Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 146-160). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

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Russia's pivot to Asia has become one of the highly discussed topics among political and international relations theorists. However, diverse opinions exist on the timeframe of the pivot and on the level of favourable results of the new policies of Russia's turn to the East. Mostly, Russia is thought to be intensifying its relations with countries of the Asia-Pacific region, increasingly since the Western trade sanctions were applied on Russia after the 2014 Ukraine crisis. Academic discussion also revolves around Russia's opportunities and challenges in the region. Progressive cooperation, mainly with China, is suggested due to the growing importance of Asia and its countries: China's rapidly rising economy and military strength has made the country into a candidate for the most important world powers. On the other hand, development and modernisation of Siberia and Russia's Far East region would be necessary for efficient maintenance of any progressive relations with Asian countries. Russia would have to develop its infrastructure in the regions to enable connection and cooperation with China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Among all potential partners in Asia, China is mostly indicated as the most probable and suitable economic and political partner for Russia in the region....

In this dissertation I explore the redistributive effects of second-dimensional identity politics in parliamentary democracies. Specifically, I focus on parties’ electoral incentives to manipulate the salience of the territorial-identity cleavage. My main argument is that a greater electoral salience of the second dimension distorts the nature of redistributive outcomes. Although the redistributive effects of second dimensions of political competition have been explored in majoritarian democracies, much less is known about their effects in democracies with proportional representation (PR). The dissertation brings “bad news” in that regard: when the territorial second dimension is salient, it is no longer true that parliamentary democracies with proportional electoral systems redistribute more –which is the prevalent view in the existing literature. In fact, the so called “left-bias” of PR systems vanishes when the territorial-identity cleavage is politically activated. This key insight therefore offers a fundamental qualification to the institutionalism literature, by making an effort to understand the way in which regional diversity interacts with institutions through multidimensional political competition. The dissertation is divided in two parts: one theoretical and one empirical. First, I develop a formal model that illustrates the way in which parties’ second-dimension electoral incentives affect both the electoral stage and the subsequent post-electoral coalition bargaining among parties in national parliaments. The reason is that both right-wing and regionalist parties have incentives to increase the salience of the second dimension at the electoral stage to attract voters, and subsequently the coalition bargaining among parties in parliaments offers new opportunities for legislative coalitions. In the second part of the dissertation, I test the empirical implications at the macro-level, the meso-level and the individual-level. The main empirical results can be summarised as follows. First, I present empirical evidence according to which the legislative salience of the second dimension induces a negative effect on redistribution and a positive effect on the regionalisation of public policy. Second, I provide evidence which shows that both right-wing and regionalist parties strategically increase the electoral salience of the second dimension when they are “losers” on the first dimension. Finally, I illustrate the way in which the salience of the second dimension affects the formation of individual preferences for redistribution. In sum, this dissertation provides new arguments and empirical evidence that demonstrates how second dimensional politics can have profound redistributive consequences in parliamentary democracies.