Sarah Henderson, Oregon State University
AbstractThis paper looks at the emergence of the civic sector in post-Soviet Russia and asks how the institutional context provided by government legislation, regulation, funding and rhetorical positioning impacts the shape of the third sector. Further, the paper delves into how these changes are being implemented by regional and local governments as changes at the federal level trickle down across Russia’s 89 territorial units. The Yeltsin (1991 – 1999) and Putin administrations (1999 – 2008) offer interesting contrasts in how states can raise and lower the costs of different types of civic activism, and in ways which do not always match up with “conventional wisdom” about Russia’s political trajectory.