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abouT The auThors Irina busyGina is Professor and Director of the Center for Regional Political Studies at MGIMO at the School of Political Science of MGIMO (Moscow). Professor Busygina’s research focuses on Russian and German federalism, centerperiphery relations from the Russian and European perspective, regional identity and regional policy. Her publications include “Federalism and Administrative Reform by President Putin the Context of Democratic Transition in Russia” in The Concept of Russia: Patterns for Political Development in the Russian Federation (ed. by K. Malfliet and F. Scharpé, Leuven University Press, 2003), “Russian Regional Institutions in the Context of Globalization and Regionalization” in Explaining PostSoviet Patchworks (ed. by K. Sebers, Aldershot, 2001); Концептуальные основы европейского регионализма. //В кн.: Регионы и регионализм в странах Запада и России. - М., 2001; Стратегии европейских регионов как ответ на вызовы интеграции и глобализации. М., Интердиалект, 2003. Luke marCh is Lecturer in Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics at the University of Edinburgh . He spent much of the late 1990s working on the communist left in the former ussR, in particular its ideological and organisational development and influence on democratisation. Recent publications include ‘Virtual Parties in a Virtual World’, in Sarah Oates, Diana Owen and Rachel Gibson (eds.), Civil Society, Politics and the Internet. (Frank Cass, 2005); ‘Russian Parties and the Political Internet’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 56, no. 4, May 2004; ‘The Putin paradigm and the cowering of Russia ’s communists’ in Cameron Ross (ed.), Russian Politics under Putin (Manchester University Press, 2004); ‘The Pragmatic Radicalism of Russia’s Communists’, in Joan Barth Urban and Jane Curry (eds.), The Left Transformed: Social Democrats and Neo-Leninists in Central and Eastern Europe, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003) and The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russia, (Manchester University Press, 2002). Marie mendras is Professor at Sciences Po University and Research Fellow with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She is a specialist of Russia at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales in Paris. She chairs the Observatoire de la Russie, a study group that produces original analysis presented at monthly seminars. Her publications deal with Russian political developments, questions of state-building and provincial rule, and Russian foreign policy. She is on the editorial board of the journals Esprit, Le Courrier des Pays de l’Est and Konstitucionnoe obozrenie, and contributes articles to the journals Pouvoirs, Esprit, Commentaire. Her most recent edited books are Comment fonctionne la Russie ? Le politique, le bureaucrate et l’oligarque (Paris, Autrement, 2003) and La Russie de Poutine (Paris, Le Seuil, « Pouvoirs », 2005). Andrei ZaKharov is the Deputy Director of the Moscow School of Political Studies. In 1990 he was elected as a People’s Deputy of the Russian Federation; from 1992 until 1993 he was a Member of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation; and in 1993 he was elected to the Russian State Duma. From 1996 until 2004 he was the Vice President of the Foundation for the Development of Parliamentarism in Russia. Dr. Zakharov is the author of several books and articles dealing with the parliamentary practice, federalism, self-government and the development of civil society in Russia, including “Ein Novum mit Tradition: Föderalismus in Russland und Europa” in Osteuropa, 53, 9-10/2003, pp. 1469-1477; “Federalizm i globalizaciya” in: Politicheskie issledovaniya, 6/2002, pp. 116-126; and E pluribus unum: ocherki sovremennogo federalizma (Moskva, 2003). About the editors Katlijn malflieT is Professor and Director of the Institute for International and European Policy at the Catholic University of Leuven. She teaches courses on the political , social and legal transition process in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2000 Katlijn Malfliet is the Holder of the Chair InBev – Baillet Latour on Eu-Russia at KU Leuven. Her recent publications include “Eu enlargement and the social function of property rights” in: Z. Mansfeldová, V. Sparschuh, & A. Wenninger (Eds.), Patterns of Europeanisation in Central and Eastern Europe (Hamburg, 2005: pp. 117-131). She co-edited with Francisca Scharpé The Concept of Russia: Patterns for Political Development in the Russian Federation (Leuven, 2003), and with Lien Verpoest Russia and Europe in a Changing International Environment (Leuven, 2001). Ria laenen is a research fellow at the Institute for International and European Policy at the Catholic University of Leuven. Since 2004 she is the co-ordinator of the Chair InBev-Baillet Latour on Eu-Russia at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on Russia’s relations with the ‘Near Abroad’, ethnic minorities and the frozen conflicts in the Cis. She co-edited with Katlijn Malfliet Minority Policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The Link Between Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy and European Integration (Leuven,1998). ...

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