RUS/USSR
RUS in terms of size
What is the biggest country?
Putin's party
What is called United Russia?
Credible commitment
What is a believable promise?
Examples of credible commitment problems
What are the US Civil War (N v. S/the number of slave and free states added), RUS v. UKR (+NATO, in some cases), king vs.moneylender/s, king vs. parliament in starting wars, and doctors being able to get sued for medical lawsuits?
Totalitarianism
What is a type of authoritarian regime w/ a highly centralized state whose regime seeks to eliminate all political pluralism and to transform society itself, usually to meet a well-defined, utopian goal, often characterized by a charismatic great leader, and trying to use propaganda so that eventually won't need violence to control the people?
USSR as federation
What was technically true but the 15 individual reps only had a lot of autonomy on paper?
Things making Russians angry and possible nostalgic for a strong leader
What are the breakup of the Soviet Union and the loss of prestige accompanying that, the chaos in the '90s because of the Yeltsin-parliament battles over reforms and trying to use the army to shut down the other one, and fairly significant economic troubles?
Solution to credible commitment problems
Moral hazard
What is a situation where an actor behaves differently (i.e. often more riskily) than he otherwise would because he is insulated from risk/the pain of failure (ex.s being bankruptcy protection, house mortgage bailouts, airbags in cars?
Weaker authoritarianism
What has not as much control over the society and vv with stronger authoritarianism but is not as important a distinction as personalistic v. buearaucratic?
Soviet successor states
What are the current countries that were formed out of the USSR, most of which have had ebbs and flows in the status of their democracies?
Other problem with Russia after breakup of USSR
What was that lot of ethnic Russians were now living in countries that were not Russia and so were in the minority which led to them being fearful and because the terrorism in/from Chechnya?
Credible commitment problem
What is a situation in which agreements are difficult to establish bc one or more players is not able to make credible commitments (i.e. to make people believe that they'll do their thing);a situation where an actor cannot achieve its foals because there's no way to guarantee it'll keep it's promises (it's really the more powerful guy's problem that his commitment isn't believable), bc when the stronger guy can't make a believable promise, he gets hurt bc no one wants to deal with him; authoritarians face commitment problems because their citizens are less likely to invest in the country's infrastructure (eg a factory)( than are citizens of other countries in their countries, since if they do there's a risk the dictator will take away their factory for himself, and he can say that he won't but he's not believable bc there's nothing to stop him from doing that, so he is having a credible commitment problem situation?
Deductible
What is the amt. you have to pay out of pocket b4 the insurance company picks up the remaining cost, making insurance ok since it solves the moral hazard problem by making there be some cost to the person who would otherwise be risky and hurt others and not face any consequences or have to pay in any way?
What IRN and CHN have in common
Gorbachev led USSR
What happened from 1985-91?
The parliament in RUS right now
What is dominated heavily by United Russia and is basically a rubber stamp parliament, with elections for these seats generally not being really free and fair except for a few seats so that it looks free and fair?
Decision tree/game tree/extensive form
What shows the incentives for credible commitment problems for each side based on whether there is punishment for the stronger side to not uphold his end of the bargain and thus the consequences of what each side will do?
Freedom/fair elections irony/paradox
What is if there is not freedom of speech, are the elections really free and fair?
Yeltsin as president
Result of solving credible commitment problems
What is those societies/agreements/situations are generally more successful/prosperous than those that leave the credible commitment problem as is, since people now want to deal with the former?