The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the aspects of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – ... more The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the aspects of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – the popular protests sprang in September 2011 in the New York City soon to spread to many other regions of the United States (at the moment of writing the protestors report to have at least 1,065 centers). The main question this paper deals with is whether the movement itself and the public discussion generated by it have a potential to advance political freedom in the modern American society, with political freedom understood in an Aristotelian tradition, that is essentially as a self-governance, that is as the participation in defining the political rules one is expected to obey.
Looking at the examples of the Gazprom’s gas import arrangements in the several East European cou... more Looking at the examples of the Gazprom’s gas import arrangements in the several East European countries, this paper suggests that the centrality of the intermediary companies’ role in them cannot be explained with purely economic or even political factors.
The data gathered in the course of this research confirms the assumptions developed on the base of modeling Putin’s Russia as a kleptocratic regime: in most cases, there are convincing evidence suggesting that the intermediation schemes created numerous opportunities for private individuals close to the government in Russia or its gas trade partner countries to benefit from the intermediation arrangements ultimately at the expense of Russian citizens' interests. Thus, the concept of a kleptocracy indeed provides us with important insights into understanding Putin regime’s policies, including those affecting international gas trade.
This paper represents an attempt to explore social sources of the geographically expressed politi... more This paper represents an attempt to explore social sources of the geographically expressed political opposition in Ukraine, paying closer attention to the character of identities that are being mobilized in the conflict. Specifically, I hypothesize that it is the confrontation of the two spatially manifested identity-complexes, roughly labeled here as the Ukrainian National and East-Slavic ones, that define the Ukrainian politics in the post-Soviet period. This paper tests the hypothesis with individual-level data from a nationally-representative survey conducted in 2009.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the aspects of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – ... more The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the aspects of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – the popular protests sprang in September 2011 in the New York City soon to spread to many other regions of the United States (at the moment of writing the protestors report to have at least 1,065 centers). The main question this paper deals with is whether the movement itself and the public discussion generated by it have a potential to advance political freedom in the modern American society, with political freedom understood in an Aristotelian tradition, that is essentially as a self-governance, that is as the participation in defining the political rules one is expected to obey.
Looking at the examples of the Gazprom’s gas import arrangements in the several East European cou... more Looking at the examples of the Gazprom’s gas import arrangements in the several East European countries, this paper suggests that the centrality of the intermediary companies’ role in them cannot be explained with purely economic or even political factors.
The data gathered in the course of this research confirms the assumptions developed on the base of modeling Putin’s Russia as a kleptocratic regime: in most cases, there are convincing evidence suggesting that the intermediation schemes created numerous opportunities for private individuals close to the government in Russia or its gas trade partner countries to benefit from the intermediation arrangements ultimately at the expense of Russian citizens' interests. Thus, the concept of a kleptocracy indeed provides us with important insights into understanding Putin regime’s policies, including those affecting international gas trade.
This paper represents an attempt to explore social sources of the geographically expressed politi... more This paper represents an attempt to explore social sources of the geographically expressed political opposition in Ukraine, paying closer attention to the character of identities that are being mobilized in the conflict. Specifically, I hypothesize that it is the confrontation of the two spatially manifested identity-complexes, roughly labeled here as the Ukrainian National and East-Slavic ones, that define the Ukrainian politics in the post-Soviet period. This paper tests the hypothesis with individual-level data from a nationally-representative survey conducted in 2009.
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Papers by Maria Semykoz
The data gathered in the course of this research confirms the assumptions developed on the base of modeling Putin’s Russia as a kleptocratic regime: in most cases, there are convincing evidence suggesting that the intermediation schemes created numerous opportunities for private individuals close to the government in Russia or its gas trade partner countries to benefit from the intermediation arrangements ultimately at the expense of Russian citizens' interests. Thus, the concept of a kleptocracy indeed provides us with important insights into understanding Putin regime’s policies, including those affecting international gas trade.
The data gathered in the course of this research confirms the assumptions developed on the base of modeling Putin’s Russia as a kleptocratic regime: in most cases, there are convincing evidence suggesting that the intermediation schemes created numerous opportunities for private individuals close to the government in Russia or its gas trade partner countries to benefit from the intermediation arrangements ultimately at the expense of Russian citizens' interests. Thus, the concept of a kleptocracy indeed provides us with important insights into understanding Putin regime’s policies, including those affecting international gas trade.