Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Military Conflict In Ukraine: Personality Profiles Of The Principals – Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, And Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Aubrey Immelman, Christ’L De Landtsheer, Elise Vomacka, Abby Goff

Psychology Faculty Publications

Panel Summary

“Military Conflict in Ukraine: Personality Profiles of the Principals – Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy” was a panel presentation at the 46th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology in Montréal, Québec, Canada, July 9–11, 2023.

Following an overview of the conceptual and methodological framework that informed their personality-in-politics inquiry, panelists presented the personality profiles of three national leaders central to the current military conflict in Ukraine: Russian president Vladimir Putin, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Presentation 1

“Psychodiagnostic Meta-Analysis: A Psychodiagnostically Relevant Conceptualization and Methodology for Assessing Personality …

Post-Conflict Reconciliation In Ukraine, Elena Baylis

Articles

Reconciliation mechanisms should be a core component of transitional justice in Ukraine. The nature of this conflict as a war justified by claims about history, identity, and legitimacy suggests that there will be a need for post-war reconciliation initiatives. Such reconciliation measures would be intended to enable Ukraine’s Russian, Ukrainian, and other communities to live together constructively within the same state. The goals of social reconciliation also converge with Ukraine’s long-term, political aims vis-à-vis both Russia and the European Union. This paper addresses three types of reconciliation measures that are important for post-conflict Ukraine. Instrumental mechanisms to engage post-conflict social …

Recent U.S. And International Assessment Of Baltic Security Developments, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper is to analyse Baltic security developments from U.S. government and military resources, scholarly journal articles, and multinational public policy research institute assessments. METHODS: The aim is to analyse the content and rhetoric within these resources to learn how those producing these materials view Baltic security developments and their viewpoints on how the U.S. and its allies should respond to these developments focusing on increasing Russian regional assertiveness. RESULTS: The author provides interpretations of Baltic security developments, Russian Baltic policy, and U.S. and NATO responses to these developments in materials produced by U.S. civilian and …

The Baltics And Ukraine: Geopolitical Hotspots, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides detailed historical overview and contemporary analysis on why the Baltics and Ukraine are historical and remain contemporary geopolitical hotspots. Provides analysis of cultural economic, environmental, and security factors influencing long-standing contentiousness over these regions. Places emphasis on how Russian behavior and policies influence this contentiousness. Concludes by noting that differences between the U.S. and its allies and conflicts within the U.S. Government may limit the ability of the U.S. to effectively respond to events in these disputed regions.

Quiet River, Heavy Waters: Un-Silencing Narratives Of Social-Environmental Inequalities In The Cradle Of Soviet Plutonium, Rosibel Roman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In December 1948, the Soviet Union’s first plutonium production facility, Mayak Production Association (PO Mayak), began operation in the Southern Urals region of Russia, at the western edges of Siberia, near the restricted city of Chelyabinsk-40, known in the present day as Ozyorsk. Since then, rural communities located downstream from PO Mayak have experienced health, economic, ecological and social impacts of contamination from high-level radioactive wastes released by the facility into the Techa River and its surrounding ecosystem. My research, drawing from archival research conducted in Russia and the United States, as well as secondary sources in English and Russian, …

Mackinder And The Arctic's Emerging Geopolitics: Recommendations For The U.S. And Its Nato Allies, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This presentation shows how Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) described Canada and the Arctic region in his geopolitical writings. It goes on to stress how the Arctic is becoming increasingly important in international geopolitical policymaking due to its significant oil and natural gas resources, how warming temperatures are increasing international access to its waters, and the how countries as diverse as Canada, China, Russia, and the U.S. see the Arctic region in their strategic policymaking. It concludes by stressing that the Arctic can no longer be viewed as a region immune from international conflict and presents recommendations for the U.S. and its …

Can Maternity Benefits Have Long-Term Effects On Childbearing? Evidence From Soviet Russia, Olga Malkova

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper quantifies the effects of Russia’s 1981 expansion in maternity benefits on completed childbearing. The program provided one year of partially paid parental leave and a small cash transfer upon a child’s birth. I exploit the program’s two-stage implementation and find evidence that women had more children as a result of the program. Fertility rates rose immediately by 8.2% over twelve months. The increase in fertility rates not only persisted for the ten-year duration of the program, but it reflected large increases in higher-order births to older women who already had children before the program started.

International Energy Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Overview of international energy geopolitical trends. Emphasizes the importance of the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, East China Sea, Russia, and the Arctic to U.S. and international economic and strategic developments. Stresses the continuing importance of fossil fuels in domestic and international energy consumption, the variety of energy sources being used by various global regions, the potential for military conflict over access to natural resources, and how emerging energy leaders will determine global energy, environmental, and international security developments.

Russia's Islam: Discourse On Identity, Politics, And Security, Simona E. Merati

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the long history of Muslims in Russia, most scholarly and political literatures on Russia’s Islam still narrowly interpret Muslim-Slavs relations in an ethnic-religious oppositional framework.

In my work, I examine Russia’s discourse on Islam to argue that, in fact, the role of Islam in post-Soviet Russia is complex. Drawing from direct sources from academic, state, journalistic, and underground circles, often neglected by Western commentators, I identify ideational patterns in conceptualizations of Islam and reconstruct relational networks among authors. To explain complex intertextual relations within specific contexts, I utilize an analytically eclectic method that appropriately combines theories from different paradigms …

Assassination Of Boris Nemtsov, Mark Mccarthy

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Understanding the death of Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia."

Posting about the assassination of Boris Nemtsov from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/the-assassination-of-boris-nemtsov

War, Fields, And Competing Economies Of Death. Lessons From The Blockade Of Leningrad, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

War can create a massive amount of death while also straining the capacity of states and civilians to cope with disposing of the dead. This paper argues that such moments exacerbate contradictions between three fields and “economies” (logics of interaction and exchange) – a political, market, and moral economy of disposal – in which order and control, commodification and opportunism, and dignity are core logics. Each logic and economy, operating in its own field, provides an interpretation of the dead that emerges from field logics of normal organization, status, and meanings of subjects (as legal entities, partners in negotiation, and …

Political Culture Of Post-Soviet Economic Change: The Case Of Financial-Industrial Groups, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Beneath the seeming chaos and conflict of Russia's post-socialist experience were structured dynamics of contentious reconstruction of fields (collective relations of power and culture institutionalized as authority and definitions of "normal"). This essay argues that the Russian experience was driven in no small part by contention over remaking core meanings and authority of field relations, practices, and boundaries. Contention over field reconstruction emerged as three groups' interests and taken-for granted meanings of normality collided: those of Soviet-era managers, a new class of financial entrepreneurs and elites, and state elites and officials. Post-socialism has been a story of competing elite culture …

Russia’S Energy Diplomacy In The Baltic States, Zachary Hanson

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, or, “The Baltic States,” are unique in that they are the first and only former Soviet Republics to join institutions aligned with the West, joining both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004. This move was a reflection of clashing cultural and political values that had been present before their integration into the Soviet Union during the Second World War as a result of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Additionally, after years of Soviet repression, the Baltic States developed a distinctly anti-Russian stance, as Russia was the most dominant country …

Plucky Little Russia: Misreading The Georgian War Through The Distorting Lens Of Aggression, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

One might expect massed armor crossing an international frontier to constitute the paradigmatic example of aggression — a case perfectly fit to analyze with the rules of jus ad bellum — and in the first flush and shock of the Georgian War in 2008, this is exactly how Western leaders described Russia’s actions. Yet that August, a constellation of circumstances combined to produce an anomalous outcome: an international war without any aggressor or any wrongful violation of territorial integrity. In theory — in doctrine — this is not supposed to happen.

The key to this puzzle is the special regime …

Russia’S International Adoption Policies: Realities Of The Soviet Happy Childhood Myth, Hannah L. Freeman

Honors Projects

Russia’s International Adoption Policies: Realities of the Soviet Happy Childhood Myth, focuses on dispelling the Soviet myth of happy childhood through revealing the numerous groups of children who were systematically left out of this upbringing. The paper focuses in particular on the plight of orphans in the USSR and continues to follow their childhood experience through investigating the intercountry adoption policies between the U.S. and Russia. My research aims to dispel the laws and regulations that are currently in place within the Russian orphanages and adoption system through real life experience including personal interviews that were conducted with American parents …

A State Within A State: The Case Of Chechnya, Hanna Zimnitskaya

International Studies Honors Projects

After the USSR's dissolution, Russia struggled to reassert its Great Power status by enhancing its internal might and territorial cohesion. Futile military campaigns against the rebellious Chechen people pushed the Kremlin to strike a bargain with an unorthodox warlord: Ramzan Kadyrov, who was to become a faithful ally, while in return Chechnya received an unprecedented level of autonomy. This thesis examines the dynamics of Kadyrov's ascent to power, specifically the Islamization of public space and the monopolization of Chechen security forces, and concludes that, in the long run, the unwavering consolidation of his rule menaces Russia's re-emerging 'greatness'.

Geopolitics Of The Kaliningrad Exclave And Enclave: Russian And Eu Perspectives, Alexander Diener, Joshua Hagen

Geography Faculty Research

Two U.S. political geographers examine a range of geopolitical issues associated with the shifting sovereignty of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast (a part of the former German province of East Prussia) during the 20th century, as well as the region's evolving geopolitical status as a consequence of the European Union's enlargement to embrace Poland and Lithuania. They argue that Kaliningrad today can be considered a "double" borderland, situated simultaneously on the European Union's border with Russia as well as physically separated from Russia, its home country, by the surrounding land boundaries of EU states. Although technically neither an exclave nor an enclave, …

An Overview Of The Low-Cost Carrier Model In The Russian Market, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna L. Rhoades

Publications

This study provides an overview of the low-cost carrier (LCC) model in the Russian market. The LCC model seeks to achieve a competitive advantage through the reduction of operating costs, below the traditional airline model. Since Russia is an emerging and developing economy, airlines face a high level of uncertainty. Despite the fact that the Russian aviation market is dominated by a few large carriers, Russian lowcost airlines such as SkyExpress and Avianova have been growing rapidly since starting their operations. While Russian LCCs follow the traditional LCC model, some differences are apparent as a result of the specifics of …

Mass Privatisation And The Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: Is There Really A Relationship?, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We reexamine the recent, well-publicized claim that "rapid mass privatisation [of state-owned enterprises]...was a crucial determinant of differences in adult mortality trends in postcommunist countries" (Stuckler, King and McKee, 2009). Our analysis shows that the estimated correlation of privatization and mortality in country-level data is not robust to recomputing the mass-privatization measure, to assuming a short lag for economic policies to affect mortality, and to controlling for country-specific mortality trends. Further, in an analysis of the determinants of mortality in Russian regions, we find no evidence that privatization increased mortality during the early 1990s. Finally, we reanalyze the relationship between …

Russia And The Cis In 2008 : Axis Of Authoritarianism?, Charles E. Ziegler

Faculty Scholarship

Russia’s seamless presidential succession produced no major changes in domestic politics or foreign policy. Ties with Asia remained strong, though several key relationships—with China, Japan, and the Central Asian states—frayed under the impact of Russia’s military action in Georgia. Impressive economic performance in the first half of the year boosted Russian confidence as a great power, but its vulnerability to the global financial crisis together with the heavy-handed operation in the Caucasus undermined Moscow’s standing with both Asia and Europe by the end of the year.

Helping Hand Or Grabbing Hand? State Bureaucracy And Privatization Effectiveness, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive institutional environment? We explore these questions in a study of privatization in postcommunist Russia. Taking advantage of large regional variation in the size of public administrations, and employing a multilevel re-search design that controls for pre-privatization selection in the estimation of regional privatization effects, we examine the relationship between state bureaucracy and the impact …

Understanding The Contributions Of Reallocation To Productivity Growth: Lessons From A Comparative Firm-Level Analysis, J. David Brown, John S. Earle

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We analyze comprehensive manufacturing firm data to measure the contribution of interfirm employment reallocation to aggregate productivity growth during the socialist and reform periods in six transition economies. Modifying a standard decomposition technique to better reflect the role of firm entry, we find that reallocation rates and productivity contributions are very low under socialism, but they rise dramatically after reforms, and productivity contributions greatly exceed those observed in market economies. Early in transition, more reform is associated with larger contributions from reallocation, but later, and on average over the whole transition, this relationship is reversed. Though reallocation rates are larger …

Russia And The Cis In 2007 : Putin's Final Year?, Charles E. Ziegler

Faculty Scholarship

Russia in 2007 moved further away from a constitutional order governed by the rule of law as President Vladimir Putin's second term drew to a close and the country prepared for parliamentary and presidential elections. High oil and gas prices buoyed the economy, but little progress was made in addressing Russia's serious social problems. In foreign policy, confrontation with the West was balanced by excellent relations with most of Asia.

Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We analyze a model of wage delay in which strategic complementarity arises because each employer's costs of violating its contracts decrease with the arrears in its labor market. The model is estimated on panel data for workers and firms in Russia, facilitating identification through fixed effects for employees, employers, and local labor markets, and instrumental variables based on policy interventions. The estimated reaction function displays strongly positive neighborhood effects, and the estimated feedback loops - worker quits, effort, strikes, and legal penalties - imply that costs of wage delays are attenuated by neighborhood arrears. We also study a nonlinear case …

Nonstandard Forms And Measures Of Employment And Unemployment In Transition: A Comparative Study Of Estonia, Romania, And Russia, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Vladimir Gimpelson, Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, Hartmut Lehmann, Álmos Telegdy, Irina Vantu, Ruxandra Visan, Alexandru Voicu

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper looks behind the standard, publicly available labor force statistics relied upon in most studies of transition economy labor markets. We analyze microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard, boundary forms and alternative definitions of employment and unemployment. Our calculations show that measured rates are quite sensitive to definition, particularly in the treatment of household production (subsistence agriculture), unpaid family helpers, and discouraged workers, while the categories of part-time work and other forms of marginal attachment are still relatively unimportant. We find that tweaking the official definitions in apparently minor ways …

Does Privatization Hurt Workers? Lessons From Comprehensive Manufacturing Firm Panel Data In Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the effects of privatization on firm-level wages and employment in four transition economies. Applied to longitudinal data on manufacturing firms, our fixed effect and random trend models consistently fail to support workers' fears of job losses from privatization, and they never imply large negative effects on wages; only for domestic privatization in Hungary and Russia are small (3-5%) negative wage effects found. Privatization to foreign investors has positive estimated impacts on both employment and wages in all four countries. The negligible consequences of domestic privatization for workers result from effects on scale, productivity, and costs that are large …

The Productivity Effects Of Privatization: Longitudinal Estimates From Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper estimates the effect of privatization on multifactor productivity (MFP) using long panel data for nearly the universe of initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four economies. We exploit the key longitudinal feature of our data to measure and control for pre-privatization selection bias and to estimate long-run impacts. We find that the magnitudes of our estimates are robust to alternative functional forms, but sensitive to how we control for selection. Our preferred random growth models imply that majority privatization raises MFP about 15% in Romania, 8% in Hungary, and 2% in Ukraine, while in Russia it lowers it 3%. …

Do Government Sponsored Vocational Training Programs Help The Unemployed Find Jobs? Evidence From Russia, Anton Nivorozhkin, Eugenity Nivorozhkin

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The study estimates the employment effect of vocational training programs for the unemployed in urban Russia. The results of propensity score matching indicate that training programs had a non-negative overall effect on the program participants relative to non-participants.

Economic Reforms And Productivity-Enhancing Reallocation In The Post-Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

How do economic reforms affect resource reallocation processes and their contributions to productivity growth? This paper studies the consequences of enterprise privatization and liberalization of product markets, labour markets, and imports in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine. Analyzing interfirm reallocation of output, labour, capital, and an input index with annual industrial census data from 1985 to 2001, we find that Soviet Russia displayed low reallocation rates that bore little relationship to relative labour and multifactor productivity across firms. Since reforms began, resource flows have increased in both countries, and their contributions to aggregate productivity growth have become …

Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

What role do community norms play in the diffusion and persistence of new organizational practices? We explore this question through an examination of the widespread practice of wage arrears, the late and non-payment of wages, in Russia during the 1990s. Existing research on wage arrears most often examines this practice as a means of flexible wage adjustment under difficult economic conditions. We develop an alternative theory that explains wage arrears through their acceptance as a legitimate form of organizational behavior within local communities. Our empirical analysis finds some support for the neoclassical position that wage arrears reflect adjustment to negative …