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Cover -- Half-Title -- Series -- Title -- Contents -- Prologue -- 1 On riding bicycles and human judgement -- 2 Homo sovieticus as Eastern European dissent -- 3 Homo sovieticus as Soviet dissent -- 4 Homo sovieticus as a Perestroika child -- 5 Homo sovieticus as a post-Soviet empathy -- 6 Homo post-sovieticus as a fight for the continent -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Copyright.

What explains Putin's enduring popularity in Russia? In 'The Red Mirror', Gulnaz Sharafutdinova uses social identity theory to explain Putin's leadership. The main source of Putin's political influence, she finds, lies in how he articulates the shared collective perspective that unites many Russian citizens. Under his tenure, the Kremlin's media machine has tapped into powerful group emotions of shame and humiliation - derived from the Soviet transition in the 1990s - and has politicized national identity to transform these emotions into pride and patriotism.

"This book inquires into Vladimir Putin's leadership strategy and relies on social identity theory to explain Putin's success as a leader. The author argues that Russia's second president has been successful in promoting his image as an embodiment of the shared national identity of the Russian citizens. He has articulated the shared collective perspective and has built a social consensus by tapping into powerful group emotions of shame and humiliation derived from the painful experience of the transition in the 1990s. He was able to overturn these emotions into pride and patriotism by activating two central pillars of the Soviet collective identity: a sense of exceptionalism that the Soviet regime promoted to consolidate the Soviet nation, and a sense of a foreign threat to the state and its people that also was foundational for the Soviet Union. Putin's assertive foreign policy decisions, culminating in the annexation of Crimea, appeared to have secured, in the eyes of the Russian citizens, their insecure national identity. The top-down leadership and bottom-up collective identity-driven processes coalesced to produce a newly revanchist Russia, with its current leader perceived by many citizens to be irreplaceable. Politics of national identity in Russia are promoted through a well-coordinated media machine that works to focus citizens' attention on Putin's foreign policy and on Russia's international standing. Public fears are played out against the backdrop of Soviet legacies of national exceptionalism and the politics of victimhood associated with the 1990s to conjure a sense of collective dignity, self-righteousness, and national strength to keep the present political system intact."--

This study uses the 2011 BEEPS survey for the Russian Federation to study factors influencing corruption perceptions in Russian regions. Specifically, the analysis relies on Henry Hale's theory of patronal presidentialism to explore the effects of the institutional environment and, particularly, of regional political uncertainty, on the perceptions of economic actors embedded in it. The analysis reveals that political instability - when measured by the recent political turnover in the region and the presence of regional inter-elite conflicts - works to increase corruption perceptions among economic actors. These findings support earlier literature on the importance of informal rules and 'insider entrepreneurship' in Russia.

This study focuses on the regional effects of new domestic and foreign policies initiated by Russia's president and the challenging policy dilemmas faced by regional governors since 2012. It analyzes gubernatorial elections held during 2012-2015 to show the increased control over the electoral process and the regional cadre exercised by the Kremlin. It explores the implications of new identity politics and foreign policies advanced from Moscow on regional elites' place in Russia's system of power, their governance strategies and political economies. It reviews regional adjustment strategies undertaken in response to Russia's rising economic problems.

This study argues for the need to better integrate the role of international factors, specifically global financial institutions, in order to understand the roots of institutional failures in some post-communist countries, including Russia. It explores the differential nature of policy challenges facing Western democracies and authoritarian regimes regarding their participation in the globalized financial system.

This study examines federal reforms in Putin's Russia under the framework of principal-agent model. It establishes the rationale and intended outcomes of these reforms and then describes their real consequences. The main findings bear on the nature of changes in the gubernatorial body, regional political regimes and the new challenges for the regime emerging from these reforms. The study demonstrates that (i) most governors survived this change in the first four years after the reform; (ii) the elimination of gubernatorial elections undermined political competition in the regions, forcing it away from public sphere to less transparent venues and (iii) new problems emerged as a result of reforms, particularly, the need for a systematic mechanism of cadre formation and the problem of moral hazard.

This paper reviews the literature that explores the drivers and effects of financial secrecy on emerging economies. It shows that most of the research on financial secrecy has been focused on issues of tax avoidance, neglecting the problems of institutional arbitrage that go beyond taxation issues. The paper discusses the limits of the institutionalist paradigm that treats businesses solely as rule-takers and calls for more attention to business agency and responsibility. Discussions about corporate social responsibility in emerging economies should incorporate thinking about the potential role that businesses, and especially big corporations, could play in promoting more effective institutions at home. Further research is needed to understand the political and institutional effects of global financial secrecy at the domestic level. The paper suggests some promising avenues for future research as well as new items to be included on the policy-making agenda in relation to financial secrecy.

Most studies of intergovernmental financial flows in the Russian Federation focus on the federal center's decision-making in determining the direction of these flows. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that regional governments employ a variety of tools and strategies to compete over federal transfers. This study uses data on federal transfers during 2002–2012 to examine the factors associated with the politically sensitive share of such transfers occurring in this period. The key findings highlight the importance of administrative capacity and the value of attracting attention from, as well as cultivating relations with, federal officials for shaping decision-making on the distribution of federal transfers. We discuss some specific strategies used by more successful regional governments in attracting additional federal funds.

Strong institutions and accountable governments are imperative for national prosperity. Yet the development of such institutions has presented a continuous challenge for many countries around the world. In this study we bring attention to the negative implications of global interdependence and institutional arbitrage opportunities that enable economic actors to solve for institutional weaknesses and constraints in the domestic realm by using foreign institutions. We argue that such opportunities lower the propensity of asset-holders, presumably interested in strong institutions at home, to organize the collective action and take the risk of lobbying for better institutions. Based on the case of post-Soviet Russia we demonstrate the main ways through which Russia's capital-owners make use of foreign legal and financial infrastructures such as capital flight, the use of foreign corporate structures, offshore financial centers, real estate markets, the round-tripping of foreign direct investment, and reliance on foreign law in contract-writing and foreign courts in dispute-resolution.

This study uses the latest 2011 round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey for the Russian Federation to take a closer look at regional-level factors influencing the business environment in Russia. Specifically, the study explores the role of regional administrations and variables of administrative continuity and governor origin in shaping regional business environment. The findings reveal that regional businesses in Russia are (1) acutely anxious about administrative transitions (as expressed in gubernatorial replacements) and favor administrative continuity, and (2) favor government officials that are locally embedded. The analysis suggests that many localities in Russia have witnessed the emergence of mutually beneficial state-business arrangements that are inimical to economic competition. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions. http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html

This study takes advantage of a publicly salient policy sphere -- road quality -- in the Russian Federation's capital city to explore the use of digital technologies as means of aggregating information and demonstrating government capacity and effectiveness. It focuses on the potential linkage between road quality based on citizens' complaints and electoral outcomes in two rounds of Moscow mayoral elections in 2013 and 2018. The data on more than 200,000 online potholes' complaints were collected and combined with local election data. The causal relationship between these two processes is established, making use of an arguably exogenous variation in the differences across local weather conditions during the heating season that differentially affects pothole creation but is uncorrelated with electoral outcomes. The results indicate that greater use of digital technologies (measured by pothole complaints) results in an increased number of votes and a higher margin of victory for the incumbent. They highlight digital technologies' role as a tool to create participatory governance mechanisms and convey to the public an image of a transparent, responsive, and capable government.