Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, and Justice in a Changing Society by William A. Pridemore (review)

REVIEWS 767 asked about the role of themedia, their own viewing habits, and specifically about whether or not themedia influenced theirvote.Most showed awareness of bias on television and of deliberate attempts tomanipulate public opinion. An oil worker said of the 2000 campaign 'There was the impression that only one man was really running, i.e. Putin [...] It didn't beat you over the head, itwas very competent [eto ne v lob delaetsya, a ochen' gramotno]' (p. 145). Some participants admitted being influenced by what they watched even though theyknew the informationwas one-sided. Others appeared to accept bias as natural: theirprincipal criticismswere not about a lack of objectivity but about the negativity of themedia. Focus-group findings such as these can enhance our sensitivity to the Russian audience, but do not prove that TV carries the vote. On this point, Oates turns to survey data. She organized an opinion survey dedicated tomedia issues in 2001, updated by an additional survey in the winter of 2003/04. Her 2001 data snowed that themedian Russian adult watched two to three hours of television on a weekday, and four tofive hours on days off.The 2003/04 survey showed thatmore than four-fifths of respon dents heard about politics on television either daily or several times a week. She presents regressions showing that, controlling for demographic character istics, viewers who prefer the main state channel ORT were somewhat more likely to vote forPutin in 2000, and fans ofNTV were slightly more critical of Putin's performance. Simple regressions such as these do not predict the vote accurately, but since other studies show that television does indeed influ ence voting preferences, at least in presidential campaigns, Oates is on safe ground. Her conclusions boil down to the following: first,television inRussia is used as an instrument formass political manipulation; second, meaningful discussion of sensitivepolitical topics isno longer part of thejournalistic main stream; third, audiences in Russia, though canny, are vulnerable because of theirheavy exposure to a centrally controlled medium. The prospects for the media to play a positive role in Russian democratization are, therefore, bleak. Centre for theStudy of Public Policy Neil Munro Universityof Aberdeen Pridemore, William A. (ed.). Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, andJustice ina Changing Society.Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York, Toronto and Oxford, 2005. xii + 325 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?22.99 (paperback). This collection is an ambitious undertaking. William Pridemore's stated goal is to provide a comprehensive point of reference in relation to the changing nature of the rule of law, patterns of crime and the criminal justice system in Russia as a result of the collapse of Communism and the break-up of the USSR in 1991, and the subsequent impact of the post-Communist transition during the last fifteenyears. Presenting a wide-ranging collection of articles 768 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 related to this topic,written by a disparate group of authors (in terms of both their geographic and academic orientation), Pridemore largely succeeds in achieving his goal. The end result is a highly informative and credible assess ment of the complex process of building a democratic legal and criminal culture in contemporary Russia. The collection isdivided into three sections, each containing studies broad ly related to the key themes covered by the book: Law, Crime and Justice. The opening chapter by Richard Sakwa begins with an incisive study of the enduring dominance of the executive in contemporary Russian legal-political infrastructure,particularly highlighting the 'hegemonic presidency' that has evolved during the recent re-assertion of state authority under Vladimir Putin, while Linda Cook goes on to demonstrate that this is one of the key factors that has undermined the state reform agenda forwelfare provisions, at a time when the political and economic strains of transition have negatively affected thewelfare ofmany of the population. Olga Schwartz competently assesses attempts to create an independent judiciary in Russia, in the light of long-standing historical state dominance and popular suspicion of the judiciary pre-dating theCommunist regime, while in the final chapter in this section she assesses the impact of theRussian Criminal Code of 2001, dubbed by Peter Solomon as a 'compromise...

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