This article contributes to current discussions on state capacity, quality of institutions, and political regimes. Our analysis demonstrates that the J-curve argument ("good institutions" in autocracies as compared to hybrid and transitional regimes) may not be generic and is not well supported by empirical evidence from the sample of post-Soviet countries. An explanatory model of the "King of the Mountain" is instead provided. Its focus is on the monopoly of political rent as a precondition for extraction of economic rent. It demonstrates an inverse correlation between the quality of institutions and the extraction of political and economic rent, and explains why an autocrat may not have an incentive to improve institutions that may make his/her monopoly vulnerable, and rather would prefer to preserve a low quality of institutions and "bad enough governance." An analysis of a variety of external and domestic factors that may endanger this monopoly is provided. Finally, the autocrat's alternative strategic choices are analyzed. It is argued that better payoffs for the autocrat -paradoxically -may result from partial reforms and improvement of the quality of institutions. However, for various reasons, this is not occurring in post-Soviet autocracies.protection, unemployment insurance, asset redistribution, and fostering markets. Another approach is that of Bäck and Hadenius (2008), who consider stateness as the capacity of state entities to maintain sovereignty. A more detailed focus is taken by Hendrix (2010) via defining state capacity in terms of military capacity, bureaucratic or administrative capacity, and the quality and coherence of political institutions. An institutional approach is found in Fortin (2010), with state capacity measured by five indicators -corruption, contract-intensive money, infrastructure reform, protection of property rights, and tax revenue. Another understanding of state capacity is presented by Lapuente (2010, 2011), who equate state capacity with the quality of government (as assessed by such measures as the International Country Risk Guide and the Worldwide Governance Indicators [WGI]). Thompson (2014) considers state capacity as "state strength," which is measured by indicators reflecting state fiscal capacity (income tax revenue as a proportion of gross domestic product), state coercive capacity (coercive capacity scale), legitimacy ("voice and accountability," "government effectiveness," "rule of law," and "control of corruption [WGI]) and armed force monopoly ("political stability" [WGI]).There are also different approaches to the problem of the relationship among state capacity, quality of institutions, and political regimes. For example, Tilly (2007) provides a theoretical typology of "crude regime types" along two axes (state capacity and democracy): high-capacity/undemocratic (e.g., Kazakhstan); low-capacity/undemocratic (e.g., Somalia); high-capacity/democratic (e.g., Norway) and low-capacity/democratic (e.g., Jamaica). Rose and Shin (2001), Bratton (2004), Bratton and ...

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There is a striking opposition within the current discourse on Russia’s position in the world. On the one hand, there are well-known arguments about Russia’s “weak hand” (relatively small and stagnating economy, vulnerability to sanctions, technological backwardness, deteriorating demography, corruption, bad institutions, etc.). On the other hand, Russia is accused of “global revisionism”, attempts to reshape and undermine the liberal world order, and Western democracy itself. There seems to be a paradox: Russia with a perceived decline of major resources of national power, exercises dramatically increased international influence. This paradox of power and/or influence is further explored. This paper introduces a new complex Index of national power. On the basis of ratings of countries authors compare the dynamics of distribution of power in the world with a focus on Russia’s national power in world politics since 1995. The analysis brings evidence that the cumulative resources of Russia’s power in international affairs did not increase during the last two decades. However, Russia’s influence in world politics has significantly increased as demonstrated by assertive foreign policy in different parts of the world and its perception by the international political community and the public. Russia remains a major power in today’s world, although some of its power resources are stagnating or decreasing in comparison to the US and rising China. To compensate for weaknesses Russia is using both traditional and nontraditional capabilities of international influence.

It is commonplace that a sovereign state is a prerequisite to democracy. But not all states are alike, each having different resources, capacities, priorities, properties, and so forth. What kinds of states and what particular features are conducive to democracy or autocracy? How do different types of stateness and their dynamics relate to different trajectories of regime transformation in post-communist countries? In light of the significant debate in comparative politics regarding the importance of structural and procedural (actor-oriented) factors in democratization and democratic consolidation, we address the effect of stateness on regime transformations in a broad framework, allowing us to specify the role of structural conditions and the decisions of key political actors in postcommunist regime change. The focus of this research is empirical, implementing a combination of qualitative comparative and multivariate statistical methods in order to study a sample of post-communist countries from the two past decades. This Working Paper is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research

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