In this chapter we are addressing the numerous cases of government failures in countries with transit economies and weak democratic traditions when the state is called upon to provide “pure public goods” (defense, security, and justice). In other words, the subject matter of this chapter...

The voter - bureaucrat is locked into a situation of a conflict of interests: as a conscientious citizen, he or she should support optimal expenditure levels for providing certain public goods, but as a person whose wellbeing and career depend on the volume of expenditures for providing public...

In June 2013, the ruble was slightly devaluated with a view to increasing ruble budget revenues amid slow-down in economic growth. A.Ulyukayev was appointed a new Minister of Economic Development, replacing A. Belousov, which most probably means an attempt to observe moderation in government...

In July 2013, Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was sentenced to fi ve years in prison. It appears, however, that he would be allowed – on procedural grounds, since no appeal hearing has been held yet – to run for mayor in mayoral elections in Moscow on September 8, 2013. A...

In August, Victor Ishaev was dismissed from his post as Russia’s Minister for the Development of the Far East – his extravagantly costly approaches to solving the region’s problems without having made even a feeble attempt at setting any priorities, had finally infuriated both the RF...

In March 2014 Russia announced the accession of Crimea based on the results of the referendum held on 16 March 2014. In response the U.S. and EU introduced visa sanctions and a ban on the possession of assets in their jurisdictions for Russian officials (and in the U.S. this also extended to...

The situation in Ukraine ratcheted up sharply in April 2014 in the Dontesk and Lugansk Regions, where armed insurgents seized the regional administration buildings. Negotiations in Geneva between officials from Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union came to an agreement on...

The link between an introduction of the universal suffrage and the growth of government spending has been established in some literature (Meltzer, Richard, 1981, Aidt et al., 2006, Funk and Guthmann, 2006). In this article we try to identify a more detailed mechanism behind that link. So, we...

“Improvements” in the mechanisms of democracy for making decisions about providing taxpayer-financed public goods can lead the economy in the same direction as authoritarianism. Such a by-product may be insignificant, but, even if so, a tradition of abridging democracy, similarly to an...

The top news story of November was the indirect polemical dispute between Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, centered on the RF Investigative Committee’s attempt to restore at least one of its previous established powers – the right of investigators to open tax fraud cases without a request...