Chaos, Violence, Dynasty

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Author :
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822961680
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (616 download)

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Book Synopsis Chaos, Violence, Dynasty by : Eric McGlinchey

Download or read book Chaos, Violence, Dynasty written by Eric McGlinchey and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the post-Soviet era, democracy has made little progress in Central Asia. In Chaos, Violence, Dynasty, Eric McGlinchey presents a compelling comparative study of the divergent political courses taken by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan in the wake of Soviet rule. McGlinchey examines economics, religion, political legacies, foreign investment, and the ethnicity of these countries to evaluate the relative success of political structures in each nation. McGlinchey explains the impact of Soviet policy on the region, from Lenin to Gorbachev. Ruling from a distance, a minimally invasive system of patronage proved the most successful over time, but planted the seeds for current “neo-patrimonial” governments. The level of direct Soviet involvement during perestroika was the major determinant in the stability of ensuing governments. Soviet manipulations of the politics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in the late 1980s solidified the role of elites, while in Kyrgyzstan the Soviets looked away as leadership crumbled during the ethnic riots of 1990. Today, Kyrgyzstan is the poorest and most politically unstable country in the region, thanks to a small, corrupt, and fractured political elite. In Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov maintains power through the brutal suppression of disaffected Muslims, who are nevertheless rising in numbers and influence. In Kazakhstan, a political machine fueled by oil wealth and patronage underlies the greatest economic equity in the region, and far less political violence. McGlinchey’s timely study calls for a more realistic and flexible view of the successful aspects of authoritarian systems in the region that will be needed if there is to be any potential benefit from foreign engagement with the nations of Central Asia, and similar political systems globally.

Chaos, Violence, Dynasty

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Author :
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 0822977478
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Chaos, Violence, Dynasty by : Eric McGlinchey

Download or read book Chaos, Violence, Dynasty written by Eric McGlinchey and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the post-Soviet era, democracy has made little progress in Central Asia. In Chaos, Violence, Dynasty, Eric McGlinchey presents a compelling comparative study of the divergent political courses taken by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan in the wake of Soviet rule. McGlinchey examines economics, religion, political legacies, foreign investment, and the ethnicity of these countries to evaluate the relative success of political structures in each nation. McGlinchey explains the impact of Soviet policy on the region, from Lenin to Gorbachev. Ruling from a distance, a minimally invasive system of patronage proved the most successful over time, but planted the seeds for current “neo-patrimonial” governments. The level of direct Soviet involvement during perestroika was the major determinant in the stability of ensuing governments. Soviet manipulations of the politics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in the late 1980s solidified the role of elites, while in Kyrgyzstan the Soviets looked away as leadership crumbled during the ethnic riots of 1990. Today, Kyrgyzstan is the poorest and most politically unstable country in the region, thanks to a small, corrupt, and fractured political elite. In Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov maintains power through the brutal suppression of disaffected Muslims, who are nevertheless rising in numbers and influence. In Kazakhstan, a political machine fueled by oil wealth and patronage underlies the greatest economic equity in the region, and far less political violence. McGlinchey’s timely study calls for a more realistic and flexible view of the successful aspects of authoritarian systems in the region that will be needed if there is to be any potential benefit from foreign engagement with the nations of Central Asia, and similar political systems globally.

Children of Chaos

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0765314835
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (653 download)

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Book Synopsis Children of Chaos by : Dave Duncan

Download or read book Children of Chaos written by Dave Duncan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-06-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the start of a stirring, intrigue-filled quest duology.

Tropic of Chaos

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Publisher : Bold Type Books
ISBN 13 : 1568586620
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (685 download)

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Book Synopsis Tropic of Chaos by : Christian Parenti

Download or read book Tropic of Chaos written by Christian Parenti and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency. Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism" -- a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

Slow Anti-Americanism

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Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503614336
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Slow Anti-Americanism by : Edward Schatz

Download or read book Slow Anti-Americanism written by Edward Schatz and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Negative views of the United States abound, but we know too little about how such views affect politics. Drawing on careful research on post-Soviet Central Asia, Edward Schatz argues that anti-Americanism is best seen not as a rising tide that swamps or as a conflagration that overwhelms. Rather, "America" is a symbolic resource that resides quietly in the mundane but always has potential value for social and political mobilizers. Using a wide range of evidence and a novel analytic framework, Schatz considers how Islamist movements, human rights activists, and labor mobilizers across Central Asia avail themselves of this fact, thus changing their ability to pursue their respective agendas. By refocusing our analytic gaze away from high politics, he affords us a clearer view of the slower-moving, partially occluded, and socially embedded processes that ground how "America" becomes political. In turn, we gain a nuanced appreciation of the downstream effects of US foreign policy choices and a sober sense of the challenges posed by the politics of traveling images. Most treatments of anti-Americanism focus on politics in the realm of presidential elections and foreign policies. By focusing instead on symbols, Schatz lays bare how changing public attitudes shift social relations in politically significant ways, and considers how changing symbolic depictions of the United States recombine the raw material available for social mobilizers. Just like sediment traveling along waterways before reaching its final destination, the raw material that constitutes symbolic America can travel among various social groups, and can settle into place to form the basis of new social meanings. Symbolic America, Schatz shows us, matters for politics in Central Asia and beyond.

War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134372868
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (343 download)

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Book Synopsis War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 by : Peter Lorge

Download or read book War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 written by Peter Lorge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-03-29 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in English to study this period of Chinese history, this comprehensive survey sets out the major military events in chapters and argues that war was the most important tool used by the Chinese in building and maintaining their empire.

Democracy in Central Asia

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Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813160693
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis Democracy in Central Asia by : Mariya Y. Omelicheva

Download or read book Democracy in Central Asia written by Mariya Y. Omelicheva and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Promoting democracy has long been a priority of Western foreign policy. In practice, however, international attempts to expand representative forms of government have been inconsistent and are often perceived in the West to have been failures. The states of Central Asia, in particular, seem to be "democracy resistant," and their governments have continued to support various forms of authoritarianism in the decades following the Soviet Union's collapse. In Democracy in Central Asia, Mariya Omelicheva examines the beliefs and values underlying foreign policies of the major global powers—the United States, the European Union, Russia, and China—in order to understand their efforts to influence political change in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Omelicheva has traveled extensively in the region, collecting data from focus groups and public opinion surveys. She draws on the results of her fieldwork as well as on official documents and statements of democracy-promoting nations in order to present a provocative new analysis. Her study reveals that the governments and citizens of Central Asia have developed their own views on democracy supported by the Russian and Chinese models rather than by Western examples. The vast majority of previous scholarly work on this subject has focused on the strategies of democratization pursued by one agent such as the United States or the European Union. Omelicheva shifts the focus from democracy promoters' methods to their message and expands the scope of existing analysis to include multiple sources of influence. Her fresh approach illuminates the full complexity of both global and regional notions of good governance and confirms the importance of social-psychological and language-based perspectives in understanding the obstacles to expanding egalitarianism.

Dictators Without Borders

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300208448
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Dictators Without Borders by : Alexander Cooley

Download or read book Dictators Without Borders written by Alexander Cooley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia's international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia's supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.

Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China

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Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824867823
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China by : N. Harry Rothschild

Download or read book Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China written by N. Harry Rothschild and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China presents a rogues’ gallery of treacherous regicides, impious monks, cutthroat underlings, ill-bred offspring, and disloyal officials. It plumbs the dark matter of the human condition, placing front and center transgressive individuals and groups traditionally demonized by Confucian annalists and largely shunned by modern scholars. The work endeavors to apprehend the actions and motivations of these men and women, whose conduct deviated from normative social, cultural, and religious expectations. Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant. A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests—a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.

Chaos

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Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316477575
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

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Book Synopsis Chaos by : Tom O'Neill

Download or read book Chaos written by Tom O'Neill and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history. Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order -- their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia -- or dystopia -- was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi -- prosecutor of the Manson Family and author of Helter Skelter -- turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions: Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him? And how did Manson -- an illiterate ex-con -- turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, Chaos mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.

Kazakhstan in the Making

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Author :
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498525482
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Kazakhstan in the Making by : Marlene Laruelle

Download or read book Kazakhstan in the Making written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is a multidisciplinary examination of modern-day Kazakhstan. It analyzes the country’s fast-changing national identity, the current regime’s ongoing quest for popular support, relations between the Kazakh majority and the Russian-speaking minorities, and various other issues.

Laboratory of Socialist Development

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501715585
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Laboratory of Socialist Development by : Artemy M. Kalinovsky

Download or read book Laboratory of Socialist Development written by Artemy M. Kalinovsky and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Focusing on the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, this book places the Soviet development of Central Asia, and the Soviet hope for communism's bringing prosperity to a supposedly backward area, in global context"--

Constructing the Uzbek State

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498538371
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Constructing the Uzbek State by : Marlene Laruelle

Download or read book Constructing the Uzbek State written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, Uzbekistan has attracted the attention of the academic and policy communities because of its geostrategic importance, its critical role in shaping or unshaping Central Asia as a region, its economic and trade potential, and its demographic weight: every other Central Asian being Uzbek, Uzbekistan’s political, social, and cultural evolutions largely exemplify the transformations of the region as a whole. And yet, more than 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, evaluating Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet transformation remains complicated. Practitioners and scholars have seen access to sources, data, and fieldwork progressively restricted since the early 2000s. The death of President Islam Karimov, in power for a quarter of century, in late 2016, reopened the future of the country, offering it more room for evolution. To better grasp the challenges facing post-Karimov Uzbekistan, this volume reviews nearly three decades of independence. In the first part, it discusses the political construct of Uzbekistan under Karimov, based on the delineation between the state, the elite, and the people, and the tight links between politics and economy. The second section of the volume delves into the social and cultural changes related to labor migration and one specific trigger – the difficulties to reform agriculture. The third part explores the place of religion in Uzbekistan, both at the state level and in society, while the last part looks at the renegotiation of collective identities.

The Return of Ideology

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Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472121995
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis The Return of Ideology by : Cheng Chen

Download or read book The Return of Ideology written by Cheng Chen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-07-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a nation makes the transition from communism to democracy or another form of authoritarianism, its regime must construct not only new political institutions, but also a new political ideology that can guide policy and provide a sense of mission. The new ideology is crucial for legitimacy at home and abroad, as well as the regime’s long-term viability. In The Return of Ideology, Cheng Chen compares post-communist regimes, with a focus on Russia under Putin and post-Deng China, investigating the factors that affect the success of an ideology-building project and identifies the implications for international affairs. Successful ideology-building requires two necessary—but not sufficient—conditions. The regime must establish a coherent ideological repertoire that takes into account the nation’s ideological heritage and fresh surges of nationalism. Also, the regime must attract and maintain a strong commitment to the emerging ideology among the political elite. Drawing on rich primary sources, including interviews, surveys, political speeches, writings of political leaders, and a variety of publications, Chen identifies the major obstacles to ideology-building in modern Russia and China and assesses their respective long-term prospects. Whereas creating a new regime ideology has been a protracted and difficult process in China, it has been even more so in Russia. The ability to forge an ideology is not merely a domestic concern for these two nations, but a matter of international import as these two great powers move to assert and extend their influence in the world.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

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Author :
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474450547
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Armenia and Azerbaijan by : Laurence Broers

Download or read book Armenia and Azerbaijan written by Laurence Broers and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict for control of the mountainous territory of Nagorny Karabakh is the longest-running dispute in post-Soviet Eurasia. Laurence Broers shows how more than 20 years of dynamic territorial politics, shifting power relations, international diffusion and unsuccessful mediation efforts have contributed to the resilience of this stubbornly unresolved dispute. Looking beyond tabloid tropes of 'frozen conflict' or 'Russian land-grab', Broers unpacks the unresolved territorial issues of the 1990s and the strategic rivalry that has built up around them since.

Order at the Bazaar

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501712381
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Order at the Bazaar by : Regine A. Spector

Download or read book Order at the Bazaar written by Regine A. Spector and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Order at the Bazaar delves into the role of bazaars in the political economy and development of Central Asia. Bazaars are the economic bedrock for many throughout the region—they are the entrepreneurial hubs of Central Asia. However, they are often regarded as mafia-governed environments that are largely populated by the dispossessed. By immersing herself in the bazaars of Kyrgyzstan, Regine A. Spector learned that some are rather best characterized as islands of order in a chaotic national context. Spector draws on interviews, archival sources, and participant observation to show how traders, landowners, and municipal officials create order in the absence of a coherent government apparatus and bureaucratic state. Merchants have adapted Soviet institutions, including trade unions, and pre-Soviet practices, such as using village elders as the arbiters of disputes, to the urban bazaar by building and asserting their own authority. Spector’s findings have relevance beyond the bazaars and borders of one small country; they teach us how economic development operates when the rule of law is weak.

Patronal Politics

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107073510
Total Pages : 557 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Patronal Politics by : Henry E. Hale

Download or read book Patronal Politics written by Henry E. Hale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new way of understanding events throughout the world that are usually interpreted as democratization, rising authoritarianism, or revolution. Where the rule of law is weak and corruption pervasive, what may appear to be democratic or authoritarian breakthroughs are often just regular, predictable phases in longer-term cyclic dynamics - patronal politics. This is shown through in-depth narratives of the post-1991 political history of all post-Soviet polities that are not in the European Union. This book also includes chapters on czarist and Soviet history and on global patterns.