Regional/subregional politics in post-communist countries

这个项目旨在尽可能多地覆盖后共产主义国家。因此，本项目在进一步推进本项目之前已经研究过的国家（如俄罗斯俄罗斯地区、中东欧国家、乌克兰、克罗地亚）研究的同时，建立了一个研究未知国家和地区的桥头堡，如俄罗斯各民族共和国、塔吉克斯坦、吉尔吉斯斯坦、立陶宛、白俄罗斯等。在方法上，本项目试图全面分析区域和地方政治，涵盖制度改革、精英、政党制度和选举地域。因此，该项目证实了区域认同的重要性，对于将多学科方法结合到区域中至关重要，并证明了后共产主义国家的地方改革是由该国中庸精英的实力水平决定的。此外，本项目推动了“国际政治关系”的概念，将新兴的政治区域学与传统的以国家为导向的政治学综合起来，同时关注地区（特别是门户地区）所扮演的国际角色。认识到独联体国家出现了机器政治，该项目提出关注区域和地方精英的活动，而不是选民的偏好。

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.