| Volume 5, Number 2, April 2008 |
The 2007-2008 Electoral Cycle in Russia and Prospects for Democracy
by David White 大卫•怀特 |
The Development of Russia in the
Past
Few Years
An Interview with Mr. Ji Zhiye
by 季志业 Ji Zhiye |
DURING the sixteen years since the collapse of the Soviet Union the question of how best to conceptualise post-Soviet Russia's political system has remained a dominant theme amongst academics and policy analysts alike. Transition theory, popular among Western political scientists in the early 1990s, and largely based on the teleological and normative assumption that Western-style liberal democracy was Russia's end goal, gradually gave way to the development of a wide range of models seeking to explain why Russian democracy had failed to consolidate.(1) By the mid-1990s it had become increasingly obvious that whilst Russia was in transition it was not necessarily in transition to Western-style democracy.
Democracy is, of course, a contested concept. As Bernard Crick points out, it is both “a sacred and promiscuous word”, adding that whilst everyone claims it as their own, no-one actually possesses...
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Yves Camus: Would you please say something about the development of Russia in the past few years?
Ji Zhiye: Ever since he became the President of Russia eight years ago, Vladimir Putin has, after some integration, set up a development mode with Russian characteristics that covers politics, the economy, culture and other areas. In politics, Russia has formed a highly centralized system, which can be viewed both as an achievement made by Putin himself and a continuation of Russian history.
The eight years under former President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was actually a failure. In that period a centralized oligarchy emerged. In the few years after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union , there appeared in the country some rich people whose assets exceeded tens of billions of US dollars. Twenty three great oligarchs, controlling 67% of the national economy, could direct President Yeltsin as to what he should do today...
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| Issue 5.2 |
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Elections
in Russian Society
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