Judging from some of the titles of recent books on Russia—for example, Richard Sakwa's The Crisis of Russian Democracy, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova's Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism inside...

Clientelist parties (or political machines) engage in a variety of strategies during elections.

This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars working on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to examine in depth three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven...

European and American experts systematically compare U.S.

Given the dramatic change in Russia's economic circumstances a year after Medvedev's ascendancy to president and Putin's move to the office of prime minister, now is a particularly appropriate time...

Do external factors facilitate or hamper domestic democratic development?

A growing conventional wisdom holds that Vladimir Putin's attack on democracy has brought Russia stability and prosperity -- providing a new model of successful market authoritarianism.

All federal systems face the two fundamental dilemmas of federalism: too strong a center risks overawing the subnational units; and too weak a center risks free-riding that makes the system fall...

Capital account liberalization was once seen as an inevitable step along the path to economic development for poor countries.