Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore the diversity of the local civil society sector in the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia). It is often assumed that civil society in Tatarstan, and Russia in general, plays a marginal role in the public sphere. In addition to the authoritarian historic tradition, the new legislation has put limitations on the NGO registration and funding sources to facilitate government control over this form of civic activity. Significant limitations to civic action in the region also come from the apathy of the population.

I argue that despite these limitations, civil society in Tatarstan is alive and striving to communicate the local knowledge to the policy-makers. I will further argue that civil society in Tatarstan operates in three different realms: 'socially-oriented' NGOs, organizations with political or human rights agenda and independent groups of activists. The latter is becoming a more prominent form of civic activity due to their focus on the localized issues rather than on a comprehensive political transformation; they have also been successful in the tactical use of the social media. 'Socially-oriented' NGOs remain the biggest segment of civil society in Tatarstan, whereas the organizations with political agenda represent a relatively small segment of the civic activity. All the three types of civil society activists have their unique features, success and failures, and target very different groups of the population. At the same, collaboration across the three sectors is often ineffective.

The paper is based on the qualitative interviews conducted with the civil society activists in Tatarstan in September - December 2017. The research utilizes the theories of civil society and the theory of conflict transformation, which focuses on the role of middle-level leadership in social change. This research is relevant to the Peace and Conflict scholarly literature, as well as to the civil society literature, as it provides ideas on the role of local civil society in connecting the bottom level with the elites and in transforming authoritarian political regimes.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015, Afghanistan adopted a "Provincial Budgeting Policy" (PBP) and "Provincial Development Planning Guideline" (PDPG) in order to encourage fiscal deconcentration to facilitate improved participatory provincial planning and budgeting linked to priorities of provincial service delivery and create transparent, equitable, and predictable budgeting process. After three years of implementation, the practice has resulted in the following: (1) the formation of provincial public finance management committee; (2) the allocation of unconditional funds (1$million) to 34 local administrations; (3) the expansion of PBP application to ten line ministries; (4) the formation of fiscal deconcentration working group within the structure of Ministry of Finance; and (5) technical and capacity building support to local planning and budgeting entities of 34 provinces. However, these results have not been enough to produce the very two outcomes mentioned above. This failure effectively impacts the manner of public service delivery throughout Afghanistan. As such, this article firstly identifies the major challenges in the planning and budgeting process, including fiscal constraints, political games, still complex planning and budgeting process, and insufficient or lack of administrative capacity. Finally, it provides recommendations for further reforms in the coming years.

Paper long abstract:

Whether external efforts to democratize are successful has been studied from various perspectives in the literature. There is a proliferous scholarship on norms diffusion related to democratization and human rights, but most of it suffers from lack of nuances of what is being diffused and nuanced effects norm diffusion produces. This paper explores why and how countries adapt to external pressures, and what happens with inside out reaction at the receiving end of democratization efforts.

There are two general streams of diffusion literature which are pertinent to this paper. One deals with diffusion mechanisms such as coercion, competition, emulation and learning (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, Klingler-Vidra and Schleifer 2014) and another one analyzes the receiving end and localization (Acharya, 2004). This paper on one hand tests mechanisms of diffusion and studies patterns of localization and yet on other hand aims to find correlates related to the sending and receiving sides of human rights diffusion, which is quite an understudied area.

This study is a two-fold. First it does cross-sectional analysis utilizing data developed by the UN Office of High Commissioner on Human Rights in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). UPR started in 2008 and by now almost all countries have gone at least through two cycles of review, when states voluntarily receive recommendations from other states on human rights issues. Cross-sectional analysis is performed of two UPR cycles where a state under review's response (rejection or acceptance) is viewed as a possible effect in regard to other variables related to UPR recommendations (issues, specificity, type of action recommended, region/joint IO membership with a recommender) and as well as variables drawn from other data sets (territorial adjacency, post/colonial network, trade/investment relations, aid dependency, history of mutual war/conflict). Second, this study applies findings of general cross-sectional analysis to three cases - Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan (as being more, less and lesser open to external pressures countries) - exploring more in depth general findings and putting them in a context of post-soviet Central Asia. A quantitative analysis is supplemented with the study of regime dynamics which affects localization of human rights norms.

Paper long abstract:

Is it possible for ethnic minorities to practice meaningful territorially-based autonomy in such multi-ethnic, authoritarian regimes as Russia or China? If yes, how can it be possible? Both Russia and China are constitutionally-defined multi-ethnic states, an important shared aspect of whose respective ethnic institutions is the establishment at the sub-national levels of formal territorially-based autonomy for certain territorially-concentrated ethnic minorities. Nonetheless, some of these ethno-regions have been more effectively promoting inter-ethnic cooperation, local economic development, and the cultural interests of their titular ethnic groups and achieving higher actual degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the central states than others. What explains the variations across different ethno-regions in terms of the extent to which they actually exercise the formally promulgated autonomy? This paper introduces both a conceptual framework with which to measure and to compare the differing degrees of actually-exercised autonomy across ethno-regions and an analytical framework with which to explain the differing outcomes. The analytical framework is composed of both structural (inter-ethnic boundary-making) and agential (elites) explanations. The paper applies both frameworks to the comparative study of autonomy outcomes in three ethno-regions of the Russian Federation, i.e. Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Yakutia. Based upon both data collected from fieldwork and secondary data, the paper investigates whether differing patterns of Tatar-Russian, Bashkir-Russian, and Yakut-Russian inter-ethnic relations contribute to varying degrees of bargaining capacity for the titular elites, which in turn lead to varying autonomy outcomes across the three ethno-regions. I argue that greater inter-ethnic integration, when combined with robust consciousness of inter-ethnic distinction, is conducive to building the capacity both for elites of the titular ethnic group to bargain with the central state and for intra-ethnic cohesion, which in turn can lead to greater autonomy outcome for the ethno-region.