NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are happy to invite you to our joint meeting of the Research Seminar on Diversity and Development and HSE Seminar on Political Economy.
Ekaterina Paystyan (CEU) presents her paper "A treaty for the rich and politically loyal? The political economy of center-regional treaties in Yeltsin’s Russia".
Registration is open until noon May 30.
Abstract:
The paper studies the factors accounting for the signing of a bilateral treaty with Moscow between 1994 and 1998. Combining actor-centered and institutional accounts, it examines an interplay of such factors as demanding sovereignty, having an elected executive, voting for Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential election, and having a donor status. Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) reveals two combinations of factors sufficient for signing a treaty. They are voting for Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential election and being a donor region or not having an elected executive and voting for Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential election. These results suggest that at the late stage of the treaty signing process Yeltsin’s strategy of ‘executive bilateralism’ led to the formation of a broad coalition with both democratic and authoritarian subnational leaders. In the short run, this strategy allowed Yeltsin to win the 1996 presidential elections, yet in the long term, it had contributed to the emergence of authoritarian federalism in Russia in the 2000s.