Category: event

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Environmental protests in Russia

Yesterday in Oodi library a panel discussion on environmental activism in Russia “Citizens, authorities, and waste management in Russia” was held. The event was organised by Suomi-Venäjä Seura and was conducted in Russian and Finnish languages. The seminar addressed current environmental issues related to waste management from the perspective of activists and researchers. Pavel Andreev, chief editor of the 7×7 online media outlet, PhD candidate Elena Gorbacheva, and Professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen participated In the discussion, chaired by Satu Hassi, Finnish MP from the Green Party.
The speakers highlighted the Shies protests – since summer 2018, people in Arkhangelsk region and Komi Republic are actively protesting against the landfill construction for Moscow waste in their area. The protesters formed “Stop-Shies” coalition, and now they organise people’s primaries and aim to select one candidate, “People’s governor”, which they will actively promote and hope to see as the new governor of Arkhangelsk region.

The video recording of the event is available below:

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Lecture in CEU

Yesterday Margarita Zavadskaya gave a lecture “Variety of Local Governance in Russia: Do Autocracies Serve People’s Interests?” at the Central European University, Budapest Campus, Hungary. During the lecture, Margarita presented and discussed her co-authored with Lev Shilov article.

Does good governance exist under autocracy and to what extent public goods provision depends on budget autonomy and political loyalty? Local heads in Russia are caught between citizens and governors that hold them accountable. We aim to explore the heterogeneity of local governance in Russian municipalities (municipal and urban districts) by constructing weighted index of public goods provision and estimating the effects of budget autonomy and vote delivery for the United Russia in 2016-17. Our findings suggest that coercive vote mobilization harm public goods provision in municipalities of relatively small size.

More information on the event can be found here.