Suchergebnisse

This article examines the options for redressing abuse of office available to citizens in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. I consider the courts, the procuracy, and the complaint mechanism as sites for citizens to lodge claims against abuse of office in late-Soviet and post-Soviet times. After the collapse of the Soviet system there was an attempt to overcome the Soviet legacy, to strengthen legal institutions and establish administrative justice. Analysis of Soviet and post-Soviet normative documents and statistical data allows us to argue that opportunities for Russian citizens to combat service crimes in the courts have improved substantially. However, the system for coping with abuse of office remains imperfect, and retains features of the Soviet legacy despite vague legislation about administrative justice and dual ways of coping with abuse through legal and quasi-legal mechanisms. The re-establishment of the complaint mechanism in the conditions of contemporary Russia exacerbates this imperfection. Overall, the complaint mechanism occupies a significant place in people's options for making claims against officials, especially claims against high-ranking officials.

In this thesis I study the investment climate in the four rapidly growing emerging economies Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The first study, Chapter 2, uses a bivariate EGARCH methodology with time varying conditional correlation to study the global and regional integration of the BRICs and to identify the existence of diversification opportunities for international investors. The second study, Chapter 3, employs a restricted version of the model to explore the relationship between equity market returns and volatility of equity returns in the BRIC countries and global oil prices. Chapter 4 is an extension of Chapter 3, and focuses on the sustainability of Russia's economic growth in view of its large dependence on oil income. A qualitative analysis of the oil industry in Russia, including an overview of the operations of the largest oil producing companies, government regulations, oil production and proven oil reserves, is conducted for the purpose of this study. The last study, Chapter 5, uses a panel data methodology to explore the determinants of changes in sovereign bond spreads for the BRICs as an asset class and for each of the BRIC countries individually. I conclude that the regional and global level of integration of the BRICs is relatively low, and portfolio investors can enjoy sound diversification benefits particularly by taking investment positions in the Indian and Chinese equity markets. Despite the aggressive economic growth of the BRICs and their increased oil consumption, the volatility of stock returns from the BRICs does not have a significant impact on global oil prices; however, oil prices do impact the volatility of equity returns in India and China, and particularly the level of returns and volatility of equity returns in Russia. Based on this and the qualitative analysis in Chapter 4, it is concluded that in the short to medium term Russia's continued economic growth will depend on increased reinvestment in the oil industry and in the longer term the government should diversify ...

The article is devoted to the study of historical retrospectives of the development of vocal art and education in China. The nationally typical sources of the formation of the Chinese vocal school are revealed in comparison with the peculiarities of vocal pedagogy in Russia. An analysis is made of the problems of academic success of Chinese students going to Russian universities to receive professional vocal education.

The current state of gender policy in Russia and its reflection in the socio-political life of the Republic of Dagestan is considered. The paper provides a brief analysis of political representation of Dagestan women in state bodies of different character, their political mobilization during transformation of the state structure of the country at the turn of 20th - 21st centuries. Special attention is paid to the personalization of the Dagestan female political elite. Based on a wide range of sources and literature, an attempt was made to assess the degree of political participation of women in Dagestan in the executive and legislative systems of the republic, as well as to monitor the role of women in the socio-political life of the region differs from the trends in this direction observed in other subjects and the federal center of Russia.

The 9/11 catastrophe had a profound impact on the security dynamics of South Asia. After this event, new actors and parties started to actively involve themselves in the region. Subsequently, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), as pursued by the United States (US), resulted in the loss of Afghanistan's traditional buffer status, making it a chief concern of South Asian regional security. Moreover, Kabul's admission in April 2007 to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) contributed to this change of status. Given the complex nature of the security undercurrents, developments in Afghanistan increasingly affected the internal power dynamics of Pakistan. Some pressing issues, as well as newly emerging geopolitical and geostrategic interests, motivated both Russia and China to engage in this volatile region. In the case of China, its involvement in Afghanistan led to regional commercial development in South Asia and increased its geopolitical influence in the region. Russia, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. It focused more on terrorism and drug trafficking than on commercial development. Russia is interested in maximising its geopolitical influence in the Central Asian Region mostly to stem terrorism and crime emanating from Afghanistan. This paper analyses the comparative strategies behind Chinese and Russian engagement with the help of Barry Buzan's theoretical model for security analysis, as modified in Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) and using the notion of securitization. The study underscores that this engagement in the post 9/11 period has had a number of implications, both for Afghanistan's security and for South Asian security mechanisms at three different levels, i.e., domestic, regional, and global.