Suchergebnisse

Analyzing law enforcement data on corruption incidents for a panel of 79 Russian regions for the period 2004-2007, we find that the relative salaries of bureaucrats determine corruption levels: Corruption declines as relative salaries rise up to a turning point, beyond which corruption rises again. Other important determinants are the strength of law enforcement, available rents through government budgets and natural resources, education levels, unemployment rates, and income inequality.

The subject. At the present stage, the real ideal of legal democracy is ensuring the right of citizens to participate in the management of state affairs, in particular, to elect and be elected to public authorities and to elected public office. The fundamental basis of democracy in a democratic state is free elections. In this regard, the substantive content of the constitutional-legal model of free elections in Russia is considered.The purpose of the paper. Recently, it is impossible not to note the tendency to narrow the legal understanding of free elections to «the absence of coercion to vote in elections». At the same time, the real understanding of free elections as a democratic value is much broader. Ensuring the constitutional principle of democracy, the improvement of domestic legislation and electoral law determine the study of the substantive content of the domestic constitutional legal model of free elections.The methodology of the study. The achievement of this goal was promoted by the use of both general scientific and special methods of cognition of social and legal phenomena (comparative legal method, method of legal modeling).The main results and scope of their application. The position of the author indicated in the work is based on the regulatory legal acts in the field of elections, judicial practice, as well as on the opinions of representatives of legal science in the framework of the problems of real meaningful content of free elections. As a result of the study, a three-part substantive content of the domestic constitutional legal model of free elections is substantiated.Conclusions. It is concluded that the free formation of their political behavior by participants in the electoral process (voters, candidates, electoral associations) is an integral element of the meaningful content of free elections and in combination with free and voluntary participation in elections, the free will represents a ternary component rather than a binary component. ; Рассматривается содержательное наполнение отечественной конституционно-правовой модели свободных выборов. Обосновывается, что свободное формирование своего политического поведения участниками избирательного процесса также является неотъемлемым элементом содержательного наполнения данной модели наряду со свободным и добровольным участием в выборах, свободным волеизъявлением.

Throughout the United States in 2004 turnout rates were up substantially. Contributing to this positive development were increased interest in the campaign and improvements in vote recording systems. Yet, reports of record turnout need to be tempered. The percentage of citizens who went to the polls fell quite short of the levels found in 1960 in most non‐southern states. Barring further extraordinary events such as those experienced during George W. Bush's first term, it is likely that the turnout increase of 2004 will prove to be a blip rather than the start of an upward trend.