A01=Kathryn Stoner-Weiss
Author_Kathryn Stoner-Weiss
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Yeltsin
Bureaucrat
Cambridge University Press
Category=JPR
Category=KCB
Category=KCP
Central Authority
Central government
Chairman
Civic Community
Civil society
Collective action
Communism
Company town
Comparative politics
Corporatism
Democracy
Democratization
Economic development
Economic policy
Economic power
Economic sector
Economy
Election
Elite
Employment
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Governance
Government
Harvard University
Harvard University Press
Head of Administration
Institution
Interdependence
International Finance Corporation
Legislation
Legislature
Leonid Brezhnev
Literature
Local government
Michael McFaul
Mikhail Gorbachev
Modernity
New institutionalism
Novgorod Oblast
Oblast
Of Education
Perestroika
Political culture
Political economy
Political party
Political philosophy
Political science
Politician
Politics
Princeton University Press
Privatization
Representative democracy
Robert D. Putnam
Ruble
Russian Republic
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
Separation of powers
Social capital
Social structure
Soviet Union
Subsidy
Tax
The Logic of Collective Action
Transliteration
Unemployment
Voting
Wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780691092812
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 05 May 2002
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
