Browsing by Subject "Russia"

This thesis examines how the recent discovery of massive oil reserves off the coast of Cuba has driven a resurgence of Cuban-Russian relations in the 21st century. The first chapter demonstrates how the Russian government came to conceptualize the export of hydrocarbons as integral to the nation's development. It also examines the internal situation in Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union to explain what initiated shifts in domestic policy that allowed for greater external investment. The second chapter discusses the effect of the discovery of these oil reserves, and how the Russians and the Cubans have come together over this issue against the backdrop of larger anti-American tendencies in Latin America. The first chapter relies more on secondary analyses of trends in both nations to help familiarize the reader with key concepts, such as the idea of Russia's energy weapon and Cuba's impetus for change. The second chapter heavily uses newspaper articles and speeches to demonstrate the visible shift in Russian attitude towards Cuba.

This thesis shows that the oil reserves have stimulated both countries to work closely together, though each has their respective reasons.

This study is a comparative historical analysis of the link between environmental activism and state-society relations in 20th century Russia and Mexico. It explores the three main currents of environmentalism that originated in these two countries under non-democratic political systems that originated in the social revolutions of 1910 (Mexico) and 1917 (Russia) and the roles that each current has played in the process of democratization that began in the 1980s. It is based on critical evaluation and synthesis of the following theoretical fields: collective action, social movements, political regime change and democratic transition. Scholarly literature and press sources are used to corroborate and evaluate findings from in-depth qualitative interviews with environmental activists, researchers, lawyers, and journalists as well as data from participant observation conducted by the author in Russia and in Mexico. The main findings of the study are two-fold. 1) Environmental activism affects social rather than political democratization. 2) The type of environmental activism that has the most significant impact on social democratization is social environmentalism - the current that emphasizes the synergy between the struggles for social justice and civil rights on the one hand and against environmental degradation on the other.

An abstract of a dissertation that examines different dimensions of legitimacy stemming from different sources, and how they condition the effects of each other. The traditional literature studies organizational legitimacy as a uni-dimensional phenomenon, however, there are multiple audiences with different systems of values that evaluate organizations and based on the fit with their values grant or withdraw legitimacy from the firm. This dissertation examines three different dimensions of legitimacy (i.e. social, market, and home country) and shows that they may substitute each other in affecting organizational outcomes. This is shown in a financial event study of additions and deletions from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, a qualitative study of the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the emerging market of Russia, and a large-scale quantitative analysis of M&A deals, where the acquirer comes from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS).

The Russian Federation emerged from the ruins of the USSR a diminished power, attempting to reconcile its imperial past with a new post-Cold War order. However, while the Kremlin may have lost a degree of global influence, Russia maintained the mantel of regional hegemon. Moscow was able to maintain this “privileged sphere of influence” through leveraging Russian diaspora communities–a decisive strategy that Russian leaders continued to refine and direct against the expansion of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Despite being the source of much focus in the foreign policy community in the twenty-first century, research around Russian diaspora communities tend to focus on the mechanics of why Russia projects influence through a diaspora population in a given country. However, the opportunity is often missed to explore how and why the diaspora itself can be co-opted by Russia in the first place. This is due to an under appraisal of how Russia developed and executed its diaspora policy in the 1990s and what Russia learned from this experience. By examining the diaspora policy development and actions of the Russian Federation in the former Soviet space during the 1990s, the West is better placed to understand the execution of Russian policy in the twenty-first century and develop defenses to it. Through a historical assessment of 1990 diaspora policy development and a case study analysis of Russian intervention in the 1990s, this thesis will also answer the contemporary policy question of how Russia can maintain a sphere of influence when it is once again weak due to its war in Ukraine, and examine the course Russia’s future military interventions will take. There are defenses to Russian diaspora policy that can be identified from historical successes and failures, which must inform Western deterrence measures.

This thesis examines how domestic violence is talked about both in the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union and by the Westerners whom have offered their expertise on the matter. The first chapter shows how there is a divide between Russian journalists and Russian academic scholars in the way domestic violence is viewed and how they believe it can be resolved. Although they both share some consistent values, there is tension between whether a new enforced law can be preventive or if the need to prevention goes beyond the law. The second chapter discusses how Westerners from both the United States and the United Kingdom have used various methods of data collection to find out why the establishment of women's crisis centers have not been as stable and successful as they had hoped. It also explores how Western aid comes with specific standards and how the word `feminism' has become stigmatized in Russia. Both of these chapters use newspaper articles, journal articles, and interdisciplinary analyses of academic texts to show how domestic violence has become recognized as a major problem in Russia, and how both Russians and Westerners are searching for a solution to end the violence.

Conclusions show how there is still a need for dialogue between Russians who are trying to aid victims of domestic violence and Westerners who have been working in this field for many years. This thesis works as a meta-analysis to show the past and current dialogue happening between Russia and `Western' scholars.