The article examines patterns of generalised and institutional trust among elites in East Central Europe, South East Europe and the West Balkans. It enquires into the extent to which such trust can predict elite perceptions and behaviour concerning informal practice. The article builds on surveys of elite representatives in seven post-socialist states. Survey findings are complemented with and illustrated by findings from qualitative in-depth interviews. It emerges that neither institutional nor generalised trust can serve as strong predictors of informal behaviour or of informal practice. The linkages between trust and informal practice are then discussed with reference to elites' own experiences with the past legacy and post-socialist society.
The social sciences are increasingly addressing the quality of research data and debating ways to improve data transparency, that is, the availability of original research data to corroborate claims made in academic publications. This article offers a systematic discussion of related problems and challenges with the example of post-Soviet area studies. It goes on to examine ways to improve data transparency. Although the Internet has a huge potential for linking research with resulting publications and underlying data as well as for organizing a collective discussion around the research, current data repositories do not truly go beyond basic upload and download functions for datasets. With the example of the Discuss Data project, this article gives an overview of more elaborated features that can easily be implemented to improve the visibility and quality assessment of data collections. Finally, it discusses ethical concerns about data transparency related to privacy protection and copyrights.
This article examines the political economy of foreign direct investment in the Russian oil and gas industry in order to explain the limited role of foreign capital in this sector. There are three forms of foreign direct investment in the Russian oil and gas industry: (1) joint ventures, (2) investment within the framework of a production sharing agreement (PSA) and (3) foreign equity investment. The development of these three forms of foreign direct investment is analysed with special reference to the interests of the parties involved, before a conclusion on the political factors determining the conditions for foreign investment is made.
Whereas state actors from new EU member countries receive formal representation and voting rights that safeguard against their marginalisation in the system of EU governance, civil society organisations from new member states find it much harder to gain access to decision-making processes at the EU level. However, as many of them work on issues that are now (at least partly) decided at the EU level, participation in EU governance should become an integral part of their strategy. Based on a quantitative assessment of membership data for European umbrella organisations and on case studies for which interviews with leading civil society actors were conducted, this article gives a first comparative assessment of the actual participation of civil society organisations from the Central and East European member states in EU governance.
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