in Russia. A view on the phenomena as on a broader version of a typological diversity of modern democracy seems to be more adequate to the real nature of the transformations going on in the world. Looking at the "global democratization" from this point of view allows not only to understand better the diversity of the world political transformations of the last decades but also to get rid of a number of illusions concerning the Russian transit.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-105-109
Pages: 105-109
FOREIGN POLICY DIMENSIONS
Russia and China: the Interaction Factors
After the collapse of the USSR Russia - if not to take into consideration its nuclear potential – has got a status of though a big, but a regional state, while China began developing from a regional state into a world empire. The raise of China concerned the interests of all its neighbors in Asia, especially those of Russia. A number of factors (geopolitical, political, economic, demographic etc.) under certain conditions can either stabilize or destabilize the relations between those two countries. The article analyses the potential impact of those factors on future Russian-Chinese relations and defines the scenarios of use of the potential of the two countries for the development of the reforms policy and modernization.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-110-122
Pages: 110-122
According to the author, the problem of corruption in Russia is inherited from the Soviet period and is very acute today. The "property owners" enrich themselves by preying on the weakness of the state and by stripping assets from property that once belonged to the state as a whole. The corruption has become pervasive and the officials still greedier. From this perspective the author formulates the approaches that the US policy to Russia should be based on. Those approaches include: the introduction of the US legislative acts, that would tighten the supervision over the US banking and financial systems to make them less vulnerable for laundering operations; further efforts to integrate Russia and Russian business into the global economy; specific measures aimed at least partial restoration of the goodwill Russians used to have for the United States.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-123-129
Pages: 123-129
The Oil and Gas Factor in International Relations
The article analyses the oil and gas factor as one of the main elements influencing the international relations. Essentially, this is the matter of interaction between the international relations and the energetic security problems. The great importance of energy resources in the international policy provokes both hidden and open struggle of the world leading powers to control them.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-130-140
Pages: 130-140
CHRONICLE
Political Parties and Movements in Russia (summer-autumn 1999)
The author analyses the processes in the party-political life of the country in summer-autumn 1999. The analyses is supplemented by the chronological description of the main events.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-141-162
Pages: 141-162