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The Russian environmental movement presents several puzzles to scholars interested in the development of civil society in post-Soviet Russia. Although environmental issues mobilized thousands of citizens during the perestroika era and environmental conditions in Russia remain dire, environmental protest has declined. In spite of the decline in protest events, however, the number of Russian environmental organizations increased steadily during the 1990s. The overall number of environmental organizations, their geographical dispersal throughout Russia, and their increasing professionalism all seem to signify the development of a vibrant sector within civil society. The mere creation of NGOs is not a measure of civil society development, however. This paper adopts two strategies for assessing Russian environmentalists? contribution to civil society. First, informed by Western theories of civil society development, the paper asks whether Russian environmental organizations are able to act as intermediaries between state and society. Then, in an effort to pinpoint unique features of the country?s social transformation, the paper uses interview data from 84 green organizations located in five Russian regions to explore the goals and activities of environmentalists and to ask how green activists relate to state and societal actors. A close examination of the Russian environmental movement reveals that green organizations have a mixed record of effectiveness in acting as intermediaries. They have struggled to present policy alternatives and monitor the government while largely failing to mobilize the population and encountering hostility from government officials. Yet a narrow assessment of environmental organizations? relative strength or weakness along these criteria overlooks an increasingly diverse sector of green activism. In fact we see different types of organizations emerging from within the environmental movement, broadly related their leaders? professional backgrounds. Environmental leaders influence the organizations? activities, strategies, and partners, and these choices have different consequences for how civil society develops. A blanket charge of ineffectiveness also obscures the way in which the Soviet legacy continues to affect the development of the green movement, both as an enabling and constraining factor. Environmentalists ?recycle? norms, institutions and networks from the Soviet era, thereby identifying a useable past on which to base social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By anyone?s measure, soldiers? rights organizations are a healthy and strong component of contemporary Russian civil society. Soldiers? rights groups, including the famous soldiers? mothers, developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a response to brutality in the Soviet army. This paper examines how the networks and activities of soldiers? rights organizations in Russia have developed and flourished under formally democratic institutions and through acquaintance with transnational actors. It asks why the soldiers? mothers? organizations in particular are so popular and respected in Russia when other soldiers? rights groups are marginalized, and answers that the soldiers? mothers frame their goals in terms of universal norms that citizens embrace, while other soldiers? rights groups frame their demands using an unaccepted antimilitarist lens. The paper also generates hypotheses from this case about how well Western theory and experience regarding civil society in democratization applies in the Russian context. The paper is based on an interview study of soldiers? rights groups and other nongovernmental organizations that took place in five Russian cities between 1999 and 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has focused attention on the diversity and complexity of civil-social life in Russia and post-communist Europe, undermining normative and 'communist-legacy' explanations of the weakness of civil society in that region, and underlining the need for theory-building that is both generalizable and sensitive to the specifics of each individual case. This paper attempts to take another step in that direction, exploring how the ways in which elites in semi-authoritarian regimes compete for power - and the social meaning of the power they are competing for - shape the development of civil society. Examining elements of civil society, the paper presents evidence from extensive field research of key variations in the relationship between civic activism and power and argues that these variations can be traced back to crucial differences in the competitive incentives political elites in each context. Specifically, the prospects for civil society appear better when elites - even closed, corrupt and authoritarian elites - are forced to engage one way or another with society at large. The paper will argue that elite-led state-society engagement, regardless of its nature, is essential to building the framework on which citizens construct notions of justice and right, while disengagement and elite autonomy significantly impede the development of civic identities. Indeed, the evidence in comparative perspective suggests that civil society may do better when it is repressed than when it is simply ignored. This, then, points to the disengaged nature of the contemporary Russian regime, rather than its authoritarianism, as a major explanatory factor in the weakness of civil society in that country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a political context where the national government is less and less tolerant of independent NGOs, and autonomous NGOs find themselves with fewer and fewer routes of dialogue in federal government policy processes, it has become essential for NGOs to be able to work in ways that attract Russian citizens based on their real problems and concerns. Literature on foreign assistance to NGOs has frequently argued that foreign assistance removes any incentive for NGOs to work with their constituencies in society, but instead encourages them to answer only to foreign donors. With few exceptions, NGOs remain largely unknown and unsuccessful in their efforts to build public support. This paper, based on interview-based field research spanning the years 1998-2005, weighs several types of explanations for the extraordinary weakness of Russian NGOs: (1) failures on the part of donors in their techniques and strategies; (2) enduring characteristics of Russian economic conditions and social attitudes that constrain NGOs' development; and (3) new trends under the Putin regime, which take advantage of such enduring characteristics. While foreign donors can be blamed in part for the weak NGO sector, domestic factors play a much larger role and the two spheres interact with one another to exacerbate each other's weaknesses. The paper makes several suggestions of ways in which foreign donors can improve their NGO development programs. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the direct engagement of civil society organizations and law enforcement in Russia in joint efforts to improve the performance and change the norms and values of state officials involved in administering justice. I describe a causal mechanism generally neglected in the burgeoning literature on national and transnational civil society, specifically how non-governmental organizations can work from the bottom up, and from the inside out, to try to strengthen the rule of law and ultimately democracy. I present three cases studies of NGO-law enforcement cooperation on rule of law reform. Although these projects suffer from some common pathologies of civil society work in Russia, they remain important, not least because of the presence of ?uncivil society? groups who also are trying to influence the norms and beliefs of state law enforcement officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the civil society and authoritarianism in Russia. It presents an overview of the political participation conceptualization and its causal role in the survival of democracy in the country. Moreover, it presents the factors that contribute to frail party system and the paucity of its civil society.

Despite enjoying a relatively high level of economic development and other apparent advantages, democratization was quickly reversed in Russia. In contrast, in Indonesia, which has a much lower level of economic development as well as myriad other liabilities, open government is surviving and even thriving. This paper will investigate the causes for this divergence in Russia and Indonesia, which, along with Brazil, are the largest and most socially heterogeneous of all countries that participated in the "third wave" of democratization. We hypothesize that high levels of public support for democracy, confidence in state institutions, and the strength of autonomous political associations in Indonesia, and the weakness of these variables in Russia, help explain the success of democratization in the former and the failure of it in the latter. This argument is formed by comparing several indicators in Indonesia, Russia, and other third-wave democratizers using data from the World Values Survey as well as published results from Keio University's Research Survey of Political Society in a Multi-cultural and Pluri-generational World, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) National Public Opinion Surveys in Indonesia, the Asian Barometer, and the Russian National Election Study (RNES). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the development and strength of civil society in Russia is presented. It offers a testable model of how certain choices made by political elites may impact the development of civil society. It identifies the causal mechanisms behind what has become known as the resource curse.

The article examines the hurdles faced by nongovernmental organizations (NGO) in their efforts to promote reform in Russia since 1991 that facilitate the development of a mature civil society. A historical survey of civil society and its relationship to environmental activism in Russia is presented. Two approaches to understanding the intricacies of Russian civil society are also discussed.

The article proposes a general framework of the normative orientations of national governments towards democracy in semi-democratic regimes and the different international mechanisms that support domestic civil society actors who express dissent or try to promote democratic processes and civil liberties focusing on the case of Russia. It discusses the several types of international mechanisms that transnational actors can adopt to support the existence of an active civil society. It relates the characteristics of different political regimes.

Political mobilization of business forces in the post-communist world has crucialimplications for economic development and civil society. The emergence of strongcross-sectoral business associations during Putin's presidency challenges theprevailing view of Russia's political economy as an informal, particularistic state-business exchange. At the theoretical level, collective action by socio-economicgroups is linked to severe principal-agent dilemmas common to many ex-socialistbureaucracies. Given institutionally incoherent state structures, the state as principalfacilitates collective action by business actors to create a parallel, non-state platformfor policy formation and implementation. Such a dynamic of ''debilitated dirigisme''should be understood in the comparative contexts of business mobilization in LatinAmerica, Asia, and the advanced industrialized world. The argument developedhere stands in contrast to two conventional approaches to business mobilization,''threat theory,'' in which firms organize to resist various anti-capitalist forces, and''political entrepreneurship theory,'' which holds that business is the passive objectof mobilization by the state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]