Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science PDF Author: Stefan Hedlund
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113950052X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book investigates cases in which national and international activities have gone massively wrong, entailing seriously negative consequences, and in which the sophisticated analytical models of social science have ceased to be helpful. Illustrations range from the global financial crisis to the failure to achieve speedy systemic change in the former Soviet Union and the failure to achieve development in the Third World. The analysis uses as a backdrop long-term Russian history and short-term Russian encounters with unrestrained capitalism to develop a framework that is based in the so-called new institutionalism. Understanding the causes of systemic failure is shown to require an approach that spans across the increasingly specialized subdisciplines of modern social science. Demonstrating that increasing theoretical sophistication has been bought at the price of a loss of perspective and the need for sensitivity to the role of cultural and historical specificity, the book pleads the case for a new departure in seeking to model the motives for human action.

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science PDF Author: Stefan Hedlund
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113950052X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book investigates cases in which national and international activities have gone massively wrong, entailing seriously negative consequences, and in which the sophisticated analytical models of social science have ceased to be helpful. Illustrations range from the global financial crisis to the failure to achieve speedy systemic change in the former Soviet Union and the failure to achieve development in the Third World. The analysis uses as a backdrop long-term Russian history and short-term Russian encounters with unrestrained capitalism to develop a framework that is based in the so-called new institutionalism. Understanding the causes of systemic failure is shown to require an approach that spans across the increasingly specialized subdisciplines of modern social science. Demonstrating that increasing theoretical sophistication has been bought at the price of a loss of perspective and the need for sensitivity to the role of cultural and historical specificity, the book pleads the case for a new departure in seeking to model the motives for human action.

Ukraine, Russia and the West

Ukraine, Russia and the West PDF Author: Stefan Hedlund
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000869938
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Why did Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine come as such a surprise to the West? This is a key question considered by this reflective and wide-ranging book. The book argues that Russia and the West were playing different games: while Russia under Putin had become obsessed with using hard power to restore the Cold War security architecture in Europe, the major Western powers had become equally obsessed with value promotion that would ensure a global triumph for the values of the West, touted as “universal values.” The Russian play for spheres of interest was clearly defined and demarcated, the Western play for values was, by definition, without limits. Hence there could be no common ground, no constructive communication, and no common understanding. While Russia convinced itself that it would be successful in forcing the West to accept its claims for a new security order, based on hard power, Western governments deluded themselves into believing that value promotion would transform Russia into a liberal democracy and a rules-based market economy. Examining the full situation, exploring political, military, economic and business spheres, the book provides a deep analysis of how the present confrontation has come about.

Putin's Russia

Putin's Russia PDF Author: Darrell Slider
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538148692
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
Thoroughly revised, expanded, and updated, the new edition of this classic text provides the most authoritative and current analysis of contemporary Russia. Leading scholars explore the domestic and international problems Russia confronts, including political, economic, societal, and foreign policy issues. The new edition provides an analysis from multiple perspectives on the major challenges facing Russia and Putin’s regime. Updates include new sections on corruption, Russia’s conflicts with Ukraine and Georgia, Russia’s response to Only by understanding these challenges—and previous efforts to deal with them—will it be possible to understand the trajectory for Russia. Well written and clearly organized, this text is an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to understand contemporary Russia.

Putin's Russia

Putin's Russia PDF Author: Stephen K. Wegren
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538114275
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Now in a thoroughly revised, expanded, and updated edition, this classic text provides an authoritative and current analysis of contemporary Russia. Leading scholars explore the daunting domestic and international problems Russia confronts, considering a comprehensive array of economic, political, foreign policy, and social issues.

Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy, third edition

Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy, third edition PDF Author: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262037335
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
An approach to comparative economic systems that avoids simple dichotomies to examine a wide variety of institutional and systemic arrangements, with updated country case studies. Comparative economics, with its traditional dichotomies of socialism versus capitalism, private versus state, and planning versus market, is changing. This innovative textbook offers a new approach to understanding different economic systems that reflects both recent transformations in the world economy and recent changes in the field.This new edition examines a wide variety of institutional and systemic arrangements, many of which reflect deep roots in countries' cultures and histories. The book has been updated and revised throughout, with new material in both the historical overview and the country case studies. It offers a broad survey of economic systems, then looks separately at market capitalism, Marxism and socialism, and “new traditional economies” (with an emphasis on the role of religions, Islam in particular, in economic systems). It presents case studies of advanced capitalist nations, including the United States, Japan, Sweden, and Germany; alternative paths in the transition from socialist to market economies taken by such countries as Russia, the former Soviet republics, Poland, China, and the two Koreas; and developing countries, including India, Iran, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil. The new chapters on Brazil and South Africa complete the book's coverage of all five BRICS nations; the chapter on South Africa extends the book's comparative treatment to another continent. The chapter on Brazil with its account of the role of the Amazon rain forest as a great carbon sink expands the coverage of global environmental and sustainability issues. Each chapter ends with discussion questions.

Power and Legitimacy

Power and Legitimacy PDF Author: Per-Arne Bodin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415677769
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This book sheds new light on the continuing debate within political thought as to what constitutes power, and what distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate power. It does so by considering the experience of Russia, a polity where experiences of the legitimacy of power and the collapse of power offer a contrast to Western experiences on which most political theory, formulated in the West, is based. The book considers power in a range of contexts - philosophy and discourse; the rule of law and its importance for economic development; the use of culture and religion as means to legitimate power; and liberalism and the reasons for its weakness in Russia. The book concludes by arguing that the Russian experience provides a useful lens through which ideas of power and legitimacy can be re-evaluated and re-interpreted, and through which the idea of "the West" as the ideal model can be questioned.

Sovereignty through Practice

Sovereignty through Practice PDF Author: Elia Bescotti
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104025974X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This book explores how actors practise sovereignty as a force in a multiscalar context. Among the various power structures that perform sovereignty, such as the head of state, a legislative body, or the military, one aspect is clear: the practice of sovereignty relies upon people at multiple levels - better portrayed as scales - of authority. This book focuses on actors – the people who bring sovereignty to life, who imbue it with meaning, and who are ultimately responsible for its practice. With that perspective, the volume interprets various case studies, such as Russian approaches to sovereignty in its leadership and Central Bank, Scottish parties' discourses, and NATO command structures. Beyond those contexts, the work also examines Chinese digital platforms, criminal gangs in Latin America, Polish and Czech nationalist movements, want-to-be states in Kurdistan-Iraq and Abkhazia, and Polish video games – together, these examples demonstrate how actors practise sovereignty in unity with, but also in place of, the state. As proof of concept, the authors further examine how they, as researchers, also qualify as practitioners of sovereignty. In a concluding three-chapter section, they reflexively explore how research methods and disciplines of study actively shape sovereignty and how the latter defines the outer limits of scholarly research. This book will be of interest to students of statehood, sovereignty, discourse analysis, history, political science, sociology, and international relations.

The Sociology of Development Handbook

The Sociology of Development Handbook PDF Author: Gregory Hooks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520277783
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 722

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Book Description
"This handbook brings together essays by leading contributors to development sociology by addressing intellectual challenges: internal and international migration, transformation of political regimes, globalization, changes in household and family formations, gender dynamics, technological change, population and economic growth, environmental sustainability, peace and war, and the production and reproduction of social and economic inequality. The Sociology of Development Handbook includes essays that reflect the range of debates in development sociology and in the interdisciplinary study and practice of development"--Provided by publisher.

Authoritarian Modernization in Russia

Authoritarian Modernization in Russia PDF Author: Vladimir Gel'man
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317177061
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Post-Communist Russia is an instance of the phenomenon of authoritarian modernization project, which is perceived as a set of policies intended to achieve a high level of economic development, while political freedoms remain beyond the current modernization agenda or are postponed to a distant future. Why did Russia (unlike many countries of post-Communist Europe) pursue authoritarian modernization after the Soviet collapse? What is the ideational agenda behind this project and why does it dominate Russia’s post-Communist political landscape? What are the mechanisms of political governance, which maintain this project and how have they adopted and absorbed various democratic institutions and practices? Why has this project brought such diverse results in various policy arenas, and why have the consequences of certain policies become so controversial? Why, despite so many controversies, shortcomings and flaws, has this project remained attractive in the eyes of a large proportion of the Russian elite and ordinary citizens? This volume intended to place some of these questions on the research agenda and propose several answers, encouraging further discussions about the logic and mechanisms of the authoritarian modernization project in post-Communist Russia and its effects on Russia’s politics, economy, and society.

EU Induced Institutional Change in Post-Soviet Space

EU Induced Institutional Change in Post-Soviet Space PDF Author: Ryhor Nizhnikau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351337173
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book analyses the role of the European Union in the process of institutional change in its Eastern neighbourhood and explains why EU policies arrive at contradictory outcomes at the sectoral level. Combining EU studies approaches with insights from the fields of new institutionalism, international development studies and transnationalisation, it explains how the EU policies contribute to rule persistence or lead to institutional change. Highlighting the importance of investigating how the policies of external intervention interact with domestic institutions, the book also provides a coherent presentation of the political and economic problems of Ukraine and Moldova and a comparative analysis in key areas at critical junctures of their development. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics and more broadly to International Relations, post-Soviet and Russian studies.