Local Heroes : : The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance / / Kathryn Stoner-Weiss.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.) :; 47 tables, 1 map, 6 line illus.

In Local Heroes, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss analyzes a crucial aspect of one of the great dramas of modern times--the reconstitution of the Russian polity and economy after more than seventy years of communist rule. This is the first book to look comprehensively and systematically at Russia's democratic transition at the local level. Its goal is to explain why some of the new political institutions in the Russian provinces weathered the monumental changes of the early 1990s better than others. Using newly available economic, political, and sociological data to test various theories of democratization and institutional performance, Stoner-Weiss finds that traditional theories are unable to explain variations in regional government performance in Russia. Local Heroes argues that the legacy of the former economic system influenced the operation of new political institutions in important and often unexpected ways. Past institutional structures, specifically the concentration of the regional economy, promoted the formation of political and economic coalitions within a new proto-democratic institutional framework. These coalitions have had positive effects on governmental performance. For democratic theorists, this may be a surprising conclusion. However, it is possible, as Stoner-Weiss suggests, that the needs of democratic development may be different in the short run than in the long run. The "local heroes" of today may be impediments to the further development of democracy tomorrow. This provocative work, solidly grounded in research and theory, will interest anyone concerned with issues of economic and political transition.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Preface -- Note on Transliteration -- Local Heroes -- CHAPTER 1 Introduction -- CHAPTER 2 The Political Economy of Government Performance -- CHAPTER 3 Decentralization and Democratization: The Development of Regional Government Institutions -- CHAPTER 4 Who Governs Russia Well ? Measuring Institutional Performance -- CHAPTER 5 Testing Theories of Performance Variation: Economic, Social-Structural, and Cultural Hypotheses -- CHAPTER 6 The Political Economy of Government Performance: Testing the Theory -- CHAPTER 7 Democracy and the Market at Risk -- APPENDIX A Regional Government Structures -- APPENDIX B Cross-Tabulations of Constituent Satisfaction with Regional Government by Urban and Rural Dwellers and by Levels of Education -- Bibliography -- Index