Regional/subregional politics in post-communist countries

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This project aimed at covering post-communist countries as many as possible. Consequently, while promoting further the study of the countries which had been already studied before this project (e.g., Russian regions of Russia, Eastern Central European countries, Ukraine, and Croatia), this project established a bridgehead to study unknown countries and regions, such as Russian national republics, Tadzhikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, and Belarus. Methodologically, this project tried to analyze regional and local politics comprehensively, covering institutional reforms, elites, party systems, and electoral geographies. As a result, this project confirmed the significance of regional identities, pivotal to combine multi-disciplinary approaches to regions, and proved that local reforms in post-communist countries have been determined by the level of strength of the meso-elites of the country. Moreover, this project promoted the concept of "interpolitical relations" to synthesize the emerging political regionology with traditional state-oriented political science, while paying attention to international roles played by regions (in particular, gateway-regions). Recognizing the emergence of machine politics in CIS countries, this project proposed to pay attention to regional and local elites' activities, rather than voters' preferences.