Grigore Pop-Eleches

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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with winners of the Leaders of Russia contest via video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow on Tuesday. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AP)

Europa,

On Sunday, Russia will hold regional elections. Voters will cast ballots in some 9,000 races in 83 regions, with everything from elections to fill national legislature vacancies to elections for regional governors and municipal councils.

According to the respected Russian election monitoring group Golos, these elections are likely to be a sham. Even the Communists, a tame, officially recognized opposition party, have not been allowed to register candidates in seven of the 18 governor’s races. Real independent candidates have found it harder than ever to get on the ballot.

Since the beginning, the Putin system has been built on twin pillars.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaUE a debate

Nov. 9, 2019, marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its wake, communist rule would collapse throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, bringing to a close perhaps the broadest sustained attempt to consciously reorganize social, political and economic life across many nations.

The legacies of communist rule, however, did not end in 1989. As we show in our book “Communism’s Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes,” post-communist citizens turned out to be less supportive of democracy and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. In a recent article in the journal Comparative Political Studies, we also found that those who had lived under communist rule were more likely to exhibit “left-authoritarian” attitudes — that is, to be both a self-identified leftist and to have a more authoritarian preferences — than citizens in the rest of the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters hold the Ukraine flag and anti-government signs at a rally in downtown Kiev, Ukraine, on Dec. 17, demanding that lawmakers lift their parliamentary immunity and establishment an anti-corruption court. (EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Europa,

For the last three years, Ukrainian activists have been trying to beat back systemic government corruption — but now that “Revolution of Dignity” is hanging by a thread. In mid-December 2017, anti-reform forces in President Petro Poroshenko’s government moved to suppress anti-corruption forces, including efforts to sideline the most prominent anti-corruption member of parliament and to subordinate the country’s independent anti-corruption bureau to the very politicians it is supposed to investigate. Here’s what’s going on — and how it matters to anti-corruption efforts worldwide.

A new approach to rooting out corruption: The ‘sandwich’ model

For the last three years, Ukrainian civil society and the international community have been experimenting with a new way to force the government to undertake major anti-corruption reforms called “the sandwich.”…  Seguir leyendo »