Leadership Selection and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia (1983) examines the system of nomenklatura, the semi-secret network of quasi-bureaucratic rules and personal relationships through which careers in Soviet politics were managed. Other Communist countries took the USSR as their prototype and their patronage relationship systems are included in this study.

Leadership Selection and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia (1983) examines the system of nomenklatura, the semi-secret network of quasi-bureaucratic rules and personal relationships through which careers in Soviet politics were managed. Other Communist countries took the USSR as their prototype and their patronage relationship systems are included in this study.

Kazakhstan is the largest state in Central Asia. Rich in oil, gas and other natural resources and sandwiched between China and Russia it occupies a key geopolitical position, the importance of which was further heightened following the attacks of 9/11 and subsequent wars in the wider Middle East. But Kazakhstan was born by default, gaining independence only reluctantly as the Soviet Union collapsed. Its political elite, facing complex tasks of state-building, also lacked a monoethnic base on which to build its legitimacy. Based on original material and extensive interviews in the capital and three of the country's regions, the book places the elite in the country's broader institutional and historical context, analysing their identity, behaviour and how they gained and secured power in the early independence years. Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite is essential reading for all those interested in the history, politics and international relations of this fascinating country.

Blending first hand accounts of grassroots politics with an original theory of social relations under communism, this 1997 book seeks to explain one of the seminal events of this century: the rebirth of politics in Russia amid the collapse of the USSR. The authors trace the process from the pre-political period of dissident activity, through perestroika and the appearance of political groups and publications, elections, the formation of political parties and mass movements, counter-revolution and coup d'état, the victory of democratic forces and the organization of a Russian state; to the struggle of power in the post-communist epoch, the violent end of the first republic and the contentious relations engulfing its successor. By focusing on the popular forces which accomplished Russia's political rebirth, rather than the reforms of the Soviet establishment, this book offers an original perspective on this critical period.

Gorbachev at the Helm (1987) analyses the policy decisions taken at the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February–March 1986, declared at the time by the Soviet government as a major turning point in Soviet history. It considers the importance of the changes for a number of policy areas, and from a variety of perspectives. The authors examine the degree to which the policy initiatives and associated personnel changes brought about by Gorbachev in certain key areas – domestic politics, general economic policy and administration, agriculture, ideology and foreign policy – constitute substantial innovations.

This book examines the course of official criticism of republican leaderships in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from Stalin's death until the collapse of central control in the late 1980s. It focuses upon five republics, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belorussia. The extraordinary power of the central leadership to replace particular republican leaders is contrasted with the continuing dominance of elite politics in these republics by local cliques with substantial and increasing autonomy from Moscow.

State failure is a central challenge to international peace and security in the post-Cold War era. Yet theorizing on the causes of state failure remains surprisingly limited. In State Erosion, Lawrence P. Markowitz draws on his extensive fieldwork in two Central Asian republics—Tajikistan, where state institutions fragmented into a five-year civil war from 1992 through 1997, and Uzbekistan, which constructed one of the largest state security apparatuses in post-Soviet Eurasia—to advance a theory of state failure focused on unlootable resources, rent seeking, and unruly elites. In Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other countries with low capital mobility—where resources cannot be extracted, concealed, or transported to market without state intervention—local elites may control resources, but they depend on patrons to convert their resources into rents. Markowitz argues that different rent-seeking opportunities either promote the cooptation of local elites to the regime or incite competition over rents, which in turn lead to either cohesion or fragmentation. Markowitz distinguishes between weak states and failed states, challenges the assumption that state failure in a country begins at the center and radiates outward, and expands the “resource curse” argument to include cash crop economies, where mechanisms of state failure differ from those involved in fossil fuels and minerals. Broadening his argument to weak states in the Middle East (Syria and Lebanon) and Africa (Zimbabwe and Somalia), Markowitz shows how the distinct patterns of state failure in weak states with immobile capital can inform our understanding of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform.

By the end of the 2000s Russia had become an increasingly authoritarian state, which was characterised by the following features: outrageously unfair and fraudulent elections, the existence of weak and impotent political parties, a heavily censored (often self-censored) media, weak rubber-stamping legislatures at the national and sub-national levels, politically subordinated courts, the arbitrary use of the economic powers of the state, and widespread corruption. However, this picture would be incomplete without taking into account the sub-national dimension of these subversive institutions and practices across the regions of the Russian Federation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, sub-national political developments in Russia became highly diversified and the political map of Russia’s regions became multi-faceted. The period of 2000s demonstrated a drive on the part of the Kremlin to re-centralise politics and governance to the demise of newly-emerging democratic institutions at both the national and sub-national levels. Yet, federalism and regionalism remain key elements of the research agenda in Russian politics, and the overall political map of Russia’s regions is far from being monotonic. Rather, it is similar to a complex multi-piece puzzle, which can only be put together through skilful crafting. The 12 chapters in this collection are oriented towards the generation of more theoretically and empirically solid inferences and provide critical evaluations of the multiple deficiencies in Russia’s sub-national authoritarianism, including: principal-agent problems in the relations between the layers of the ’power vertical’, unresolved issues of regime legitimacy that have resulted from manipulative electoral practices, and the inefficient performance of regional and local governments. The volume brings together a team of international experts on Russian regional politics which includes top scholars from Britain, Canada, Russia and the USA.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1991 shed entirely new light on the character of their political systems. There is now a need to re-examine many of the standard interpretations of Soviet and Yugoslav politics. This book is a comparative study of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union - as multinational, federal communist states - and the reaction of European and US foreign policy to the parallel collapses of these nations. The authors describe the structural similarities in the destabilization of the two countries, providing great insight into the demise of both.