for many political observers, the collapse of the soviet :union: would lead to accelerate the process of democratization in all the remained countries from this event, especially russia. but very soon it was clear that the country is confronted with many critical obstacles in this way. the considerable weakness of the civil society and its institutions along with the legacy of centralized power...

t seems clear that Russia’s attempts at democratization and Westernization will not meet the expectations of Russia’s democratic reformers. As happened in previous eras of Westernization, only some elements of Western liberal democracy have taken root in Russian soil, the most important of them being competitive elections. Other fundamental elements of liberalism have not only failed to flouris...

Do democracies provide more public goods than autocracies? Clear answers to this question have been hampered by inconsistent, unreliable, or missing data. To address the shortcomings of self-reported government data, I propose a novel method to generate unbiased estimates of the provision of electrical infrastructure across the entire globe using satellite imagery of nighttime lights. After dem...

Following the demise of Soviet-type regimes most countries of postcommunist Inner Asia either experienced initial political openings followed by reversion to authoritarianism or moved directly from one type of harsh authoritarianism to another. Mongolia is exceptional. The extent of political opening there during the 1990s far exceeded anything seen in any neighboring country and the gains of t...

The article analyzes the changes that since the mid-1990s have transformed journalistic practices in Brazil's most powerful media institution. More especially, the aim is to investigate the transformation of TV Globo's News Division and situate this process in relation to the democratization of Brazilian politics and society. Based on content analysis of Jornal Nacional, TV Globo's main newscas...