Book chapter
Russia Country Report
Russia Country report for Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), 2014
Various indices and ratings describing democratic processes in countries around the world have been developed by international organizations (such as Freedom House) and analytical centers (such as the one affiliated with the journal Economist). The main drawback of such ratings is that they only provide a linear ordering of countries by averaging a multitude of criteria. Such approach does not make it obvious which particular problems exist in which countries and thus does not help comparing democratic processes in different countries. In this paper, we propose a multidimensional model for ratings based on the mathematical discipline of formal concept analysis, which deals, in particular, with automated taxonomy construction from object–attribute data. In our case, every node of a taxonomy would group countries similar in certain aspects, while at the same time providing a description of these aspects. The aim is not to question the existing ratings, but rather to provide a neutral instrument for uncovering the structure of the data underlying these ratings. The proposed representation is much more informative than linear ratings, since it shows the commonalities and differences in the democratic development of various countries. In addition, it provides a solid ground for discussing, comparing, and criticizing ratings. It can also help formulate theoretical hypotheses on the evolution of democracy, thereby advancing scientific discovery. We illustrate the proposed representation with the case study of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The article belongs to research category and deals with the analysis of educational statistics on student currents including young people enrolling into universities, colleges and professional technical schools of the Russian Federation. The aim of the article is to describe and analyze new balance between student currents in higher and secondary professional education as well as the consequences for higher educational university development strategies related to the changes of the balance. The main research method used in the article is the analysis of statistic data dynamic sets related to student enrollment to professional education programs. The main result of the research is the conclusion on the achieved balance of students choosing secondary and higher professional education programs during the period of 2001–2014. Data provided in the article allow for making a conclusion that in the coming years student characteristics would play a much more important restrictive role in implementing university and college development strategies than financial resources. The novelty of the article is related to treating student currents as a specific type of managerial resource that is gaining an essential role for professional education institutions in the context of demographic crisis.
The thirty second issue of the collection includes two sections: «Theoretical problems of economics and institutional reforms» and «Applied problems and practice of institutional reforms in Russia
The article analyzes the mechanisms of political regime consolidation in modern Russia. The most important mechanism is the trend of government institutions transformation under the influence of political and administrative class. Among the processes of government institutions change we analyze the cases of the State Duma Council reform and expansion of the Presidential Administration functions that took place in 1990-2000 –ies. These processes with the recent changes in the judiciary power institution confirm the thesis of the "volatility " of the Russian government institutions , implicitly distorted according to the interests of the political elite.