Article
The post-Soviet publication landscape for higher education research
We studied the population of articles on higher education published in academic journals by researchers from post-Soviet countries in the last three decades. We found that post-Soviet countries contribute differently to the overall publication output, with only Russia, Lithuania, and Estonia having more than 100 articles in journals indexed in Scopus. Countries also have different publication profiles in terms of articles’ language, topics, methodology, and the balance between articles in local and international journals. In comparison with a sample of international articles, post-Soviet authors publish a substantially smaller share of research articles, and articles about teaching and learning issues, student experience and outcomes, and academic work, but a larger share of policy-related articles and articles about system policy and history. Researchers from one post-Soviet country collaborate much less within their country compared with authors from the international sample, where people collaborate more actively between institutions within a country. At the same time, scholars from different post-Soviet countries do not collaborate with each other. Our analysis demonstrates the disunity of the community of post-Soviet scholars disconnected by national borders.
This book is novel not only in its theoretical framework, which places racialisation in post-communist societies and their modernist political projects at the centre of processes of global racism, but also in being the first account to examine both these new national contexts and the interconnections between racisms in these four regions of the Baltic states, the Southern Caucasus, Central Asia and Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, and elsewhere. Assessments of the significance of the contemporary geopolitical contexts of armed conflict, economic transformation and political transition for racial discourse are central themes, and the book highlights the creative, innovative and persistent power of contemporary forms of racial governance which has central significance for understanding contemporary societies.
The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of racism and ethnicity studies.
Race and Racism in Russia identifies the striking changes in racial ideas, practices, exclusions and violence in Russia since the 1990s, revealing how 'Russianness' has become a synonym for racial whiteness. This ground-breaking book provides new theories and substantive insights into race and ethnicity in a Russian context.
Highly cited scientific papers by Russian authors are studied. A definition of highly cited papers based on the interpretation provided by the Essential Science Indicators database is presented; the number of highly cited Russian papers is analyzed against the background of global indices and the disciplinary distribution of these papers is explored. It is shown that in all scientific areas the share of Russian papers that become highly cited is below world average. The impact of coauthorship with foreign scientists on the creation of highly cited papers is investigated. It is concluded that international collaboration has a key role in the related process.
In this paper the author argues that we can identify three types of intellectual communities that participate actively in the policy process: analytical communities, experts’ communities and communities of consultants. The distinguishing features of these communities are both an analytical tool and a manifestation of their different identities. These policy actors are distinguished from each other by several criteria: the focus of their political activity (policy analysis, expert reports / remarks or political advise / PR); referent groups (academic, professional or business communities); principles of interaction with decision makers (self-autonomy, contract, clientelism); ethical principles, civic values and attitudes. According to the author’s empirical research of analytical centers and communities in Moscow1 and Russian regions (Karelia, Tatarstan and Saratov region)2 we can make the conclusion that the identity of analytical communities can take three forms: analytical structures (think tanks, public policy centers etc.); “analytical spaces” (recurrent seminars, club meetings, forums etc.), informal intellectual groups. The empirical research that was conducted by the author and the Committee on Public Policy and Governance of the Russian Association for Political Science allows us to point out several factors that influence the identity of analytical communities and their capacity to be autonomous and powerful policy actors and to put these factors into hierarchical order according to their importance for development of analytical communities. The first group of factors is infrastructure for analytical communities; actors with strategic vision i.e. leaders that have organizational, communicational, project work capitals and skills in analytical communities; Human recourses and its mobility (“revolving door system”, academic and scientific traditions, quantity and quality of intellectuals and researchers, etc.). These three factors are vital and the most important for the emergence of analytical community’s identity. Another group of factors: the level of political competition and pluralism (political actors, their goals, diversity of strategies, the strength of political opposition etc.); institutionalization level of the political processes (efficiency of democratic institution and decision making procedures etc.); the capacity of analytical communities to build coalitions with other political actors and social groups (with interest groups, business associations, political parties, civil society organizations, local authorities). These three factors are vital and the most important for the development of analytical communities as influential and autonomous political actors. For Eastern European countries, where political competition and pluralism are not widespread and civil society institutions are week, the capacity of analytical communities to build coalitions with other political actors and social groups is the most promising strategy for democratic development. Additional factor to this group is inclusiveness and transparency of policy process. It correlates with capacity to build coalitions factor. Legal prerequisites (liberal NGO regulation etc.) and philanthropy recourses (from the development of philanthropic culture to the amount of philanthropists) are the cultural factors which depend on long-term features of the civilization or a group of states with similar historical paths. According to the theory of political science and policy practice, in political process we can identify two types of political activities. Activities of the first type are connected with state strategy and program implementation, decision making practices, political management, and problem-solving. The second type of activities are related to the analysis of challenges which decision makers face, with developing programs and strategies of addressing social, economic and political issues. The first type of activities or functions are delegated to politicians (decision makers, political elites etc.) the second ones are related to the work of the intellectuals (analysts, experts, consultants etc.). The demand for the intellectual support of policy implementation is high and even growing in modern diverse and dynamic societies. We can say that this function in contemporary political systems is carried out by intellectual communities.
The entry provides an overview of the development of the multidiscilinary field of higher education research in Russia. In Soviet period, research on higher education has been developing along with the division of research in the country – between the Academy of Sciences, higher education institutions, and sectoral research under the corresponding ministries. However, current lack of an institutional basis for higher education research reflects the marginal role that the field plays in Russia.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.