Regional/subregional politics in post-communist countries

该项目旨在尽可能多地覆盖后共产主义国家。因此，在进一步促进对本项目之前已经研究过的国家（例如，俄罗斯地区，东欧中欧国家，乌克兰和克罗地亚），该项目建立了一个桥头堡，研究未知的国家和地区，如俄罗斯民族共和国，塔吉克斯坦，吉尔吉斯斯坦，立陶宛和白俄罗斯。在方法论上，该项目试图全面分析区域和地方政治，包括制度改革，精英，政党制度和选举地理。因此，该项目证实了区域身份的重要性，这是对区域采取联合收割机多学科方法的关键，并证明了后共产主义国家的地方改革取决于该国中等精英的实力水平。此外，该项目推广了“政治间关系”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相结合，同时关注区域（特别是门户区域）所发挥的国际作用。该项目认识到独联体国家出现了机器政治，建议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.