Come May, Vladimir Putin is to pay a visit to China, where a number of consequential agreements will be signed. To be sure, this visit will have a profound impact on Russia's development in the years to come. If Putin decides to reorient its policy towards the East, there is little hope that Russian economy will modernize. Whereas the European Union is currently Russia's top economic partner, China plays a second role in trade mainly importing Siberian mineral resources. Given the...
... 2000s, this theoretical school has argued that political change begins with a split between "hard-liners" and "soft-liners" within an authoritarian regime. Though analytically rigorous (hence the widespread use of this framework by political economy scholars), "transitology" does not always fit into political scenarios we may witness these days. In the recent decade, a new kind of literature on transitions emerged, this time with foci on external actors and indigenous ...
In early 2011, the world witnessed a hitherto unseen and largely unexpected course of events in the Middle East. Following the eruption of protests ignited by Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunis, the entrenched dictatorships of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen collapsed in domino fashion. Whereas Tunisia and Libya have made considerable progress in institution-building following the fall of their respective dictatorships, political transitions in Yemen and Egypt by and large failed...
