In Developments in Russian Politics 9 an international team of experts provide a comprehensive and critical discussion of the country's most recent developments, offering substantive coverage of the key areas in domestic and foreign Russian politics.

Russia has a new parliament and a new president, and the shape of its future political life remains uncertain. Taking the elections of 1999 and 2000 as their starting point, the contributors to Developments in Russian Politics 5 describe the institutional framework of the post -- Yeltsin system and examine the policy choices that confront the Putin administration. This completely revised edition includes new discussions of such topics as media and political communication, crime and corruption, and Russia's continuing search for a 'national idea.' Other sections cover elections and electoral procedures, parties and organized interests, as well as economic, social, and foreign policy. Written by leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, Developments in Russian Politics 5 will replace earlier editions as the leading text for students of Russia and for a wider group of readers seeking a reliable and up-to-date introduction to the politics of the world's largest country.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Russia today represents one of the major examples of the phenomenon of "electoral authoritarianism" which is characterized by adopting the trappings of democratic institutions (such as elections, political parties, and a legislature) and enlisting the service of the country's essentially authoritarian rulers. Why and how has the electoral authoritarian regime been consolidated in Russia? What are the mechanisms of its maintenance, and what is its likely future course? This book attempts to answer these basic questions. Vladimir Gel'man examines regime change in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day, systematically presenting theoretical and comparative perspectives of the factors that affected regime changes and the authoritarian drift of the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's national political elites aimed to achieve their goals by creating and enforcing of favorable "rules of the game" for themselves and maintaining informal winning coalitions of cliques around individual rulers. In the 1990s, these moves were only partially successful given the weakness of the Russian state and troubled post-socialist economy. In the 2000s, however, Vladimir Putin rescued the system thanks to the combination of economic growth and the revival of the state capacity he was able to implement by imposing a series of non-democratic reforms. In the 2010s, changing conditions in the country have presented new risks and challenges for the Putin regime that will play themselves out in the years to come.

In Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia scholars scrutinise developments in official symbolical, cultural and social policies as well as the contradictory trajectories of important cultural, social and intellectual trends in Russian society after the year 2000. Engaging experts on Russia from several academic fields, the book offers case studies on the vicissitudes of cultural policies, political ideologies and imperial visions, on memory politics on the grassroot as well as official levels, and on the links between political and national imaginaries and popular culture in fields as diverse as fashion design and pro-natalist advertising. Contributors are Niklas Bernsand, Lena Jonson, Ekaterina Kalinina, Natalija Majsova, Olga Malinova, Alena Minchenia, Elena Morenkova-Perrier, Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, Andrei Rogatchevski, Tomas Sniegon, Igor Torbakov, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, and Yuliya Yurchuk.

The eighth edition of a popular course book tracking recent developments in Russian politics.

Introduction: the guns of August -- Contours of Russian foreign policy -- Bulldogs fighting under the rug: the making of Russian foreign policy -- Resetting expectations: Russia and the United States -- Europe: between integration and confrontation -- Rising China and Russia's Asian vector -- Playing with home field advantage? Russia and its post-Soviet neighbors -- Conclusion: dealing with Russia's foreign policy reawakening.