PONARS Eurasia 24 - PONARS Eurasia

The United States and Russia Today: A Practical Partnership

U.S.-Russian relations today can be characterized best as pragmatic. But this pragmatism is a very specific one. The partnership between Russia and the United States is driven by expediency rather than principle…

What Went Wrong? Regional Electoral Politics and Impediments to State Centralization in Russia 2003-2004

In the fall of 2004, Russia’s national executive launched a major reform that affects the development of center-region relations in the country. The pivotal component of the reform is a move to…

Russians Support NGOs But Not Parties: Implications for Donors

In previous PONARS memos (see especially no. 221, also nos. 243 and 244), we presented October 2001 survey results showing weak support among Russians for human rights, particularly for civil liberties and…

Russian Private Equity: An Opportunity for which the Time Has Not Yet Come

Private equity is a relatively common investment discipline in many Western countries and is an asset class that, over the years, has become an important component of many institutional portfolios.…

Rights and Restraints in Russia’s Criminal Justice System

One of the hardest tasks for the newly democratizing states in Central and Eastern Europe has been the establishment of fair and effective systems of criminal justice. During the Communist era, the…

Does Russia Need to Strengthen the Ruble? Accumulation of Foreign Exchange Reserves and Economic

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as some academic economists, suggest that Russia should run down its foreign exchange reserves (FER) and appreciate (strengthen) the ruble. These reserves grew quickly after…

Postwar Iraq: Policy Options for Russia

As foreseen by many observers, the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces on April 9, 2003, was just the beginning, not the end of the story. In postwar Iraq, the United…

The View of Russian Electoral Reforms from Russia’s Ethnic Republics

President Putin’s proposal to eliminate gubernatorial elections throughout Russia caught the leaders of Russia’s ethnic republics by surprise. Although it was widely known that such ideas had been circulating in the…

Waiting for a Democratic Left: A Dangerous Gap in Russia’s Political Spectrum

A decade ago, the politically entrepreneurial vanguard of Moscow's ruling elite–the so-called reformers–came to power under a slogan that was attractive by virture of its simplicity: transforming Russia into a…

The Selective Use of State Capacity in Russia’s Economy: Property Disputes and Enterprise Takeovers After 2000

Throughout the 1990s, the role of the Russian state in governing the private economy was negligible. Private organizations of various kinds, such as organized criminal groups, private security agencies, and…

The Duma Districts: Key to Putin’s Power

When politicians hit the campaign trail and Russians prepare to vote for a new parliament (the Duma), Western attention is invariably drawn to the familiar and colorful competition among parties seeking…

The Yukos Affair: Terminating the Implicit Contract

On July 2, 2003, Russian law enforcement arrested billionaire Platon Lebedev, chairman of the Board of Directors of MENATEP, the financial center of the oil giant YUKOS. A few days earlier the…

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PONARS Eurasia Podcast

PONARS Eurasia