Description
Book SynopsisCombining the approaches of three fields of scholarship - political science, law and Russian area- tudies - the author explores the foundations and future of the Russian Federation. Russia''s political elite have struggled to build an extraordinarily complex federal system, one that incorporates eighty-nine different units and scores of different ethnic groups, which sometimes harbor long histories of resentment against Russian imperial and Soviet legacies. This book examines the public debates, official documents and political deals that built Russia''s federal house on very unsteady foundations, often out of the ideological, conceptual and physical rubble of the ancien régime. One of the major goals of this book is, where appropriate, to bring together the insights of comparative law and comparative politics in the study of the development of Russia''s attempts to create - as its constitution states in the very first article - a ''Democratic, federal, rule-of-law state''
Trade Review"Dr. Jeffrey Kahn's admirable and thoroughly researched study offers invaluable materials and insights on what has been transpiring in the world of Russian federalism (and beyond) from the earliest Soviet days to the present, with particular emphasis and depth on the post-Soviet decade." William E. Butler, Michigan Law Review
"I have not seen a better account, or a more perceptive one, in any language." William E. Butler, Michigan Law Review
"Kahn's study is the best and most thoughtful account available of the early experience." William E. Butler, Michigan Law Review
Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. Federal Theory ; 3. Soviet 'Federalism' ; 4. Gorbachev's Federalism Problem ; 5. The Process of Federal Transition ; 6. Inter-Governmental Relations Under Yeltsin's New Federalism ; 7. Federal Effects on Transitions in Russia's Republics ; 8. The Federal Reforms of Vladimir Putin ; 9. Conclusion
