Linda J. Cook

The passport society : controlling movement in Russia and the USSR

Passports under the Tsars early Bolshevik policies Stalins passport system long-standing social problems the bureaucratic morass liberalization after communism regional dimensions.

NGOs and Social Policy-Making in Russia's Regions

Interviews with NGO leaders reveal that dialogue with authorities is ongoing, but signs of NGOs’ systematic influence on regional social policy are few.

Negotiating Welfare in Postcommunist States

Welfare states everywhere have been under pressure to retrench and restructure, to reduce public expenditures, and to adopt market-conforming welfare models. Such pressures have been especially intense in postcommunist East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. As these countries moved into market transition and recession dur ing the early 1990s, their inherited systems of broad, basic social provision became financially unsustainable and ineffective. In response, most governments initiated reform projects based on a liberal paradigm of reduced subsidies and entitlements and social sector privatization, projects that would move the balance in welfare provision away from the state and far toward the market. Yet the patterns of retrenchment and lib eralization in postcommunist states diverged in puzzling ways. In Russia the governments liberalizing welfare reform project was blocked for most of the 1990s. Inherited statist welfare programs and structures were kept in place amidst ongoing economic decline. Liberal restructuring proceeded only at the end of the 1990s, when it coincided with economic recovery. The transitional democracy in Poland increased welfare expenditures as its economy declined and liberalized welfare struc tures gradually over the decade. The authoritarian post-Soviet regime in Kazakhstan implemented deep expenditure cuts and radical liberalization. By the end of the 1990s these three states had institutionalized distinct welfare models that differed in expendi ture patterns, public-private mixes, and measures of exclusion and state withdrawal. Why did postcommunist welfare states produce such divergent trajectories of change and outcomes from similar beginnings? Part of the answer lies in the differing intensity of downward economic pressures. While all postcommunist states experienced transitional recessions, East Central European states had much shallower downturns than the former Soviet states and recov ered sooner, allowing them to better maintain welfare provision. But economic explana tions are limited in accounting for patterns of change. Postcommunist states behaved differently with regard to welfare expenditures even in the depths of recession: Poland increased overall welfare effort (that is, social expenditures as percent of GDP); Russia sustained previous levels; and Kazakhstan cut. Nor did the extent and timing of their movement toward liberalization correlate with economic and fiscal pressures. Poland introduced liberalizing structural reforms sooner than Russia despite better economic and fiscal conditions. Kazakhstan liberalized more rapidly and deeply than Russia while following a similar economic trajectory. Moreover, all three had substantially recovered

Labor Unions in Post-Communist Countries

Labor unions in post-communist Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic find it difficult to defend their members’ interests in the face of economic disruption and neo-liberal reform policies.

The Social Contract Revisited: Evidence from Communist and State Capitalist Economies

Abstract The social contract thesis explained stability in communist autocracies as a consequence of an implicit exchange between the regime and the populace: citizens remained quiescent and the regime provided them with secure jobs, social services, subsidised housing, and consumer goods. Our essay asks how well the social contract thesis applies in three different types of regimes. We review classic literature on the socialist social contract in light of newly available archival evidence on the Soviet Union. We turn then to reform-era China and Putin’s Russia, finding that these post-socialist regimes create distinctive ‘market social contracts’. Our work shows that communist and authoritarian leaders cater to the consumption needs of populations in a strategic effort to remain in office and highlights the centrality of mass cooptation for explaining durable authoritarianism.

The Carrot or the Stick? Constraints and Opportunities of Russia’s CSO Policy

This collection of essays is devoted to analysis of current trends in Russian civil society development after the recent changes in the state policy that both restricts and supports the activities of Russian civil society organisations (CSOs). Many of the essays in this collection were first presented at the international conference ‘“Between the Carrot and the Stick”: Emerging Needs and Forms for Non-State Actors including NGOs and Informal Organisations in Contemporary Russia’. The conference was organised by the Centre for Independent Social Research in collaboration with the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute (University of Helsinki), and took place in January 2016.1 The essays focus on CSOs and state–society relations in contemporary Russia. Nearly all are based on recent field research including interviews with CSO leaders, activists, and other actors connected with the sector. Overall, they paint a negative but nuanced picture of organisations confronting restrictive government legislation, particularly the so-called ‘Foreign Agents Law’ (Federal Law No. 121), which controls Russian CSOs that receive international funding and engage in political activity.2 The authors report damaging effects of the law on individual CSOs, including those in particular issue areas such as environmental and human rights organisations, and the sector as a whole. The essays discuss NGOs’ survival strategies in the face of these new restrictions, documenting an impressive range of strategies that reveal the resourcefulness and resilience of the sector. Contributors also address the Russian state’s efforts to engage ‘socially oriented’ NGOs (SONGOs) in social policy-making and the delivery of social services. Some contributors see these efforts as just another part of the state’s campaign to control CSOs. Others take the more nuanced view that the Russian state, while restricting CSOs, is at the same time building up SONGOs’ capabilities in order to improve the performance of the

Labor Relations in Russia: Moving to a "Market Social Contract"?

The paper analyzes contemporary labor relations in Russia as constituting a distinctive “market social contract.” Focusing on market and state policy, labor law, and tripartism, we show how the state has been balancing needs for “social stability” and labor market efficiency. To promote “stability” it protects employment security and prohibits collective protest; to promote efficiency it accommodates pressures for labor market flexibility by tolerating informality. Surveys conducted over the years 2007–2013 provide some evidence about behaviors, strategies, and attitudes of managers, workers, and state officials. The state has so far managed labor market tensions, but it has done so inefficiently. The current economic crisis demands new policy responses.