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:
The Congress 'System' in India
In the study of party systems, attention has so far been given to two opposite phenomena, the two party or multi-party system on the one hand and the "one party system" on the other. Until quite recently, discussion in this field has been dominated by a dichotomous (or trichotomous) division on these lines, the principal criterion employed being the availability of choice between alternatives. The two-party system provides such a choice, and so does the multi-party system though in a more complicated manner;1 the one party system does not provide this choice. That, at any rate, is the rationalization behind the widely prevalent typology of party systems. To be sure, there is of late an attempt to look more closely at the precise functioning of the various party systems, especially in some of the new nations of Africa. There are also attempts at a "behavioural analysis" of the American and British party systems.2 These studies are giving rise to new ways of looking at party phenomena and have made scholars aware of the shortcomings of the present typology. While such a discussion is going on, it might be useful to look at the Indian experience with political parties, which is one of the most successful party systems in operation and yet is a system that cuts across the usual stereotypes and also calls into question the very criterion of political performance usually employed in the analysis of party systems. That it is the function of politics to offer choice between alternative sets of policies and personnel may indeed be a gross oversimplification of political phenomena. Politics is not always reducible to who gets what, when and how. We do not, however, intend to go into these more fundamental questions in this paper. In what