Suchergebnisse

"In 2008, the worldwide financial crisis dealt a severe blow to the construction industry in Tomsk, a charming academic center in Russia dubbed the "Siberian Athens" for the numerous universities that call the city home.1 A crisis of liquidity forced banks to stop lending altogether to the industry, freezing almost two-thirds of construction projects dead in their tracks. Demand for apartments dropped by nearly 80% and dozens of firms teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. One construction manager become so desperate he started spreading false rumors to customers that his competitors had already closed up their shops. Out of the half million total residents in Tomsk, some 30,000 construction workers risked losing their jobs.2"--

AbstractDoes the passage of anticorruption reforms affect the types of people that want to serve in government? This article evaluates the effects of a common tool to fight corruption—financial disclosures—using data on 25,642 elections in Putin‐era Russia. I argue that financial disclosures function like a personal audit, generating information for journalists and prosecutors to investigate illicit gains earned inside and outside of government. Exploiting staggered elections, I find that requiring financial disclosures leads to roughly 25% fewer incumbents seeking reelection and 10% fewer candidates with suspicious financial histories. Greater media freedom and law enforcement capacity further increase the risk of corruption and tax evasion being uncovered, resulting in even fewer candidacies from those criminally exposed. Increasing transparency changes the incentives for serving in elected office, even in settings where other political motives may be at play.

AbstractIncumbents have many tools to tip elections in their favor, yet little is known about how they choose between strategies. By comparing various tactics, this article argues that electoral malpractice centered on manipulating institutions offers the greatest effectiveness while shielding incumbents from public anger and criminal prosecution. To demonstrate this, the study focuses on a widespread institutional tactic: preventing candidates from accessing the ballot. First, in survey experiments, Russian voters respond less negatively to institutional manipulations, such as rejecting candidates, than to blatant fraud, such as ballot box stuffing. Next, using evidence from 25,935 Russian mayoral races, the article shows that lower societal and implementation costs enable incumbents to strategically reject candidacies from credible challengers and then reduce their electoral vulnerability. In all, the technology behind specific manipulations helps determine when and how incumbents violate electoral integrity.

Do businesspeople who win elected office use their positions to help their firms? Business leaders become politicians around the world, yet we know little about whether their commitment to public service trumps their own private interests. Using an original dataset of 2,703 firms in Russia, I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of firm directors winning seats in subnational legislatures from 2004 to 2013. First, having a connection to a winning politician increases a firm's revenue by 60% and profitability by 15% over a term in office. I then test between different mechanisms, finding that connected firms improve their performance by gaining access to bureaucrats and not by signaling legitimacy to financiers. The value of winning a seat increases in more politically competitive regions but falls markedly when more businesspeople win office in a convocation. Politically connected firms extract fewer benefits when faced with greater competition from other rent-seekers.

Wenig überraschend hat die Partei Einiges Russland die ersten auf der Krim abgehaltenen Dumawahlen seit über hundert Jahren gewonnen. Doch eine anhaltende Unzufriedenheit mit seiner Führungsqualität in Städten wie Sewastopol könnte Russlands Fähigkeit untergraben, eine Linie zu entwickeln, mit der die neue politische Landschaft auf der Krim dauerhaft in den Griff zu bekommen ist.