Instrumentalisation Of Mass Media In Electoral Authoritarian Regimes

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Instrumentalisation of Mass Media in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes

Author : Nozima Akhrarkhodjaeva
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2017-04-25
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838270135

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Instrumentalisation of Mass Media in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes by Nozima Akhrarkhodjaeva Pdf

Focusing on the case of Russia during Putin’s first two presidential terms, this book examines media manipulation strategies in electoral authoritarian regimes. Which instruments and approaches do incumbent elites employ to skew media coverage in favor of their preferred candidate in a presidential election? What effects do these strategies have on news content? Based on two case studies of the presidential election campaigns in Russia in 2000 and in 2008, this investigation identifies the critical internal mechanisms according to which these regimes work. Looking at the same country while it transformed from a competitive into a hegemonic authoritarian regime, allows a diachronic comparison of these two regime types. The book explicates the subtle differences between competitive and hegemonic regimes, different types of media manipulation strategies, the diverging extent of media instrumentalization, various interactions among state actors, large business owners, the media, and journalists, the respective effects that all these factors and interactions have on media content, and the peculiar types of bias prevalent in each type of regime. This deep exploration of post-Soviet politics is based on extensive review of documents, interviews with media professionals, and quantitative as well as qualitative content analyses of news media during two Russian presidential election campaigns.

Transregional versus National Perspectives on Contemporary Central European History

Author : Michal Baran, Magdalena M. Vit
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 468 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2017-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9783838210155

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Transregional versus National Perspectives on Contemporary Central European History by Michal Baran, Magdalena M. Vit Pdf

This volume compares different regional perspectives on the national and democracy-building aims of individual states. It confronts discourses about national states to regional perspectives on the past as well as the current political and social landscape. Why are we observing calls for national identity right now? What are the roots of this development? How can a Central European identity be shaped when national perspectives are prevalent? The book’s first part analyses social and political processes that shaped nation-states in the Central European region and shows divergent trends of individual states when it comes to defining a regional approach of the Visegrád Group (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary = V4). The second part focuses on key personalities of the 20th century history of individual V4 countries in the light of their perception in the neighbouring states and how they shaped national states as well as identities after the end of World War II. Similar aims and approaches implemented by individual countries often led to anything but raising regional understanding. The book’s third part reflects upon activities of various initiatives aiming to approach this challenge from the perspective of civil society, and Central Europe’s young generation. The collection brings together leading historians of Central Europe from the V4 countries. It also offers external perspectives on historical developments in Central Europe from the perspective of the 21st century and on political cooperation as well as its roots. Lastly, it includes practitioners of Central European cooperation from both academia and civil society, and their reflection on their countries’ political cooperation after 1989.

Russia, the EU, and the Eastern Partnership

Author : Vasile Rotaru
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2018-07-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838211343

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Russia, the EU, and the Eastern Partnership by Vasile Rotaru Pdf

Even before the Ukrainian crisis, neither Russia nor the EU were content with their relationship. Despite economic interdependence, strategic partnership, official declarations of belonging culturally and historically to the same ‘European family’ and in spite of Russia’s stated interest in establishing an economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, the two actors found it difficult to agree on important issues. The conflictual atmosphere between the EU and Russia has three main dimensions: the normative issue, energy relations, and the shared neighbourhood with the latter being particularly salient after the launch of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) in 2009. The former Soviet space is at the core of Russian foreign policy. Moscow’s special interest in this area results from economic factors, diaspora issues, and, most importantly, from its perceived security need. Obsessed by a fear of being encircled by enemies, Russia sees its hegemony over the former Soviet republics as paramount to the protection of its own borders. Therefore, the rapprochement of any other actor towards this region is regarded with high suspicion. Against this background, Vasile Rotaru analyzes EU-Russia relations with a particular emphasis on the impact of the EaP on Moscow’s relations with Brussels. He argues that the EaP represented a turning point in EU-Russia relations, determining Moscow to revise its attitude towards the Union. Rotaru explains that, even if the EaP was Brussels’ initiative, the Partnership met the aspirations of the six former Soviet republics. Moreover, despite its opposition towards the EU’s initiative, Russia itself acted involuntarily as a propeller of the EaP. By aiming to keep the former Soviet republics close, Moscow often conducts an assertive, aggressive policy in the ‘near abroad.’ This strategy, however, had mostly opposite effects, causing Russia’s neighbors to look elsewhere for support of their sovereignty. From this perspective, the rapprochement of Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, and the three Caucasus republics with the EU has not been determined only by Brussels’ prosperity and soft-power attractiveness but also by existential fears in the former Soviet republics. The book appeals to a wide range of students, researchers, and professors specializing on Russia, the EU, and the former Soviet space in the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Security Studies as well as to think-tank analysts and policy makers.

How Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies Sustain Hybrid Regimes

Author : Oksana Huss
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2020-10-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838214306

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How Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies Sustain Hybrid Regimes by Oksana Huss Pdf

Leaders of hybrid regimes in pursuit of political domination and material gain instrumentalize both hidden forms of corruption and public anti-corruption policies. Corruption is pursued for different purposes including cooperation with strategic partners and exclusion of opponents. Presidents use anti-corruption policies to legitimize and institutionalize political domination. Corrupt practices and anti-corruption policies become two sides of the same coin and are exercised to maintain an uneven political playing field. This study combines empirical analysis and social constructivism for an investigation into the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005), Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010), and Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014). Explorative expert interviews, press surveys, content analysis of presidential speeches, as well as critical assessment of anti-corruption legislation are used for comparison and process tracing of the utilization of corruption under three Ukrainian presidents.

The Russian Path

Author : Dmitry Gel'man, Vladimir Marganiya, Otar Travin
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2020-10-20
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838214214

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The Russian Path by Dmitry Gel'man, Vladimir Marganiya, Otar Travin Pdf

The politico-economic reforms launched during the late twentieth century in post-Soviet Russia have led to contradictory and ambiguous results. The new economic environment and mode of governance that emerged have been subjected to serious criticism. What were the causes of these developments? Were they unavoidable for Russia due to specific factors grounded in the country’s previous experiences? Or were they an intended result of actions taken by the leaders of the country during the last few decades? The authors of this book share neither a deterministic approach, which implies that Russia is bound to fail because of the nature of its economic and political evolution, nor a voluntarist approach, which implies that these failures were caused only by the incompetence and/or malicious intentions of its leaders. Instead, this study offers a different framework for the analysis of political and economic developments in present-day Russia. It is based on four ‘i’s—ideas, interests, institutions, and illusions.

On the Verge of History

Author : Izabella Agardi
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 486 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2022-04-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783838216027

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On the Verge of History by Izabella Agardi Pdf

Rural women have not had a formative role in the public histories of Central Eastern Europe. Izabella Agárdi aims to correct that by concentrating on their life stories and their connections to general histories. She investigates how Hungarian-speaking, ordinary women in rural contexts born in the 1920s and 1930s remember and talk about the twentieth century they have experienced, and how, through their stories, they articulate historical change and construct themselves as historical subjects. In her analysis, Izabella Agárdi traces the interactions between micro- and macro- narratives as well as the specific tools women of this generation appropriate to talk about personal memories of their often traumatic past. From these stories, a particular mnemonic community emerges, one that speaks from a highly precarious position 'on the verge of history'. It is up to future generations whether these women's experiences will be remembered or forgotten.

The Years of Great Silence

Author : Jonathan Otto Pohl
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2022-03-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838216300

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The Years of Great Silence by Jonathan Otto Pohl Pdf

This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressive one in the 1930s, i.e. already before the Soviet-German war. J. Otto Pohl traces the development of Soviet repression of ethnic Germans. In particular, he focuses on the years 1941 to 1955 during which this oppression reached its peak. These years became known as “the Years of Great Silence” (“die Jahre des grossen Schweigens”). In fact, until the era of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rebuilding) in the late 1980s, the events that defined these years for the Soviet Germans could not be legally researched, written about, or even publicly spoken about, within the USSR.

Constructing the Limits of Europe

Author : Rumena Filipova
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 498 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2022-04-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838216492

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Constructing the Limits of Europe by Rumena Filipova Pdf

This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe. She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated perspective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.

The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity

Author : Regina Elsner
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-10-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783838215686

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The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity by Regina Elsner Pdf

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC’s current resistance against—what it perceives as—Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC’s arguments against—and sometimes preferences for—modernization and analyzes which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book’s systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC’s considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC’s today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favor of unity.

Geopolitical Rivalries in the “Common Neighborhood”

Author : Vasif Huseynov
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2019-11-20
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838212777

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Geopolitical Rivalries in the “Common Neighborhood” by Vasif Huseynov Pdf

This timely book analyses ‘soft power’ in the light of neoclassical realist premises as part of the foreign policy toolkit of great powers to expand their sphere of influence. Vasif Huseynov argues that if nuclear armed great powers compete against the same type of powers to expand or sustain their sphere of influence over a populated region, they use soft power as a major expansive instrument while military power remains a tool to defend themselves and back up their foreign policies. Presenting his model of soft power, the author explores the role of soft power projection by great powers in the formation of the external alignment of regional states. He focuses on the rivalries between Russia and the West (i.e. the EU and the USA) over the states located between the EU and Russia (the region known as the “common [or shared] neighborhood”) and on two of these regional states (Ukraine and Belarus) to test his hypotheses.

Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution

Author : Ivan Maistrenko
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 420 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2018-10-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838211077

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Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution by Ivan Maistrenko Pdf

Much has been written on the 1917–1920 revolution in Ukraine, on the national movement, the Makhnovists and the Bolsheviks. Yet there were others with a mass following whose role has faded from history books. One such party was the Borotbisty, the heirs of the mass Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, an independent party seeking to achieve national liberation and social emancipation. Though widely known in revolutionary Europe in their day, the Borotbisty were decimated during the Stalinist holocaust in Ukraine. Out of print for over half a century, this lost text by Ivan Maistrenko, the last survivor of the Borotbisty, provides a unique account on this party and its historical role. Part memoir and part history, this is a thought-provoking book which challenges previous approaches to the revolution and shows how events in Ukraine decided the fate not only of the Russian Revolution but the upheavals in Europe at the time.

Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands

Author : Eleonora Fedor, Julie Narvselius
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 438 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2021-11-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783838215235

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Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands by Eleonora Fedor, Julie Narvselius Pdf

Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive architectural forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors. In other words, they evolve from perpetual tensions between choices of the past and the burden of the past. A novel feature of this book is its multi-level approach to the analysis of engagements with the lost diversity in historical urban milieus full of post-war voids and ruptures. In particular, the collected studies test the possibility of combining the theoretical propositions of Memory Studies with broader conceptualizations of borderlands, cosmopolitan sociality, urban mythologies, and hybridity. The volume’s contributors are Eleonora Narvselius, Bo Larsson, Natalia Otrishchenko, Anastasia Felcher, Juliet D. Golden, Hana Cervinkova, Paweł Czajkowski, Alexandr Voronovici, Barbara Pabjan, Nadiia Bureiko, Teodor Lucian Moga, and Gaelle Fisher.

Power and Identity in the Post-Soviet Realm

Author : Steven Bottlik, Zsolt Berki, Marton Jobbitt
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2021-02-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838213996

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Power and Identity in the Post-Soviet Realm by Steven Bottlik, Zsolt Berki, Marton Jobbitt Pdf

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Cold War’s bipolar world order, Soviet successor states on the Russian periphery found themselves in a geopolitical vacuum, and gradually evolved into a specific buffer zone throughout the 1990s. The establishment of a new system of relations became evident in the wake of the Baltic States’ accession to the European Union in 2004, resulting in the fragmentation of this buffer zone. In addition to the nations that are more directly connected to Zwischeneuropa (i.e. ‘In-Between Europe’) historically and culturally (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine), countries beyond the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia), as well as the states of former Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan) have also become characterized by particular developmental pathways. Focusing on these areas of the post-Soviet realm, this collected volume examines how they have faced multidimensional challenges while pursuing both geopolitics and their place in the world economy. From a conceptual point of view, the chapters pay close attention not only to issues of ethnicity (which are literally intertwined with a number of social problems in these regions), but also to the various socio-spatial contexts of ethnic processes. Having emerged after the collapse of Soviet authority, the so-called ‘post-Soviet realm’ might serve as a crucial testing ground for such studies, as the specific social and regional patterns of ethnicity are widely recognized here. Accordingly, the phenomena covered in the volume are rather diverse. The first section reviews the fundamental elements of the formation of national identity in light of the geopolitical situation both past and present. This includes an examination of the relative strength and shifting dynamics of statehood, the impacts of imperial nationalism, and the changes in language use from the early-modern period onwards. The second section examines the (trans)formation of the identities of small nations living at the forefront of Tsarist Russian geopolitical expansion, in particular in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Southern Steppe. Finally, in the third section, the contributors discuss the fate of groups whose settlement space was divided by the external boundaries of the Soviet Union, a reality that resulted in the diverging developmental trajectories of the otherwise culturally similar communities on both sides of the border. In these imperial peripheries, Soviet authority gave rise to specifically Soviet national identities amongst groups such as the Azeris, Tajiks, Karelians, Moldavians, and others. The book also includes more than 30 primarily original maps, graphs, and tables and will be of great use not only for human geographers (particularly political and cultural geographers) and historians, but also for those interested in contemporary issues in social science.

The February 2015 Assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed Trial of his Alleged Killers

Author : John B. Dunlop
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2019-01-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838211886

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The February 2015 Assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed Trial of his Alleged Killers by John B. Dunlop Pdf

The book provides a detailed description of “the Russian crime of the twenty-first century” as well as a thorough examination of the eighty sessions of the nine-month-long trial (during 2016-2017) of Boris Nemtsov’s alleged killers. It directs attention to the chief obstacle in determining what precisely happened shortly before midnight on February 27, 2015, on a bridge located a mere stone’s throw away from the Kremlin, in an area under the active surveillance of the Russian Federal Protective Service. The glaring absence of closed circuit videos from this most heavily guarded site in Russia is underscored. Given the absence of such key evidence, those seeking to investigate the murder have been akin to blind people stumbling about in obscurity. The attempts to penetrate this man-made fog undertaken during the course of the trial by the Nemtsov family attorneys, Vadim Prokhorov and Olga Mikhailova, as well as by numerous tenacious analysts of the crime, such as former deputy Russian energy minister Vladimir Milov, former Russian presidential economics advisor Andrei Illarionov, and leading mathematician Andrei Piontkovskii, are covered in full. The uneven case mounted by the prosecution and the scrappy defense effort of the attorneys for the alleged killers, many of them ethnic Chechens, are highlighted, as is the non-unanimous verdict which was reached by the twelve jurors. The findings of this study are in agreement with those of a number of commentators who contend that the actual organizers of the crime remain at large as does the assassination’s shadowy mastermind.

Russia's Recognition of the Independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Author : Nikoloz Samkharadze
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2021-05-18
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783838214146

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Russia's Recognition of the Independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Nikoloz Samkharadze Pdf

The Russian Federation’s official acknowledgement of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008 has since been undermining both overall political stability in the Southern Caucasus in general and future perspectives of Georgia’s development in particular. Such recognition of new quasi-legal entities without consent of the parent state and a subsequent erosion of the principle of territorial integrity are pressing challenges in current world affairs. The Kremlin’s controversial 2008 decision continues to be an important bone of contention in Russian-Western relations. This study explores the emergence and recent transformation of modern norms of recognition, secession, and self-determination in international law. It traces the evolution of Soviet and Russian perspectives on the recognition of new states, and discusses overall Georgia-Russia relations in order to answer the question: Why did the Kremlin recognize Georgia’s two breakaway entities in contradiction to traditional Russian approaches to recognition? The author argues that Moscow’s deviant behavior vis-à-vis Tbilisi was caused by three major reasons, namely: the earlier recognition of Kosovo by many Western nations in disregard of Russia’s stance, the intention to prevent Georgia’s accession to NATO, and the necessity to legitimize a continued presence of Russian armed forces in Georgia’s two breakaway provinces.