Abstract not available

Today Russia plays an important role in global economic development and attracts a lot of multinational companies, who establish their subsidiaries there. Many foreign investors send their representatives, business expatriates, to develop their businesses in Russia. The knowledge of cultural and communication specifics in Russia is very important for the success of those business personnel. This study has presented an in-depth picture of Danish business expatriates’ experience in Russia. Qualitative interviews with eight Danish business expatriates were conducted to examine and compare cultural and communication norms in Denmark and Russia. The results were analyzed using the cross-cultural theories of Hofstede (2011) and Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov (2010). The findings revealed that communication norms in Russia differ significantly from those in Denmark on two cross-cultural dimensions: Power Distance and Indulgence versus Restraint. / Department of Communication Studies

Significant and rapid social change has occurred in Russia in the recent decade. With the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the former socialist block, Russian society entered a new stage of development, a stage of transformation towards a capitalist society with a democratic political system. In the course of this transformation, a new social group of Russian private capital owners has emerged. / This research focuses on the political attitudes and political participation of Russian businessmen who own and manage their own capital. In particular, it examines the extent to which capital owners are willing to support the consolidation of the democratic regime in Russia. The analysis was based on interviews with 60 capital owners conducted in Moscow, the capital of Russia. I examine their attitudes towards democracy, democratic institutions and democratic procedures, along with their ways of political participation in correlation with the size and origin of the capital that the businessmen own, controlling for age, education and political past. The purpose of this analysis was to establish if structural conditions such as the size and origin of the capital might play a role in a capital owners' pro-liberal political orientation. / Three main conclusions emerge from this research: (1) Russian capital owners are not uniformly pro-liberal in their political orientation, some businessmen being hostile to democratic political rule, and others having only limited pro-liberal political attitudes; (2) those capital owners who have pro-liberal political attitudes, limited or not, are the least likely to participate politically; (3) owners of small and medium sized independent type capital constitute the most pro-democratic group among Russian businessmen.

Thesis (M.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Cover title. "December 2002." AD-A411 335. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the World Wide Web.

Honors Thesis (Politics)--Oberlin College, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

ix, 53 p. : ill. / Russian men are over two and a half times more likely to die before 60 than are Russian women. Aggregate national indicators of state policy, health care and individual behavior are examined in a time-series analysis of male and female mortality rates from 1990 to 2008. Data come from the Russian State Statistical Office (Goskomstat) and the World Bank. There is a debate in both demographic literature and that on post-Soviet transition about changes in mortality in post-socialist society. Hypotheses about the relative impact of individual behavior such as alcohol consumption, the effect of changes to the healthcare system and economic stability are studied. A goal of this study is to understand the relative contribution of each factor to gender-based inequality in mortality rates. The findings show that the different types of variables - health care, the economy and human behavior - vary in their level of significance and in effect. / Committee in charge: Caleb Southworth, Chairperson; Julie Hessler, Member

Conventional wisdom views authoritarian legislatures as 'rubber stamps'. According to this model, non-democratic parliaments are entirely subservient to dominant executives, having no influence on the development of policy; as a result, all bills introduced into the legislature become laws without amendment. Although these bodies might perform other functions, they serve - according to this account - a purely ceremonial function in the policy-making process. There is evidence, however, inconsistent with this portrayal from a range of non-democracies, including evidence of executive bill failure and bill amendment. Existing attempts to explain these apparently deviant observations refer to some degree of legislative autonomy - bills fail and change as a result of legislator influence. According to these accounts, authoritarian elites use legislatures to co-opt members of the opposition and to gather information about citizen grievances. This dissertation, in contrast, argues that legislative activity in non-democracies can be driven by executive concerns. Whereas the 'rubber stamp' model infers from executive dominance an absence of legislative activity, the approach proposed by this dissertation suggests there are a variety of reasons why executive actors might want to amend or kill off their own bills in the legislature. In particular, these legislative policy developments can result from clashes between executive factions, which use legislative institutions to monitor, challenge, and amend each others' proposals. This dissertation proposes and assesses this new approach using fine-grained data on legislative processes and outputs from the contemporary Russian State Duma. The analysis draws on a variety of data sources, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings suggest that legislative institutions can still 'matter' in non-democracies, even with an entirely subservient body of legislators.

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No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Russian demographic statistics reflect the persistence of a dramatically wide gender gap in life expectancy and mortality over the last decades - about twice that found in the developed world. On average, men in Russia live 12 years less than Russian women, and 14.5 years less than men in Western Europe. This thesis provides an overview and synthesis of the most recently available literature that addresses the persistent gender gap in mortality and life expectancy in Russia. I reviewed the prevalent behavioral and social-structural drivers that explain the causes of higher male mortality in contemporary Russia. Especially, I looked at how the conceptualization of the male social role and related norms that shape masculine behavior contribute to high male mortality in Russia. The study reveals that men’s unhealthy, risky behavior and their higher vulnerability to stress are considered to be linked to their gendered social identity which is created and reproduced by the social-structural context of the Russia’s society.