Article
The Elite New Wine into Old Bottles?
Analysis is given of the elite transformation during Putin's third presidential term with regard to both personal composition and general design.
It is for the first time when the phenomenon of the political class is being investigated in the Russian political science literature. In this edition, the political class is viewed as a community of persons professionally involved in the sphere of politics. Political elites, administrative and political bureaucracy, deputy corps, party functionaries, analyst center staff, expert community, political consultants, political journalists are regarded as important segments of the political class. The study of political participation of corporate business is also paid attention to. An important advantage is the combination of theoretical, methodological and applied aspects of the research, as well as a comparative perspective: the features of the formation of a political class in Ukraine and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe are considered.
In result of intensive personnel replacements in 2014 - first half of 2016, Russian political regime has strengthened its personalistic character and shifted from the 'corporate' to 'sultanistic'.
The article analyzes the historical specifics of transformations of the Russian society and the state. As the starting point, the author of the article accepts the differences between dynamically developing and stagnant cultures proposed by Lawrence Harrison. In the author's opinion, to date, all the necessary prerequisites for Russian subjectness have emerged - territory, political mechanisms, etc. However, to overcome the stagnation of Russian society and elites, this is not enough. The way out of the vicious circle is possible only through deep institutional transformation.
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Corruption, fake news, and the “informational autocracy” sustaining Putin in power
After fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat—at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong.
Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia is neither a somewhat reduced version of the Soviet Union nor a classic police state. Corruption is prevalent at all levels of government and business, but Russia’s leaders pursue broader and more complex goals than one would expect in a typical kleptocracy, such as those in many developing countries. Nor does Russia fit the standard political science model of a “competitive authoritarian” regime; its parliament, political parties, and other political bodies are neither fakes to fool the West nor forums for bargaining among the elites.
The result of a two-year collaboration between top Russian experts and Western political scholars, Autocracy explores the complex roles of Russia’s presidency, security services, parliament, media and other actors. The authors argue that Putin has created an “informational autocracy,” which relies more on media manipulation than on the comprehensive repression of traditional dictatorships. The fake news, hackers, and trolls that featured in Russia’s foreign policy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election are also favored tools of Putin’s domestic regime—along with internet restrictions, state television, and copious in-house surveys. While these tactics have been successful in the short run, the regime that depends on them already shows signs of age: over-centralization, a narrowing of information flows, and a reliance on informal fixers to bypass the bureaucracy. The regime’s challenge will be to continue to block social modernization without undermining the leadership’s own capabilities.
Integration of Crimea and Sevastopol into Russian political space is analyzed, including changes in institutions and the managerial system, personnel replacements and new practices adoption.
The article deals with the processes of building the information society and security in the CIS in accordance with modern conditions. The main objective is to review existing mechanisms for the formation of a common information space in the Eurasian region, regarded as one of the essential aspects of international integration. The theoretical significance of the work is to determine the main controls of the regional information infrastructure, improved by the development of communication features in a rapid process.The practical component consists in determining the future policies of the region under consideration in building the information society. The study authors used historical-descriptive approach and factual analysis of events having to do with drawing the contours of today's global information society in the regional refraction.
The main result is the fact that the development of information and communication technologies, and network resources leads to increased threats of destabilization of the socio-political situation in view of the emergence of multiple centers that generate the ideological and psychological background. Keeping focused information policy can not be conceived without the collective participation of States in the first place, members of the group leaders of integration - Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Currently, only produced a comprehensive approach to security in the information field in the Eurasian region, but the events in the world, largely thanks to modern technology, make the search for an exit strategy with a much higher speed. The article contributes to the science of international relations, engaging in interdisciplinary thinking that is associated with a transition period in the development of society. A study of current conditions in their relation to the current socio-political patterns of the authors leads to conclusions about the need for cooperation with the network centers of power in the modern information environment, the formation of alternative models of networking, especially in innovation and scientific and technical areas of information policy, and expanding the integration of the field in this region on the information content.
This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.