The Central Government of Russia: From Gorbachev to Putin by Iulia s> Shevchenko (review)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
i86 SEER, 85, I, 2007 Crosston's book constitutes one of very few works to provide a crossregional comparative analysis. The author does a good job of explaining his case selection as well as how he designed and carriedout his research. He is right to point out that his third case study, Lipetsk, has received virtually no scholarly attention. Consequently this chapter is the most original and empirically rich of the book. Although it is clear the chapters on Tatarstan and Sverdlovskare also based upon exhaustivefield research and interviews, readers more familiar with these cases may be disappointed by the lack of a similar degree of detail. Moreover, the book does not include a list of interviewsconducted by the author. The author is very critical of the role of bilateral treaties, particularly in compromising the unity and stability of democratic federal governance. But while his theoretical frameworkgives us insight into how the practice of bilateral treaties may have undermined federalism, it does not adequately address whythis happened. While Crosston demonstratesthat the practice of treaties in Russia's regions had a negative effect on stabilityand democracy, he gives too little considerationin his theoreticalchapters of whether treaties per se are nefarious. The book provides too little contrast between different theories of multi-level governance and devolution and the practice as it evolved in the Russian Federation: is Russian federalism undermined by the use and abuse of bilateral treaties by regional leaders or by recourse to bilateralismand devolution altogether?Furthermore,by concentratingon the use of treatiesby regionalleaders, Crosstonabstractsthe federalgovernment's role in bilateralism.While regionalgovernmentsmay have providedthe impetus , the centre's decision to pursue bilateral accommodation as well as its inability or unwillingness to sanction abuses of power in the regions also impacts the stability of Russia's federalism. The book would have been strengthenedby furtherexamination of such issues. Notwithstanding these criticisms,Matthew Crosston's ShadowSeparatism is a useful addition to the literature on federalism and regional politics in post-Soviet Russia. His cross-regionalcomparative research design is a good example of the benefit and necessityof adopting such approachesin the study of contemporaryRussia. Universiy of Ottawa DAVID CASHABACK Shevchenko, Julia. 7he CentralGovernment of Russia:FromGorbachev to Putin. Post-Soviet Politics. Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington,VT, 2004. xi + I99 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?49.95. THEpendulum swing of weak government to stronger government to weak government in Russia has been frequently remarked upon and often explained in terms of presidential preferences to cut potential competitors down to size. JuliaShevchenko'smonographpenetratesmuch deeper into the ebbs and flows of government autonomy to explain this dynamic in terms of alternationsin the nature of the principal-agentrelationshipand relates this REVIEWS I87 to the incentives for delegating policy-making power to the government. Shevchenko's central argument is that where the government is delegated policy-makingpowers in addition to its regulatoryrole of implementingpolicy made elsewhere, then government organization and efficiency improves. This is likely to happen where the government is subject to two principals (presidentand parliament)and/or where policy goals are highly uncertain.In such circumstances,the principalswill seek to shirk responsibilityfor policy by delegating policy-making powers to the government. In situationswhere government faces only one principal (usuallythe president)and policy goals are more certain, there is a tendency for the government to perform a purely regulatoryrole of implementingpolicy made elsewhere. This shiftis reflected in the degradation of its internal organization as Soviet-era practices re-emerge and parallel structuresproliferate. In the first chapter, Shevchenko elaborates this nuanced theory based on the growingprincipal-agentliteratureand then proceeds in the subsequentsix chronologically-organizedempiricalchaptersto convincinglydemonstratethe utility of this approach for explaining the dramatic changes in government organization since the late I98os. While the theoretical argument is parsimonious and thoroughlyintegratedthroughoutthe book, the empiricalanalysisis well-structuredand extremelydetailed. At the startof each empiricalchapter, Shevchenko offers an impassive analytical-narrativeoverview that neatly conveys the rapidly-changingbroad sweep of events while maintaining the focus on the central government's position within the separation of powers. Then the chapters are organized thematically, examining in turn the ever-changing structureof the executive branch, the internal organization of the Council/Cabinet of Ministers,Cabinet-levelbodies and staffservice.The empirical chapters are based on a scrupulous study of...
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".