Description
Book SynopsisYou know just how serious a problem alcoholism has become for our country. Frankly speaking, it has taken on the proportions of a national disaster. So spoke Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 as the government launched its latest anti-alcohol campaign. Challenging the standard narrative of top-down implementation of policy, Anna Bailey's Politics under the Influence breaks new ground in the analysis of Russian alcoholism and the politics of the Putin regime.
The state is supposed to make policy in the national interest, to preserve the nation's health against the ravages inflicted by widespread alcohol abuse. In fact, Bailey shows, the Russian state is deeply divided, and policy is commonly a result of the competitive interactions of stakeholders with vested interests. Politics under the Influence turns a spotlight on the powerful vodka industry whose ties to Putin's political elite have grown in influence since 2009. She details how that lobby has used t
Trade Review
This is a well-constructed, detailed study of recent governmental action regarding alcohol in Russia with relevance for political scientists, public health researchers, historians, and policymakers. Bailey does an excellent job, using a vast array of sources woven together in convincing narratives, of bringing illumination to the "black box" of public policy construction under Putin.
* The Russian Review *
In this detailed analysis of the Russian state's ambivalent attitude toward vodka, Anna Bailey argues that excessive alcohol consumption has plagued Russian society for centuries.
* Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *
This is a well-researched, useful and practical analysis of a problem which has beset Russia for centuries: how to control the Russian love of alcohol—given its highly negative effect on public order and the country's demographic situation—without significantly endangering the income that it produces in the form of (paid) taxes that contribute to the country's economic and social development?
* Europe-Asia Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Contradictions of Alcohol Policy
1. Feeding the State: Vodka from Tsarism to Communism
2. Soviet Policy Doublethink
3. The Parasites Feed: State Capture under Yeltsin
4. Regaining State Control under Putin
5. The Judo Gang: Informal Networks and Perceptions of Power
6. An All-Powerful Regulator
7. Beer: The New Pretender on the Russian Alcohol Market
8. The Brewer's Nemesis in the Duma
9. "Vodka Is Our Enemy, but Who Said We're Afraid of Enemies?"
10. From Illegality to Demography: Alcohol Policy Paradigms
11. The New Antialcohol Network
12. Medveded and the Antialcohol Initiative
13. Alcohol Policy as Battleground: The 2011 Alcohol Law
14. The Campaign is Over, but the Battle Continues
Conclusion: What Alcohol Tells Us about Russian Politics
Appendix 1: Methodology and Research Methods
Appendix 2: List of Respondents and Statements in the Public Domain
Appendix 3: List of Interview Questions
Notes
Bibliography
