The Last Bastion of Unitarism? Local Institutions, Party Politics, and Ramifications of EU Accession in Lithuania
A Japanese political scientist specializing in the former Soviet republics examines the system of regions taking shape within Lithuania. Driven in part by EU accession requirements, the current system is compared with the Soviet past and with that of Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The paper, based substantially on field work in 2001, argues that emergence of the country's most recognizable and operational regions, second-tier municipalities, has bolstered the competitive character of Lithuanian politics. A detailed analysis of elections of deputies to municipal councils, and subsequent election of mayors to head those councils, demonstrates patterns of coalition building designed to maintain a power balance among local party organizations. Three case studies demonstrate divergent contexts within which a national trend—the rise and fall of Lithuania's bipolar party system—is played out. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H11, H77, O18. 1 figure, 5 tables, 42 references.
Elites and the Party System of Zakarpattya Oblast' : Relations among Levels of Party Systems in Ukraine
IT IS NO SECRET THAT the flourishing study of regional politics in Russia was inspired by the specific path of state building which Russia underwent during the 1990s.1 A number of objective and subjective conditions led the Russian federal state to the brink of confederation. Russian regional politics seemed much more interesting than its counterparts in Ukraine, Lithuania and the Central Asian countries, which, at least officially, declared themselves to have chosen unitary paths of state building. Responding to the confederational characteristics of the Russian state, researchers, willingly or unwillingly, relied upon a methodological trick to analyse Russian regions as if they were independent political entities. Indeed, this trick enabled them to construct a 'comparative political science in one country' which has produced excellent results.2 On the other hand, however, this 'comparative political science in one country' was accompanied by a dismissive attitude towards spatial factors in politics, thereby depriving researchers of a crucial standpoint from which to view interactions between regional and national politics. It is paradoxical that regionologists do not respect spatial factors, but if we consider that each region lives its own life, why do we need to care about spatial factors at all? Okayama, a specialist in interpolitical relations3 in nineteenth century USA, observes the situation of regional studies of Russia as follows:
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo