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Violations of rights, a weak Duma, political parties dominated by bureaucrats, and corrupt privatization are ordinarily taken as signs or even causes of the failure of democracy in Russia or at best as normal traits of electoral politics in a middle-income state. Yet all of these are natural consequences of introducing democracy in a country with the Russian electorate's distinctive recent experience of a loss of a third of the state's territory and half its population. In such a democracy only a centrist, not a liberal, strategy can block a return to authoritarianism, and such a strategy in Russia will subordinate rights to the task of privatization that a Duma weakened by ideological, demographic and geographic impediments to party development cannot conduct. Consequently what are taken as signs or causes of democratic failure in Russia are instead necessary effects of introducing democracy in Russia's special circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fearing that weak or poorly institutionalized party systems may undermine democratic consolidation, scholars have examined party systems in a myriad of contexts. The vast majority of these studies utilize aggregate measures of party system institutionalization to assess the relative merits of individual systems. While laudable, relying on aggregate measures may obscure the effects of the variation in party institutionalization in different systems. This article examines legislative politics in post-Communist Russia and Ukraine to determine whether variation in party institutionalization, even in weakly institutionalized party systems, has significant effects. The empirical results show that variation in party institutionalization creates variation in levels of parliamentary party discipline in both contexts. This raises the possibility that systemic level analyses of party system institutionalization are ignoring the effects of within-system variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Issues that are to be considered in the process of organizing full digital environment in Russian radiology departments were gathered and analyzed. Different specific features besides economical ones were found. Possible ways of overcoming problems, inconveniences and inconsistencies were proposed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Mixed-member electoral systems embrace two views of representation by electing some legislators in single-member district elections and others in a proportional representation election. This can potentially create a "mandate divide" in legislatures, because single-member district legislators have an incentive to embrace parochial issues and proportional representation legislators have an incentive to center on national issues. Previous studies of this question have only found limited evidence of its existence. The author argues that the level of party system institutionalization will fundamentally determine whether a mandate divide will exist in a mixed-member legislature. Using roll-call voting data from the Hungarian National Assembly, the Russian Duma, and the Ukrainian Rada, the author analyzes patterns of party discipline in each legislature. The empirical results show that a mandate divide only existed in the legislature with the most weakly institutionalized party system, the Russian Duma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]