Copyright (c) 2017 University of Iowa All rights reserved. http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh Recent documents in Benjamin F. Shambaugh Conferences en-us Tue, 24 Jan 2017 16:13:36 PST 3600 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/8 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/8 Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:15:00 PDT It has been declared over a decade ago that the ideational variables "moved back to the forefront of the political science agenda,"1 yet in comparative politics the turn to ideas has not widened much beyond the scholars of the EU.2 Only few studies of policy choices of postcommunist elites relied on ideational arguments.3 Recent studies of Russian and comparative federalism, more generally, also frame the analysis of political action privileging interests over ideas and objective over discursive structures.4 In this paradigm power balance and political actors’ incen-tive structures are determined by such tangible variables as institutions, economic and financial resources, ethnicity and geographic location. The less tangible ideas, norms and rhetorical frames are absent.

]]> Gulnaz Sharafutdinova http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/7 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/7 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:00:00 PDT Rostislav Turovskii http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/6 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/6 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:00:00 PDT Henry E. Hale http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/5 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/5 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:15:00 PDT William M. Reisinger et al. http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/4 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/4 Sat, 08 Oct 2011 09:30:00 PDT Yoshiko M. Herrera http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/3 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/3 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:15:00 PDT In the wake of multiple political and economic transformations in the 1990s and the 2000s, new patterns of subnational politics and governance emerged across Russia’s regions and large cities in the form of local regimes. These patterns could be analyzed through the theoretical and comparative lenses of international research on the subject. I argue that the major changes of local regimes in Russia’s regions and large cities – unlike those analyzed in the literature on American and European sub-national politics and governance – are heavily affected by structural factors such as trends of local as well as national economic development. Also, major political and institutional changes in Russia and, especially, the process of cooptation of previously semi-autonomous local regimes into the hierarchy of the "power vertical" during the wave of re-centralization of politics and governance in the 2000s led to the emergence of the dual model of sub-national governance, which combines some featured characteristics of subnational authoritarianism and crony capitalism that partly resembles developmental trends in some Third World countries as well as late-Soviet practices of territorial politics and governance.

]]> Vladimir Gel'man http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/2 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/2 Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:15:00 PDT That income inequality has a number of social and political effects has been well documented. In view of the rapid rise in interpersonal and interregional inequality in Russia in the past two decades, this paper seeks to answer three questions. First, descriptively, what are the trends in interregional income inequality in Russia and how do they compare to those in China and other large countries? Second, how are interregional and interpersonal inequality related? Finally, how have social and economic policies shaped interregional inequality? The paper compares Russia with China, although it also draws comparisons to inequality in the United States and other large, heterogeneous countries. In both Russia and China, the growth in interregional inequality has levelled off somewhat in the last few years (at least by some measures) but remains high by international standards. Income inequality is fueled by the widening differentials in earnings, a consequence of the economic reform strategies both countries have followed. Territorial centers of growth, particularly metropolitan centers and natural resource-rich regions, experience faster rates of average income growth than rural and peripheral regions, fueling income inequality across regions. Both Russia and China lack significant fiscal redistributive mechanisms, although government policy has mitigated some of the extremes of social and interregional inequality by shoring up incomes at the low end and through targeted government infra-structure investment intended to raise incomes in poorer regions. However, in both countries, the decentralization, commercialization and privatization of public services has reinforced rather than offset inequality generated in the labor market. Social policy in the area of pensions, unemployment and poverty assistance aims at preventing social unrest rather than being a source of broad-based economic growth. I conclude by arguing that the absence of effective mechanisms for aggregating broad social interests and resolving redistributive conflicts, either corporatist or parliamentary, leaves the state poorly equipped to use social policies to redress interpersonal and interregional inequality except through targeted state spending programs.

]]> Thomas F. Remington http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/1 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2011/papers/1 Sat, 08 Oct 2011 09:30:00 PDT Andrei Akhremenko http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2007/day3/5 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2007/day3/5 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:30:00 PDT http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2007/day3/2 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2007/day3/2 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:30:00 PDT http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2007/day2/11 http://ir.uiowa.edu/shambaugh/2007/day2/11 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:30:00 PDT