Ethnic mobilization in post-Soviet Georgia: the case of the Yezidi-Kurds

'The aim of this article is to examine the failure of the Yezidi-Kurdish minority to attain a high level of ethnic mobilization in order to protect its political and cultural interests after the fall of the USSR and the creation of an independent Georgia in 1991. This inability has intensified the threat of the complete cultural, religious, and linguistic assimilation of the Yezidi-Kurds into the wider Georgian society, instead of allowing the minority to achieve healthy integration into society and the preservation of its ethnic identity. The author argues that the convergence of three sets of factors best explains the present tenuous position of the minority. First, structural changes affected the ability of minority leaders to gather sufficient human and financial resources necessary for mobilization. Secondly, problems in determining a unified identity as well as conflicts between minority elites prevented the consolidation of the ethnic group and limited its organizational capacity. Lastly, Georgian state policies and larger societal trends have subtly contributed to the dismantling of certain core components of the Yezidi-Kurdish ethnic identity, thereby accelerating the process of assimilation. This article concludes with a discussion of the prospects of the Yezidi-Kurdish community in Georgia, arguing that only efforts to reunite the minority and cooperate with existing minority civil society structures will prevent the effective disappearance of the group in this country.' (author's abstract

Renting Elected Office: Why Businesspeople Become Politicians in Russia

Why do some businesspeople run for political office, while others do not? Sending directors into elected office is one of the most powerful but also resource-intensive ways firms can influence policymaking. Although legislative bodies are populated with businesspeople in countries worldwide, we know little about which firms decide to invest in this unique type of nonmarket strategy. In response, I argue that businesspeople run for elected office when (1) they cannot trust that the politicians they lobby will represent their interests and (2) their firms have the resources available to contest elections. My theory predicts the probability of politician shirking (reneging on their promises) depends on whether rival firms have representatives in parliament and political parties are capable of enforcing informal quid pro quo agreements. Evidence to test my arguments comes from an original dataset of 8,829 firms connected to candidates to regional legislatures in Russia from 2004-2011. I find that both greater oligopolistic competition and weaker political parties incentivize businessperson candidacy, while the ability to cover campaign costs depends on the level of voter income and firm size. Do firms with directors holding elected political office then benefit from political connections? Using the same dataset but restricting the analysis to elections in single-member districts, I next employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of gaining political ties, comparing outcomes of firms that are directed by candidates who either won or lost close elections to regional legislatures. I first find that a connection to a winning politician can increase revenue by roughly 60% and profit margins by 15% over their time in office. I then test between different mechanisms potentially explaining the results, finding that connected firms improve their performance by gaining access to bureaucrats and reducing information costs, and not by signaling legitimacy to financiers. Finally, winning a parliamentary seat is more valuable for firms where democratization is greater, but less valuable when firms face acute sector-level competition. This finding suggests that the intensity of economic rivalry, rather than the quality of political institutions, best explains the decision to send a director into public office

Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness

Bureaucrats implement policy. How important are they for a state’s productivity? And do the tradeoffs between policies depend on their effectiveness? Using data on 16 million public purchases in Russia, we show that 39 percent of the variation in prices paid for narrowly defined items is due to the individual bureaucrats and organizations who manage procurement. Low-price buyers also display higher spending quality. Theory suggests that such differences in effectiveness can be pivotal for policy design. To illustrate, we show that a common one—bid preferences for domestic suppliers—substantially improves procurement performance, but only when implemented by ineffective bureaucrats

Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness, and Consequences for Policy Design

How much of the variation in state effectiveness is due to the individuals and organizations responsible for implementing policy? We investigate this question and its implications for policy design in the context of public procurement, using a text-based product classification method to measure bureaucratic output. We show that effective procurers lower bid preparation/submission costs, and that 60% of within-product purchase-price variation across 16 million purchases in Russia in 2011-2015 is due to the bureaucrats and organizations administering procurement processes. This has dramatic policy consequences. To illustrate these, we study a ubiquitous procurement policy: bid preferences for favored firms (here domestic manufacturers). The policy decreases overall entry and increases prices when procurers are effective, but has the opposite impact with ineffective procurers, as predicted by a simple endogenous-entry model of procurement. Our results imply that the state’s often overlooked bureaucratic tier is critical for effectiveness and the make-up of optimal policies

Staatsdumawahlen auf der Krim

Wenig überraschend hat die Partei Einiges Russland die ersten auf der Krim abgehaltenen Dumawahlen seit über hundert Jahren gewonnen. Doch eine anhaltende Unzufriedenheit mit seiner Führungsqualität in Städten wie Sewastopol könnte Russlands Fähigkeit untergraben, eine Linie zu entwickeln, mit der die neue politische Landschaft auf der Krim dauerhaft in den Griff zu bekommen ist