Putinism – An ideology?

Anna-Cara Keim takes a look at the Russian president.
Note: This post is part of a new cooperation with the blog Crossing the Baltic.

Russian president Vladimir Putin | photo by Politsurfer via wikimedia commons

Putinism is an expression widely used to describe the ruling style of Russia’s current president Vladimir Putin. This ruling style has been described as a guided democracy with a carefully managed economy resembling the rent-seeking oil economies of the Persian Gulf. Moreover, gas and energy have also become Russia’s defining foreign policy features. Media censorship might not be comparable to the days of the Soviet Union – however, it is ensured that the life of the few remaining independent and critical journalists is as difficult as possible.

Opposition in Armenian Presidential Elections Limited

Kasia Remshardt explores the landscape of the forthcoming Armenian presidential elections.

Government House in Yerevan, Armenia. Come 18 February, there is unlikely to be a new incumbent | photo by Rita Willaert via flickr.com

On 18 February 2013 Armenia will hold presidential elections, however there is little reason to believe that it will produce a genuine political battle between the candidates or shake up the disillusioned Armenian public. Instead, current office-holder Serzh Azati Sargsyan is likely to win a new mandate thanks to his overwhelming administrative resources, a feature he shares with many of his regional counterparts.

Why Eastern Europe’s politicians are all atwitter & How to ride the waves of the tweetosphere

Following the great success of my rankings of tweeting presidents and prime ministers in Central and Eastern Europe last year, I have now written a new post on the topic (an updated summary if you will) for my department’s research blog. In the process of writing, I also thought a bit more about how to make waves in the ‘tweetosphere’ – read my reflections below.

Zeman wins at home but Schwarzenberg abroad: Differences in voting results in the Czech presidential election

In the recent Czech presidential election – the first direct election of the head of state in the country’s history – it was reported that Czechs abroad predominantly voted for foreign minister and runner-up Karel Schwarzenberg instead of voting for the eventual winner, Milos Zeman. However, visualisations of this difference have been rather crude and concerned only the second round of elections on 25-26 January. For this blog post I have therefore re-worked the data from the Czech Electoral Commission website and created some new diagrams showing the patterns of this difference. In the end of this article I also provide a tentative explanation for why these differences exist.

Results of the second round of the Czech presidential elections, 25-26 January 2013 – Map from Eric Maurice (@er1cmau) Editor in chief of Presseurop.eu

Inaugural addresses of CEE presidents: A link list

Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė during her inaugural address on 07/12/2009 © Office of the President of the Republic of Lithuania

In my last blog post I compared the inaugural addresses of Central and East European presidents – as a follow-up, you can find links to all the speeches of the current presidents and – if available – their predecessors below. The links are to the English translations, if the text is in another language this is indicated in parentheses. I aim to update this list in the future – suggestions for further links and countries to be included are always welcome!

Comparing inaugural addresses of CEE presidents: Putting the country first?!

Yesterday, Barack Obama was sworn in for his second term as US president drawing thousands to the West front of the Capitol and his inaugural address (full text here) was awaited by citizens and journalists around the world alike. In CEE inaugural addresses are usually held in parliament (also due to the fact that half of the president are elected there by the deputies and not by popular vote) and while presidents’ words receive their fair share of media attention, it can hardly measure up to American proportions.

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev during his inaugural speech on 19 January 2012 © Office of the President of Bulgaria

Paper accepted – PSA Annual Conference, Cardiff 2013

My paper ‘Presidential Activism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): A statistical analysis of the use of presidential vetoes in the CEE EU member states, 1990-2010′  has been accepted for presentation at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA) in Cardiff, 25 – 27 March 2013.

The paper is a revised version of the paper I gave in June 2012 at the European Political Science Association and presents the first statistical longitudinal and cross-country analysis of the use of presidential vetoes in parliamentary democracies.