The Russian Review, vol. 72, issue 1 (January 2013). 180 The Russian Review to account for failed transitions, it defines and highlights the utility and limitations of three conceptual lenses (“hybrid regimes,” “competitive authoritarianism,” and “neo-patrimonialism”) which when applied to Russia (part II), Ukraine and Georgia (part III) and Central Asia (part IV) better explain the realities and dynamics of contemporary rule. Chapter 1 (Timm Beichelt) argues that “hybrid regimes” are constructed in one of two ways. First, they engender and oscillate between combinations of characteristics of the two “pure” regime types. Here, traditional autocratic models promote media repression and clientelist decision-making, while the impulse for pluralist political competition comes from transition democratization efforts. Second, they represent the residue of a diminished subtype of democratic or authoritarian ideal types and as such are “incomplete” or “defective.” This gives rise to such categories as “exclusive democracy,” “illiberal democracy,” “delegative democracy,” and “enclave democracy” (p. 19). Chapter 2 (Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way) focuses on “competitive authoritarian” regime types which systematically create an “uneven playing field” by enforcing unequal access to state resources and institutions, such as the legal system and media. Incumbents act as judge and jury, relying on de facto, informal proxy, and patronage means of control to fuse together state and ruling party interests and set and change the rules of game as appropriate to the needs of elite and power continuity. In the process, a self-reinforcing dynamic is set in motion: the more efficient and effective competitive authoritarian “hyper-incumbencies” become, the less the need to resort to significant fraud or repression, the more opposition parties are co-opted (or collapse), the greater the international legitimacy of the system. Chapter 3 (Gero Erdmann) defines “neo-patrimonialism” as the institutionalization of two systems or logics; one based on personal loyalties, informal dependencies, and patron-client patrimonial rule and the other on constitutional rules of formal subordination and authority set by rational legal state institutions and bureaucracies. Paradoxically, from the resultant systematic uncertainty and insecurity this fusion generates, a self-reinforcing and sustaining dynamic allows for system self-reproduction. Though neo-patrimonialism is a difficult concept to apply (there are no agreed benchmarks delineating one such system from another), subtypes relevant to the postSoviet space are identified as “sultanistic,” “oligarchic,” “bureaucratic,” and “soft” (pp. 52–53). The sum of the book is more than its parts. Ultimately, it raises questions relating to structure and agency in the post-Soviet space. First, as path dependencies have been set by powerful preexisting political cultures and contexts, the weight of uncivil society legacies, and the burden of underdevelopment, can we argue that “hybridity” is not the “incomplete” or “defective” residue of failed transitions, but rather an authentic representation of preexisting indigenous and organic political structures and processes? Do then existing regimes represent evolving and sustainable equilibriums appropriate to given strategic contexts, broadly acceptable to elites and compatible with societal values, and affordable in terms of financial and human capacities? Second, the “Arab Spring” indicates that widespread frustration and anger when directed against apparently unyielding resilient autocratic systems, highlight the existence of fragile and brittle façades; Potemkin structures ready to crumble when faced with the wrong kind of systemic shock. This insight encourages research to focus not on regime type or its direction of travel, but on the relationship between sources of regime legitimacy and the political will and skill of incumbents to balance pressures to maintain the status quo with the necessity of constant adaptation. Graeme P. Herd, Geneva Centre for Security Policy Shevel, Oxana. Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xvii + 287 pp. $95.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76479-7. The main issue that animates Oxana Shevel’s meticulously researched and scrupulously written book is the question of how nationalism has shaped refugee policies in the post-state-socialist political Book Reviews 181 space. To answer it, Shevel amassed and carefully considered an impressive amount of archival material, policy documents, interviews, and secondary literature. She constructs a sophisticated theoretical framework, which she uses to account for the differences in the refugee policies of Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and Poland. She divides the countries into two groups: those in which the question of “who counts as member of the nation” had not been settled before the refugee policies started being formulated—she calls these states contested (Russia, Ukraine)—and those in which it had been (the uncontested states of Czech Republic and Poland). She argues that in Russia and Ukraine refugee policies differ depending on whether elites adopted a consensus or compromise definition of the nation. While in the case of Ukraine, all refugee groups, including potential “compatriots,” are treated equally, in the case of Russia, refugees that are imagined as compatriots receive preferential treatment. This is the most intriguing finding and the most important contribution of Shevel’s book. In the uncontested states, the key variable is elite autonomy. She sees Czech and Polish elites as unencumbered by legislative, institutional, and historical constraints, and hence free to push through refugee policies according to their idiosyncratic inclinations. The differences in these inclinations account for different outcomes. Although the argument, especially in regard to Russia and Ukraine, is compelling, a few questions arise. First, the work really consists of two separate studies in one book. This is because the explanatory variable for the first pair (Russia and Ukraine) is what distinguishes it from the second pair, but there it plays no role. Shevel actually presents two independent explanatory models. The two pairs do not seem to share much beyond the “postcommunist” label and, as a result, the pairs are only compared in terms of their relations to the UNCHR, but otherwise are just juxtaposed. This setup is somewhat unfortunate as it reinforces the “orientalizing” view of East Central Europe as an internally undifferentiated whole. While throughout most of the book, Shevel’s treatment of nationalism is cogent, at the beginning she proposes quantifying the degree of national contestation. The equation she uses generates the following scores (the higher the score, the greater the degree of contestation): Russia – 95.6 percent; Ukraine 19.4 – percent; Czech Republic – 1.5 percent; Poland – 3.4 percent. The fact that the distance between the scores of the two countries supposedly belonging in the same category (Russia and Ukraine) is far greater than the distance between the scores of Ukraine and either of the two uncontested countries casts some doubt on the usefulness of expressing numerically what the author actually articulates convincingly in narrative form. Finally, in the Czech and Polish cases, there seem to be a bit of a disjunction between the theoretical framework and the empirical chapters. Heavy theoretical focus on elite autonomy does not do justice to a constraint of immense importance: the European Union and the intense desire to join it, which perhaps more than anything else characterized these countries in the 1990s–early 2000s. This desire necessitated the acceptance of acquis communautaire, as well as the signing of readmission agreements with Germany, both of which significantly shaped their refugee policies and eventually made them far more similar than different. Although in the empirical chapters Shevel does discuss the influence of these powerful international actors, she continues to insist—almost despite her own evidence—on the elites’ ability “to shape policies largely single-handedly” (p. 61). These remarks notwithstanding, Shevel’s is an empirically rich, well-argued book that any student not just of refugee policies but also of the workings of early post-state-socialist states in general will find well worth reading. Alena K. Alamgir, Rutgers University Cooley, Alexander. Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xiv + 252 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-19-992982-5. In Great Games, Local Rules Alexander Cooley shows that, despite the great differentials in overall capabilities, the great powers that have been competing for influence in post-Communist Central