Russian Polity
Vladimir Gel’man, Andrei Starodubtsev
POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF AUTHORITARIAN MODERNIZATION: RUSSIAN REFORMS OF THE 2000s
Keywords: policy, political regime, authoritarian regime, socio-economic reforms, Russia
In order to answer the question of whether key socio-economic changes can be implemented successfully under the conditions of electoral authoritarianism, V.Gel’man and A.Starodubtsev turn to the analysis of the Russian experience of the 2000s. The study conducted by the authors shows that, despite the existence of opportunities for authoritarian modernization, its implementation encounters a number of political and institutional constraints, including the poor quality of the state apparatus and inefficiency of institutional design. The authors conclude that under the regimes of electoral authoritarianism the success of an innovative policy is determined by three interrelated factors: (1) strategic priority of reforms in the eyes of a country’s president; (2) focused implementation of these reforms by their proponents within certain ministerial jurisdictions; (3) one-step nature of the reforms and their implementation within a limited time.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-6-30
Keywords: political journalism, new media, legitimacy of power, public sphere, virtual reality, information-psychological war
n this article A.Okara attempts to comprehend the role of political journalism in the social life of the modern Russia. The second part of the article published in this issue (for the first part, see Politeia, 2014, ¹ 3) examines the political journalists’ perception of politics and politicians, their status as the “fourth power”, as well as their role in managing perceptions of legitimacy of power structures. Having pointed out the growing influence of journalists as creators of the meanings, “correctors” of the picture of what is going on, creators of virtual reality (as well as their decreasing role as intermediaries between events and society), the author also demonstrates that to date the impact of domestic journalists and journalism on politics remains mostly fragmentary, unsystematic, and sporadic.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-31-48
POLITICS OF MEMORY IN RUSSIA: YEAR OF DASHED HOPES
Keywords: politics of memory, historical policy, Ukrainian crisis, dialogue between society and government
Having documented the deepest crisis in the politics of memory in Russia, A.Miller turns to the analysis of the events and circumstances that led to the destruction of the emerging areas and forms of dialogue and cooperation in the field of historical consciousness between government and society as well as between the individual segments of the latter. The article compellingly shows that the crisis over Ukraine that gradually evolved into the crisis of relations between Russia and the US and the EU is a key factor contributing to the radical change of the situation with the politics of memory in the country. According to the author's assessment, if the present trend in Russia continues, what is happening today can signal the start of a long process of mobilizing civil society not just on an anti-liberal, but ignorant nationalist platform.
Political theory
ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL FORMS IN HISTORICAL TIMES AND CIVILIZATIONAL SPACES (I)
Keywords: political form, political order, political formula, evolutionary morphology
The article represents a sort of prologue to the debate about the political form as a phenomenon and as an analytical category. In the first part of the article published in this issue, M.Ilyin, having briefly touched upon morphology as a special method of scientific analysis of reality, tries to answer the question of why people perceive as a phenomenon of the same order and use the same word “form” (or its analogues) to describe very dissimilar analytical tools; considers the ratio of different real political forms (plural) with an abstract political form (singular); and introduces a distinction between political form, political orders and political formulae. The first part of the article concludes with the review of the real forms, orders and formulae that existed before, exist now and are capable of existing through times and civilizational spaces of politics with the help of the scientific apparatus of evolutionary morphology.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-58-70
ABOUT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICAL THEORY AND REALITY
Keywords: political reality, political fact, political theory, causality
This article is devoted to the analysis of the relationship between political reality, political theory and political facts. If condensed, the author's logic unfolds as the following. Political facts emerge only with the advent of political theory. Multiplying the number of theories always means multiplying the number of facts. Political facts are drawn from political reality. The latter is incomprehensible, infinite, and inexhaustible. The key point in the relationship between theories and facts is that theories embrace the existing plethora of facts only to a negligible extent. As a result, there is almost never real competition between theories; the analysis of the majority of political processes requires application of several theories at once; the construction of facts in the form of causal chains is difficult or impossible. According to the author's evaluation, it is the specific features of the origin of political theories that allow them to exist to a certain extent separately from political reality.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-71-85
SUBNATIONAL POLICY: INTRODUCTION TO POTENTIAL THEORY
Keywords: subnational policy, political region, federalism, regional construction
One of the main problems of regional political studies is deficit of unifying concepts, which leads to the focus of researchers on relatively narrow topics, the study of which impedes complete and comprehensive understanding of the subject. As a possible step to solving this problem, R.Turovsky introduces and justifies a concept of subnational policy, through which a variety of political processes occurring inside the country and related to its territory can be examined. The article defines subnational policy and identifies its three dimensions – vertical (inter-level), horizontal (inter-territorial), and local, and examines the relation of subnational policy with such traditional research paradigms as federalism, regional policy, local government, and international politics.
Paradigms of Social Development
WIDOWS, GREED, AND LARGE INHERITANCE: PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL SUCCESSION IN ASIA
Keywords: political succession, South, Southeast and East Asia, political elites, nepotism
The article investigates an institution of succession and analyzes factors that contribute to the electoral success of political leaders' successors on the material of the countries in the South, Southeast and East Asia. Based on the analysis of 25 cases of succession in the history of India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, the author concludes that the circumstances most favorable for the elites' coalition in power (closedness of the regime, dependent successor, resources’ availability) appear to be less favorable for the success of succession. Having pointed out a sort of “sinking effect” (leaders that assume power from authoritarian and resource-rich rulers are more likely to lose their electoral advantage), A.Gilev at the same time emphasizes that such effect can be mitigated by the use of majoritarian electoral formula: the higher the proportion of deputies elected by the majority rule, the easier it is for the ruling group to maintain its advantage when transferring power to a successor.
Post-Soviet Space
INSTITUTION OF PRESIDENCY IN UKRAINE: POWER SHIFT OR MODEL TRANSFORMATION?
Keywords: institution of presidency, political institutionalization, Ukraine, patronal presidentialism
The article discusses political and legal aspects of the presidential power transfer in Ukraine in February 2014 from the perspective of the development of this institution. Identifying the established system in Ukraine as patronal presidentialism, N.Borisov shows that in Ukraine, contrary to the promises of the new authorities, the model of presidency based on patron-client relations, informal institutions and a scenario “winner takes all” is reproduced. According to his assessment, the real steps towards democratization of the Ukrainian political system have not been undertaken, and it is yet premature to talk about the beginning of the transition to “good” or “good enough” institutions in Ukraine.
Ideologies
AXIOLOGY OF EUROPEAN CONSERVATISM: BETWEEN TRADITION AND PROGRESS
Keywords: conservative ideology, political conservatism, Christian tradition
Having analyzed principles of conservative consciousness embodied in the attitudes and electoral preferences of the Europeans, A.Smirnov comes to the conclusion about the prematureness of the verdict on semantic exhaustion of conservatism and its complete transformation into a meaningless category. The author posits that the socio-economic transformations of the last decades that heralded the triumph of liberal principles only partly affected political, cultural and ideological foundations that define the inner world of the European peoples; and a variety of disasters and challenges of this century may reunite conservative ideas with their former conceptual value. In this case, ascribing values to these ideas, which are now largely depleted, will once again become popular and in demand.
Practical sociology
Dmitry Rogozin, Dmitry Saponov
CORPUS OF ERRORS IN AUTOMATED TELEPHONE SURVEY
Keywords: interview duration, corpus of errors, general theory of errors, paradata, telephone survey
The paper presents a formalized approach to the detection of systematic errors in mass surveys by constructing a single data matrix. Errors are defined as the difference between values of individual variables in the sample representing all respondents and a subsample, from which units of observation coded under different contextual conditions or possessing another set of related parameters are removed. The time the interview was conducted and its duration are considered as factors that hypothetically affect biases. The results obtained by the authors do not allow to speak with confidence about the reliability of the developed procedure, but presents great opportunities for operationalization of the general theory of errors.
Book Review
Keywords: ideology, political theory, liberalism, socialism, conservatism, populism
Assessing the work under review as a milestone for the problematic sphere of ideology studies in the national political science, L.Polyakov expresses his view that from now on no study of ideology published in Russian that fails to advance this topic above the bar set by G.Musikhin can be qualified as properly scientific. According to the reviewer, within the metaphorical domain “ideologiya.ru”, Musikhin's book has all the attributes that can be conveyed by the term benchmarking. However, he by no means thinks that the author “ended the discussion”. On the contrary, from his point of view, the author in some sense “opened the discussion”. Focusing on the already invented “wheels”, “deliciously” described by Musikhin, one can and should go further – especially in the direction of the applied analysis of contemporary Russian ideologies.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-163-170
Gubernatorial Readings
Keywords: Russian economics, economical crysis, resources of development, Tyumen region.
The material published here is a report on the Eighteenth Gubernatorial Readings held in Tyumen, November 6th, 2014, under the framework of the joint project conducted by the journal Politeia and the administration of Tyumen region with the topic of the Readings being resources for Russian economy's growth in a changing world, and a lecturer – L.M.Grigoryev, Head of Department of World Economy, Higher School of Economics; Senior Advisor to the Head of the Analytical Centre for the Government of the Russian Federation.