Insightful analysis of how regional politics shaped the executive branch's ability to retain power and govern under Yeltsin and Putin

In The Regional Roots of Russia’s Political Regime, William M. Reisinger and Bryon J. Moraski examine Russian politics at the subnational level in order to discover why democracy failed to take root and how Putin’s authoritarian regime materialized. Since the national regime needed dominant victories in federal legislative and presidential elections, elections were critical to the resurgence of Russian authoritarianism. At the same time, victories without a traditional nationwide political party required that regional politicians help deliver votes. Putin employed a variety of resources to encourage the collaboration of regional leaders during federal elections and to sanction those who would or could not deliver these votes. By analyzing successive federal elections, Reisinger and Moraski show that regions that led the way in delivering votes in Putin’s favor were those that had been both more independent and more authoritarian during the Yeltsin era. These authoritarian enclaves under Yeltsin became models of behavior in the Putin regime, which prized deferential election results. Other regions were quick to follow this lead, functioning during Putin’s ascendancy as “swing states.” Still, Russia’s regimes continued to exhibit regime diversity, with democratic enclaves resisting the push to become cogs in the Kremlin’s electoral authoritarian wheel. While motivated by scholarly questions about authoritarianism, democracy, and the influence of subnational forces on national regime trajectories, Reisinger and Moraski also consider policy-relevant questions.

This book asks why dominant political parties emerge in some authoritarian regimes, but not in others, focusing on Russia's experience under Putin.

In February 2014, Russia initiated a war in Ukraine, its reasons for aggression unclear. Each of this volume's authors offers a distinct interpretation of Russia's motivations, untangling the social, historical, and political factors that created this war and continually reignite its tensions. What prompted President Vladimir Putin to send troops into Crimea? Why did the conflict spread to eastern Ukraine with Russian support? What does the war say about Russia's political, economic, and social priorities, and how does the crisis expose differences between the EU and Russia regarding international jurisdiction? Did Putin's obsession with his macho image start this war, and is it preventing its resolution? The exploration of these and other questions gives historians, political watchers, and theorists a solid grasp of the events that have destabilized the region.

This look at economic development in India focuses on interactions between the central state and regional elites. India is widely regarded as a "failed" developmental state, seemingly the exception that belies the prediction of a triumphant Asian century.

Examines how political parties navigate major election reforms by comparing electoral system changes in Russia and Ukraine at the same time, under different regimes In Party Politics in Russia and Ukraine, Bryon Moraski provides a window into the political landscapes of Russia and Ukraine, two countries that have clashed with each other—and struggled with their own popular revolts—in recent years. Drawing on election outcomes, party nominations, parliamentary voting, and other data, Moraski highlights how ruling parties, incumbent legislators, and others have adapted to major electoral system changes in both countries. Moraski sheds light on how authoritarian regimes—and the ruling parties that support them—have used changing conditions in their countries to consolidate their power, with varying success. Exploring the swiftly changing political arena of Eastern Europe, Party Politics in Russia and Ukraine offers timely insight into the impact of elections in the twenty-first century.

Research and analysis of the post-Soviet Russian experience of political, economic and social change have generally focused attention on the complications and influences of the Soviet legacy on the transition process with most early main stream studies emphasizing the difficulties of the adoption of the institutions of democracy and a free market economy to the centralized command and control legacy structures carried over from that adjacent system to the more recent analyses that have attempted to explain why the Putinist hybrid authoritarian democracy emerged to take control of the Russian state. The complex nature of the Russian experience of political, social and economic change had yet to be explained as a long-term legacy analysis until now with the linkages presented in this study of the legacies and structures that have defied attempts at reform by the Bolsheviks, the Soviets and the modern Republicans. The political geography of Russia represents a districting system that defines the people and places and represents an influential legacy structure that has had a long reach from the Russia of Imperialism to the Russia of Putinism and the twenty first century. A clearer understanding of the influences the Imperial legacy brings to the Russian transformation enables the student of post-Soviet Russian transition an opportunity to contextualize the strong linkages of historical governance structures with the one hundred years of Bolshevik and Soviet system capture and the struggles of transformation faced by the government and people of Russia today.