Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy traces the transformation of museums from publicly or privately funded heritage institutions into active players in the economic sector of culture. Exploring how this transformation reconfigured cultural diplomacy, the book argues that museums have become autonomous diplomatic players on the world stage. The book offers a comparative analysis across a range of case studies in order to demonstrate that museums have gone global in the era of neoliberal globalisation. Grincheva focuses first on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which is well known for its bold revolutionising strategies of global expansion: museum franchising and global corporatisation. The book then goes on to explore how these strategies were adopted across museums around the world and analyses two cases of post-Guggenheim developments in China and Russia: the K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong and the International Network of Foundations of the State Hermitage Museum in Russia. These cases from more authoritarian political regimes evidence the emergence of alternative avenues of museum diplomacy that no longer depend on government commissions to serve immediate geo-political interests. Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy will be a valuable resource for students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary museology and cultural diplomacy. Documenting new developments in museum diplomacy, the book will be particularly interesting to museum and heritage practitioners and policymakers involved in international exchanges or official programs of cultural diplomacy.

This book is an anthology of essays penned by distinguished experts from around the world to commemorate life time contribution of Sanjaya Baru to the discipline of Geo-economics in India and globally. Curated and published by CUTS International, the book contains 20 essays from 21 distinguished authors,who amongst others include, noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati, two former foreign Secretaries Shyam Saran and S Jaishankar, former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, Secretary General CUTS International Pradeep Mehta, Director NMML Shakti Sinha and former DG, WTO Pascal Lamy. In the current times when the world order is being rapidly reconfigured, this book is a useful resource for the government, think tanks, academia, civil society and all those interested in strategic affairs.

Language policy and usage in the post-communist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states during the period of 2004–2017. The most notable difference observed between Ukraine and the two Baltic countries is that many Russian-writing users in Ukraine’s internet tend to support the position that the state language, i.e. Ukrainian, is discriminated against and needs special protection by the state, whereas the majority of the Russian-speaking commentators on selected Estonian and Latvian news websites advocate for introducing Russian as a second state language. Despite attempts of Ukraine’s government to Ukrainize public space, the position of Ukrainian is still perceived, even by many Russian-writing commentators and bloggers, as being ‘precarious’ and ‘vulnerable’. This became especially visible in debates after the Revolution of Dignity, when the number of supporters of the introduction of Russian as second state language significantly decreased. In the Russian-language sector of Estonian and Latvian news websites and blogs, in contrast, the majority of online users continually reproduce the image of ‘victims’ of nation-building. They often claim that their political, as well as economic rights, are significantly limited in comparison to ethnic Estonians and Latvians. The results of Maksimovtsova’s research illustrate that, notwithstanding differences between the Estonian as well as Latvian cases, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other, there is an ongoing process of convergence of debates in Ukraine to those held in the other two countries analyzed in terms of an increased degree of ‘discursive decommunization’ and ‘derussification’.

Contributors to this volume discuss a variety of ways the African past (African history) influences the present-day of Africans on the continent and in diaspora: cultural (historical) memory as a factor of public (mass) consciousness; the impact of the historical past on contemporary political, social, and cultural processes in Africa and African diaspora.

This volume is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

Based on the synthesis of a large empirical and theoretical literature on centre-region relations in China and Russia, Federalism in China and Russia is one of the first attempts to integrate this literature from different disciplines into a coherent common framework. Libman and Rochlitz argue that the divergence in growth performance between Russia and China can be – at least partially – explained by a number of features of the Chinese system of centre-regional relations.The authors offer a comparative analysis of the development of centre-region relations in Russia and in China and explore several dimensions of these relations: fiscal ties and incentives; bureaucratic practices; flows of information; and local government practices, while addressing the determinants of divergence between both countries. They also examine how the Chinese system has recently started to change, by adopting several features of the Russian model, which might be one of the reasons for China’s declining growth performance in recent years.Federalism in China and Russia should be read by scholars in public economics, political economy and comparative politics, as well as by students and policy analysts. For scholars, the book serves as a point of reference in studying the comparative evolution of the two countries. It will enrich the discussion on fiscal federalism, centre-region relations and sub-national political regimes, and could potentially become an important part of syllabi in political economy, public economics and comparative politics courses. For policy analysts, the book offers a comprehensive survey of the evolution of centre-periphery relations of the two countries and the differences between them, which is important to better understand the overall development of Russia and China.

On 15 March 2019, the first “Connecting Eurasia Dialogue: From the Atlantic to the Pacific” was held in Brussels, at Europe’s political heart. The event was organized by the Roscongress Foundation and the Conoscere Eurasia Association with the support of the Association of European Businesses and the Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce. Amid the current political cooldown, this was a unique gathering, enabling a high-level dialogue on trade, economic, and integration issues among stakeholders from the wider Eurasian space, including the European Union (EU), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and China. The focus of high-level policy makers and top business executives attended the Dialogue was on challenges and opportunities of the EU’s engagement with the EAEU, harmonization of soft infrastructure to enhance trans-Eurasian connectivity, and the EAEU’s single pharmaceutical market. This IIASA discussion paper provides a summary of the deliberations, supported by research from inside and outside the Institute.

The book pursues the following three aims:

• First and foremost, we want to help conceptualize the Arctic as a multifaceted region within a changing global context, which is both affected by it and affecting it.

• Secondly, we aim to describe the major drivers of these GlobalArctic dynamics; namely, ecological changes, changes in resources extraction practices and corresponding infrastructure development, including urbanization, as well as changes in geopolitical configurations, and changes in Arctic economies, societies and cultures.

• Thirdly, we aim to define, analyze, and discuss concrete ways to address these changes in the GlobalArctic, including mitigation, adaptation, and resiliencebuilding. The purpose is to offer the relevant GlobalArctic stakeholders innovative approaches, methods, best practices, and solutions to address these unprecedented dynamics. Here the GlobalArctic is a (new) geopolitical context.

This book is based on the collection of articles centered around Russia and its policies. The articles are grouped under three parts. The first part contains articles on international relations, Russian foreign policy, and the situation in the world. The main themes they cover include Russian policy in Asia and the Eurasian integration — in which Moscow plays the most active role.

The second part looks at the theorization of Russia’s internal processes, issues concerning reforms to the communist system, its troubled transition from Communism, and analysis of the country’s current political regime. While elaborating on various reforms and transition from the communist system, the author has suggested certain alternatives concepts. Many of the articles analyze the shortcomings and inconsistencies of the modern Russian political system.

The third part is devoted to current issues in Russian politics, the democratization process, growing authoritarian tendencies, mass protests, and that evaluate the programs and policies of individual leaders. The book will be of interest to those specializing in Russian foreign and domestic policy as well as to all those interested in following the developments of this country, its role in the world, and the global situation in general.

The Handbook of Research on International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic discusses the perspectives and major challenges of the investment collaboration and development and commercial use of trade routes in the Arctic. Featuring research on topics such as agricultural production, environmental resources, and investment collaboration, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, business leaders, and environmental researchers seeking coverage on new practices and solutions in the sphere of achieving sustainability in economic exploration of the Artic region

A number of recent events in the last decade have renewed interest in Russian discourses on international law. This book evaluates and presents a contemporary analysis of Russian discourses on international law from various perspectives, including sociological, theoretical, political and philosophical. The aim is to identify how Russian interacts with international law, the reasons behind such interactions, and how such interactions compare with the general practice of international law. It also examines whether legal culture and other phenomena can justify Russia's interaction in international law. Russian Discourses on International Law explains Russia's interpretation of international law thrugh the lens of both leading western scholars and contemporary western-based Russian scholars. It will be of value to international law scholars looking for a better understanding of Russia's behaviour in international legal relations, law and society, foreign policy, and domestic application of international law. Further, those in fields such as sociology, politics, pholosophy, or general graduate students, lawyers, think tanks, government departments, and specialised Russian studies programmes will find this book helpful.

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism—such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law—have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within often rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This third volume of the Reset DOC “Russia Workshop” collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings, providing a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law (Pravovoe Gosudarstvo), and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times, when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin’s death, the “thaw intelligentsia” of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR.  The third part focuses on the “time of troubles” under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and “system liberals”. Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a “reboot” of Russian liberalism?

This volume is based on the premise that moral claims made about sports mega-events

constitute one of the most visible and significant sources of normative expectations about

international affairs. Thanks to sport’s extraordinary popularity, what we expect of international

sport helps shape what we expect of the international order. Few events, if any, draw the level of

global attention that the Olympic Games and the men's soccer World Cup excite. In 2012, an

estimated 70% of the world’s population participated in some way in the Olympic Games;

figures for the 2010 men’s soccer World Cup show close to half the world’s population watching

at least some of the coverage.1 These events do not simply offer a representation of a global

order; they create, reinforce, and propagate normative views about that global order, helping to

constitute the moral rules and expectations that guide and inspire it.

The volume traces the origins and development of international sport’s major idealistic

claims and examines how they have operated in particular contexts. Chapters investigate the

functions idealistic claims have served, what kind of politics they have abetted, and why they

have been believable, when, and to whom. It aims to understand how different ideals have

worked sometimes in tension and sometimes in harmony and how the relative power of each

ideal has waxed and waned as a result of changes in international politics. The contributions

probe contestation over ideals by organizers, proponents, and critics; the legitimizing strategies

that have underpinned those claims; the relationship of these claims to broader currents of

international idealism; and how these claims have influenced conceptions of world order.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of public opinion patterns among Muslims, particularly in the Arab world. On the basis of data from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer Project and the Arab Opinion Index, it compares the dynamics of Muslim opinion structures with global publics and arrives at social scientific predictions of value changes in the region. Using country factor scores from a variety of surveys, it also develops composite indices of support for democracy and a liberal society on a global level and in the Muslim world, and analyzes a multivariate model of opinion structures in the Arab world, based on over 40 variables from 12 countries in the Arab League and covering 67% of the total population of the Arab countries. While being optimistic about the general, long-term trend towards democracy and the resilience of Arab and Muslim civil society to Islamism, the book also highlights anti-Semitic trends in the region and discusses them in the larger context of xenophobia in traditional societies. In light of the current global confrontation with radical Islamism, this book provides vital material for policy planners, academics and think tanks alike.

This work serves as a comprehensive collection of global scholarship regarding the vast fields of public administration and public policy. Written and edited by leading international scholars and practitioners, this exhaustive resource covers all areas of the twin fields of study. In keeping with the multidisciplinary spirit of these fields, the entries make use of various theoretical, empirical, analytical, practical, and methodological bases of knowledge.

The encyclopedia provides a snapshot of the most current research in public administration and public policy, covering such important areas as:

1. organization theory, behavior, change and development

2. administrative theory and practice

3. bureaucracy

4. public budgeting and financial management

5. public finance and public management

6. public personnel and labor-management relations

7. crisis and emergency management

8. institutional theory and public administration

9. law and regulations

10. ethics and accountability  

Relevant to professionals, experts, scholars, general readers, and students worldwide, this work will serve as the most viable global reference source for those looking for an introduction to the field.​

This book examines the waves of protest that broke out in the 2010s as the collective actions of self-organized publics. Drawing on theories of publics/counter-publics and developing an analytical framework that allows the comparison of different country cases, this volume explores the transformation from spontaneous demonstrations, driven by civic outrage against injustice to more institutionalized forms of protest. Presenting comparative research and case studies on e.g. the Portuguese Generation in Trouble, the Arab Spring in Northern Africa, or Occupy Wall Street in the USA, the authors explore how protest publics emerge and evolve in very different ways – from creating many small citizen groups focused on particular projects to more articulated political agendas for both state and society. These protest publics have provoked and legitimized concrete socio-political changes, altering the balance of power in specific political spaces, and in some cases generating profound moments of instability that can lead both to revolutions and to peaceful transformations of political institutions.

The authors argue that this recent wave of protests is driven by a new type of social actor: self-organized publics. In some cases these protest publics can lead to democratic reform and redistributive policies, while in others they can produce destabilization, ethnic and nationalist populism, and authoritarianism. This book will help readers to better understand how seemingly spontaneous public events and protests evolve into meaningful, well-structured collective action and come to shape political processes in diverse regions of the globe.

The Working Paper focuses on possible impacts of related technologies, such as machine learning and autonomous vehicles, on international relations and society. The authors also examine the ethical and legal aspects of the use of AI technologies. The present Working Paper of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) includes analytical materials prepared by experts in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous system, as well as by lawyers and sociologists. The materials presented here are intended to contribute to the public dialogue on issues of artificial intelligence and the possible consequences of using this technology.

This report summarizes the results of a German-Russian dialogue project, which was implemented and designed by inmedio peace consult gGmbh (Berlin) and the Institute for Law and Public Policy, ILPP (Moscow) and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office under the ‘Expanding Cooperation with Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia’ Programme. Using a mediative dialogue approach, 20 experts from academia, thinks tanks and NGOs as well as journalists and cultural exchange/dialogue practitioners met near Moscow in September 2018 and in Berlin in November to analyse and reflect on the Russian and Western narratives on what went wrong since the end of the Cold War regarding the deterioration of Russian-Western relations.

Providing a comprehensive overview of Russia’s foreign policy directions, this handbook brings together an international team of scholars to develop a complex treatment of Russia’s foreign policy. The chapters draw from numerous theoretical traditions by incorporating ideas of domestic institutions, considerations of national security and international recognition as sources of the nation’s foreign policy. Covering critically important subjects such as Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine and Syria, the handbook is divided into four key parts:

Part I explores the social and material conditions in which Russia’s foreign policy is formedand implemented.

Part II investigates tools and actors that participate in policy making including diplomacy, military, media, and others.

Part III provides an overview of Russia’s directions towards the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Eurasia, and the Arctic.

Part IV addresses the issue of Russia’s participation in global governance and multiple international organizations, as well as the Kremlin’s efforts to build new organizations and formats that suit Russia’s objectives.

The Routledge Handbook of Russian Foreign Policy is an invaluable resource to students and scholars of Russian Politics and International Relations, as well as World Politics more generally.

Russia and the European Union had all objective preconditions for establishing a lasting cooperative relationship, which could subsequently lead to integration. However, objective factors of their internal development and systemic changes in global politics resulted in a situation where such relations proved to be unclaimed for both parties. The fundamental cause of the crisis in the relations between Russia and Europe was that for both of them the other party was becoming more of an internal negative consolidating factor. In the new historical situation, a return to practices which existed in relations between Russia and Europe before the crisis of 2014 is impossible and, apparently, not viewed as reasonable by either party. However, in the mid-term perspective, the parties may build a new model of relationship based on unbiased assessment of systemic resources and constraints.

This article was born while I was working on my contribution to the Second Moscow International Conference on Opposition to Anti-Semitism, Racism and Xenophobia (October 29-30, 2018). The subject of the conference suggested greater emphasis on antisemitism among other outcrops of xenophobia. The article is based on the materials of the Levada Center 2018: reports on quantitative and qualitative studies of the state and dynamics of public opinion carried out on order of the Russian Jewish Congress to be quoted at the conference. What is even more important is the fact that I completely agree with the theoretical approaches used in the studies mentioned above and the definitions of xenophobia and anti-Semitism found in the reports of the Levada Center. At the same time, “forecasting trends and crises” (which is one of the three aims of the conference) might provide far from identical results; this depends on specific scientific approaches.

The article carries out macro-analysis that takes into account the impact of historically long stages or cycles of ethno-political processes on the dynamics of xenophobia. This analysis allows me to specify assessments based on sociological polls that cover comparatively short historical periods. I have arrived at a comprehensive interpretation of the results of sociological ranking of different ethnic phobias of Russians based on my analysis of the fundamental changes of ethnopolitical situation in Russia in the 1990s vs. the early 2000s. This article covers the ethnopolitical trends that cropped up in Russia and that are connected with the global processes we can observe here and now in the age of populism, to use one of popular definitions. I have also analyzed the essence of populism and its impact on the dynamics of xenophobia.

In the 2000s, the ethnopolitical situation in Russia started changing: the relationships between the ethnic territories and the center as well as ethnic separatism of the autochthonous colonized peoples and anti-Semitism were pushed aside by new problems created by migrants and other isolated ethnic minorities (Gypsies, for example). The rise of national-populism as one of the political movements in Russia and in other countries of the global North is explained by the changes in the basic characteristics of ethno-political situation and the resultant dynamics of xenophobia. I have relied on Russian examples to show that populism has many faces and that its impact on the dynamics of xenophobia is highly ambiguous. National-populism may be responsible for the growth of xenophobia while social populism might transform ethnic, racial and religious phobias into civic protests.

Experts code latent quantities for many influential political science datasets. Although scholars are aware of the importance of accounting for variation in expert reliability when aggregating such data, they have not systematically explored either the factors affecting expert reliability or the degree to which these factors influence estimates of latent concepts. Here we provide a template for examining potential correlates of expert reliability, using coder-level data for six randomly selected variables from a cross-national panel dataset. We aggregate these data with an ordinal item response theory model that parameterizes expert reliability, and regress the resulting reliability estimates on both expert demographic characteristics and measures of their coding behavior. We find little evidence of a consistent substantial relationship between most expert characteristics and reliability, and these null results extend to potentially problematic sources of bias in estimates, such as gender. The exceptions to these results are intuitive, and provide baseline guidance for expert recruitment and retention in future expert coding projects: attentive and confident experts who have contextual knowledge tend to be more reliable. Taken as a whole, these findings reinforce arguments that item response theory models are a relatively safe method for aggregating expert-coded data.

The article explores a series of blockbuster exhibitions of DreamWorks Animation developed by the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) in collaboration with one of the largest Hollywood producers. Curated by ACMI, this blockbuster exhibition was designed to provide a behind-the-scenes look into collaborative processes involved in DreamWorks animations. This exhibition travelled across the Asia-Pacific in 2015-2017 and was hosted by a number of museums, such as the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, and the National Taiwan Science and Education Centre in Taiwan. It displayed over 400 unique objects from the studio’s archive ‘of rare and never before displayed material’, such as drawings, models, maps, photographs, posters, and other artworks. The article explores the highly favourable reception to the DreamWorks Animation blockbuster in different cities in Asia. It employs a geo-visualization of Asian engagement with the blockbuster exhibit to reveal and explain local and global mechanisms of ‘attraction’ power, generated by DreamWorks in different Asian countries. Contributing to the special issue, this article engages with two aspects of it: the form, cultural digital mapping; and the content, the nature of media pop culture exemplified through the traveling blockbuster.

This article explores the overlooked role of museums in the international arena as playing a dual role in cultural diplomacy. It explores the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to illustrate an emerging ‘hybrid’ form of diplomacy that cannot be strictly defined as ‘state’ or ‘non-state’. Although the article documents strong ties between the Hermitage Museum and the Russian government, it also reveals the Hermitage’s growing capacity to build productive bilateral cultural relationships with foreign partners, bypassing governmental control. Specifically, the article looks at the international network of Hermitage Foundations as a successful museum international outreach and fundraising campaign that significantly contributes to the Russian government’s efforts in cultural diplomacy. This case offers new empirical findings from the non-Western context, exposing the growing role of museums in contemporary diplomacy.

The primary ambition of this special issue of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy1 is to approach a certain segment of the diplomatic universe that has been heretofore overlooked, and yet one could argue it is also more than ever pertinent to the effort to understand geopolitical and cultural impacts on governance in contemporary diplomacy.2 The articles that form ‘Non-State Diplomacy from Non-Western Perspectives’ are foremost joined by their challenge to two prevailing tendencies in diplomatic studies scholarship: first, the interpretation of non-Western practices through a predominantly Western lens; and, following from this, that diplomatic action in these contexts is largely confined to state institutions. Each of the articles in this special issue applies exploratory lenses of ‘contextual discovery’ to recalibrate foundational developments in the current diplomacy scholarship through an empirical research conducted in non-Western countries.3 Each article offers fresh findings from non-Western contexts to enrich a growing body of literature that takes a ‘post-globalist’ approach to the study of diplomacy.4 In doing so, the scholarship embraces complexities of challenging co-existence among state and non-state actors in the field of international relations. Two years in the making, this special issue expresses our hope that — by drawing these perspectives into the light — we will be in a much better position to meet this non-state/non-Western phenomenon with a fuller appreciation of its manifestations.

Over the past decade or even longer, a lot has been contemplated and written about the need for Russia to «return» to the African continent. An increase in the importance of Africa’s resource, human and economic potential within the emerging model of world development is undeniable, and with Russia once again claiming to be a weighty player on the global arena, it cannot but seek to expand its presence on the continent to restore its international standing. The first Russia-Africa Summit poised to take place in Sochi (Russia) in October 2019 attests to the growing importance that Moscow attaches to the continent. In recent years, within its new foreign policy approach to Africa, Russia has established special relations with a number of African countries. Russia developed particularly close cooperation with Sudan, just short of establishing a full-fledged strategic partnership, raising hopes in Moscow that it gained a viable foothold on the continent and, consequently, access to farther parts of the continent. Indeed, Russia capitalized on its standing with Khartoum as it managed to penetrate politically and economically into the Central African Republic. On 11 April 2019, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir was removed from power by the Sudanese military and placed under arrest. This put Moscow, which was seen as a close ally of the ousted President, in a precarious position. Even so, the present study argues that the intensity of political and military relations and the convergence of national interests have laid a solid foundation for the close friendship and comprehensive ties between Russia and Sudan. However, the shortcomings of Moscow’s economic policy for Africa in general and Sudan in particular must be addressed promptly if Russia were to establish itself on the continent.

The European Union’s development vector will largely depend on Germany, the engine of the European economy and integration. Europe in general and Germany in particular are at a crossroads. Strained relations with the United States, the migration crisis, the rise of populism, climate change, and China’s economic boom push relations with Russia into the background. How do young Germans see the future of Europe and their own country? To answer this question, it is essential to take a look at the entire spectrum of political trends in Germany and to analyze which of them evoke the greatest response from the younger generation. 

This paper discusses Russian and Iranian economic activity and interests in Syria and focuses on two macroblocks. First of all it seems to us important to highlight the level of trade and economic cooperation between Russia and Syria, on the one hand, and Iran and Syria, on the other. If for Iran’s economic relations with Syria, it should be noted that although the country has long been one of the top priority targets for Iranian trade and the trade interactions between the two sides were on the rise before 2011, the Syrian Crisis caused bilateral trade to fall drastically. However, Russian economic interests in Syria do not look so obvious and convincing. If we talk about the Russian economic presence in Syria after the Arab spring, it would be more correct to consider the interests of individual Russian businessmen and representatives of the economic elite in specific projects in Syria. Also, this work will be devoted to the difficulties faced by Moscow and Tehran in the implementation of their economic and investment projects in Syria and prospects of cooperation and competition between Russia and Iran. Given the close partnership between Iran and Russia in supporting Bashar al-Assad government, this paper also takes a look on the prospects of economic cooperation or rivalry between Tehran and Moscow in Syria and shows that no mechanism has yet devised by the two parties to manage their competition and promote cooperation in Syria’s economic sphere. Of note, this paper deals exclusively with Iran and Russia’s non-military economic activities in Syria and does not cover issues like arms exports or military aids of the two countries to the Syrian government.

This article discusses the structural elements of the concept of a security community using the example of ASEAN. The relevance of studying this phenomenon has risen dramatically due to the official launch of the ASEAN Community in 2015, which consists of three key elements – the Economic Community, the Political and Security Community and the Socio-Cultural Community. The article argues that such generally accepted factors as economic interdependence, the political regimes, and the support of liberal ideas should be considered only as triggers which may facilitate the transition of security communities to a more advanced stage. In this regard, more significant variables are the “we feeling” among ruling elites and the population, the presence of common goals, the interests and values shared by all members of the community, adherence to key norms and principles of functioning of the union, the presence of strong channels of communication between states, the ability of collective response of states to internal and external challenges, and peaceful conflict resolution.

This study investigates the involvement of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the development of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) after the Treaty of Lisbon. The preliminary results reveal that the competence of the CJEU in CFSP is limited because EU member states (MS) avoid extending the principle of direct effect and other acquis of the CJEU in this field. On the basis of the integration through law concept it has been demonstrated that the CJEU (in the realm of rulings as provided by the Treaties) can rule in a way that would almost certainly have an impact on how CFSP is being implemented. This paper provides a reconstruction of the case law in the field and the prospects for integration through legal development.

Previous studies have found that the increase in the proportion of youth in adult population can lead to an increased risk of political violence. However, studies of the influence of the ‘youth bulges’ on the intensity of non-violent protest activity have hardly been conducted. We hypothesize that ‘youth bulges’ could influence the rise of non-violent protests as well. We find that though in the absence of controls, there is a statistically significant negative correlation between the proportion of young people in the total adult population and the intensity of non-violent protests this correlation turns out to be positive after the introduction of controls for per capita GDP, urbanization, non-autocratic political regime and the proliferation of education. 

Political Internet meme is an underresearched contemporary phenomenon situated at the interface of digital media and political communication. Regarded as a unit of online transmission of cultural information, such a meme can be considered, on the on hand, as a manifestation of post-folklore, and on the other hand, as a mechanism of political participation and construction of social media users’ collective identity. The article presents the results of investigation into Internet memes generated by protest discourse in Runet (Russian Internet). Examination of a vast amount of Internet content allows drawing conclusions as to the thematic emphases of protest actions represented in Runet’s memosphere and to the specifics of the image of Russian protest as reflected in memes.

The article investigates the questions how and why, the European mainstream responds to the challenge of the right-wing populist parties (RPP), by analyzing the UK case. Using a mixed methodological approach, which includes the theoretical tools of historical institutionalism, Down’s classification of the mainstream’s strategies and Heinze's approach to analyzing the factors of its choice, we survey the strategic responses of the UK political mainstream (Conservatives and Labour), towards RPP (UK Independence Party). Findings suggest that the political mainstream could move from exclusion strategies, to predominantly inclusion strategies. In the UK case – cooptation of UKIP’s policy positions with political and legal isolation. Transit to these strategies takes place under the influence of the electoral and ideological development of UKIP, the salience of migration issues, strategies of other mainstream parties and the historical conditions that define available options and shape the selection process, in the UK – party-based Euroscepticism.

Based on the idea of the analysis of symbolic representations of sovereignty and framework of poststructuralist international relations theory this research is exploring the performative nature of sovereignty in a comparative empirical perspective. We have taken four well-known speeches on sovereignty issues to see which symbolic representations of sovereignty were involved in the specific discourse of the four presidents: France, the United States of America, Russia and China. In the analyzed symbolic representations of sovereignty, we encounter important differences synthesize ten symbolic representations of sovereignty that are common to all four examined discourses.

The study analyzes the construction of the network links of Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny with various issues of Russian public discussion in the national print media. The theoretical framework is issue ownership theory, according to which political actors have a range of issues that are most strongly associated with them. Ownership by the politician of topics that are perceived as important in the society determines his popularity among the population. In this study, we use the Integrum database, which contains extensive print media archives of approximately 500 Russian magazines and more than 250 national newspapers. We analyze the period from 12.12.2016 to 12.12.2017, i.е., one year after Alexey Navalny's announcement of his intention to participate in the presidential election in 2018. The analysis shows that Putin has more opportunities to form an agenda, as he attracts much more attention from national media than Navalny does. Putin is often mentioned in connection with economic issues and international relations, which attract the attention of the population and are perceived as important, while his activity in these spheres is perceived as successful. Navalny is associated with the issues of corruption, NGOs and civic activism. Corruption is an important topic for Russians, but the low attention of the media to Navalny does not allow him to gain the maximum benefit from owning this story.

This research analyzes the differences between municipal elections in large and medium-sized Russian cities (more than 100,000 citizens) and federal elections to representative bodies for the period from 2003 to 2018. The empirical evidence includes 210 municipal electoral campaigns in 119 cities and 4 federal legislative campaigns for comparison. We examine these differences using the notion of the party system nationalization, which is measured by comparing turnout and voting for political parties at different territorial levels in the same cities, and by party system inflation (with the use of the effective number of parties – an index that allows a comparison of election competitiveness at different administrative levels). Most of the cases are midterm municipal elections held separately between the federal campaigns. However, we draw special attention to the differences when federal and municipal campaigns overlap. The results showed some progress in the process of the nationalization of the Russian party system which is indicated by the rapprochement of the degree of competitiveness in the federal and municipal elections and, later, by the likeliness of electoral preferences at different territorial levels.

Nordic countries are among the main destinations for immigrants in the world because of their traditionally generous policies. They are also some of the most integrated and similar countries. Yet, in the 1970s when they became confronted with the “multicultural question”, they made different choices. This article shows that the presence or absence of a sizeable immigration was the main causal factor. It explains why Sweden adopted multiculturalism while Finland and Iceland did not. However, this factor was sufficient and not necessary. The formulation of multicultural policy provisions (MCPs) in Norway despite a small and late labour immigration was the result of diffusion from Sweden. In Denmark, the absence of sizeable immigration combined with the presence of a nationally-oriented policy legacy to further deny such outcome. There was an upward albeit slow convergence towards multiculturalism. Groupings of multiculturalist and assimilationist countries stuck together until the civic turn in the mid-2000s.

Democracy has not always accompanied market economy. But in modern societies, economic and political freedoms are increasingly interconnected. Democracy and market economy can support each other. This is particularly true in post-communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Thus, authoritarian tendencies observed in these and other regions can negatively affect quality of economic policy and governance.

There is an extensive body of research devoted to how political satire affects political knowledge and political behavior. Extant studies are focused on political satire in democratic countries and do not pay enough attention to authoritarian regimes. This study extends this research to non- democratic regimes, while also adding to it by exploring the extent to which the use of political satire encourages exposure to political information. We conduct an online experiment on the sample of Russian students. We borrow satirical pictures from Lentach – popular Russian socialmedia public page, whose motto is “a propaganda of common sense” as opposed to biasedpolitical messages proliferated by government-controlled media outlets. Using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches, we found that access to political information containing satirical illustrating content increases attention to the information, relative to political news reports accompanied by standard news illustrations. The findings contribute to the literature on the political entertainment and exposure to political information, as well as to research on media under authoritarianism.

The G20 and BRICS emergence in response to systemic vulnerabilities and structural changes in the world economy germinated expectations, reflections and criticisms. The G20 sought to manage the crisis, reform the international architecture and devise a new global consensus. BRICS committed to foster cooperation and policy coordination between its members and promote the international institutions reform.  Often criticized for lack of efficiency and legitimacy, G20 and BRICS consistently engage with international organizations (IOs). This engagement has the potential to promote inclusiveness and efficiency of the two institutions and global governance. The study explores the G20 and BRICS modes of engagement with the IOs testing the assumption that the they can resort to a combination of “catalyst,” “core group” and “parallel treatment” modes and their preferred choice reflects their mission and role in the system of international institutions. Acting as a catalyst they can exert influence for change in IOs through endorsement or stimulus. Engaging IOs as a core group they can impart a new direction by giving a mandate or providing the necessary political leadership. They can also create their own mechanisms in parallel with IOs.  Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis of G20 and BRICS documents the authors trace the dynamics and models of the G20 and BRICS engagement with IOs since their first summits.  The findings confirm G20 and BRICS commitment to multilateralism. The G20 exceeds the BRICS by the number, intensity and scope of references to IOs. It employs all three modes, engaging key partners (the IMF, the FSB, the OECD, the WB, the WTO and the ILO) mostly as a core group. With a different degree of success G20 exerts catalytic influence over its key partners. It resorts to parallel treatment sparingly. The G20 engages IOs across the full range of global governance functions.  BRICS members consistently support the G20 decisions and the UN central role in the multi-polar world. BRICS acts as a catalyst endorsing and supporting change of the UN, the IMF, the WB, the WTO, but never acts as a core group. BRICS increasingly uses its own institutions. The BRICS mostly engages IOs in deliberation and direction setting, less frequently in decision-making. BRICS own mechanisms are also involved in delivery.  Thus G20 demonstrates a strong capability for global governance development through use of IOs, while BRICS contributes to global governance development building BRICS-centered institutional system and stimulating change of the IOs. 

The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of the human factor on the corruption in the public authority. The corruption depends on the institutional quality of the public authority, its ability to withstand the negative manifestations of the human factor, and on the officials’ qualities. The motivation of "going to power" has a big significance. Under the authoritarian regimes, the corruption system is generated by the deformations in the election institution. The managerial lustration expediency for the power purification after the regimes' changes is substantiated. The institutional measures to combat the corruption have been identified.

We explore the role and organizing capacity of foreign business associations (FBAs) in the Russian context. Considering the potential role of FBAs as effective intermediaries during time of aggravated international relations, the paper examines the problems and mechanisms of foreign firms’ interaction with key national partners in their host countries and describes the conditions that lead to effective dialogue between FBAs and national governments. The main phases and factors of evolution are identified for Russia’s two main channels of foreign firms’ collective actions: The Foreign Investment Advisory Council, which is chaired by Russia’s prime minister, and FBAs. A comparative analysis of the efficiencies of each channel finds that political, rather than economic or institutional, factors play the dominant role in explaining the shifting efficiency of collective action of foreign firms over time.

Given its geographical location, the region is important to the EU in terms of security, stability, trade and transit routes. The Western Balkan countries’ economic and political prospects and their future within a European framework should remain one of the top priorities for the EU.

The study analyzes the construction of the network links of Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny with various issues of Russian public discussion in the national print media. The theoretical framework is issue ownership theory, according to which political actors have a range of issues that are most strongly associated with them. Ownership by the politician of topics that are perceived as important in the society determines his popularity among the population. In this study, we use the Integrum database, which contains extensive print media archives of approximately 500 Russian magazines and more than 250 national newspapers. We analyze the period from 12.12.2016 to 12.12.2017, i.е., one year after Alexey Navalny's announcement of his intention to participate in the presidential election in 2018. The analysis shows that Putin has more opportunities to form an agenda, as he attracts much more attention from national media than Navalny does. Putin is often mentioned in connection with economic issues and international relations, which attract the attention of the population and are perceived as important, while his activity in these spheres is perceived as successful. Navalny is associated with the issues of corruption, NGOs and civic activism. Corruption is an important topic for Russians, but the low attention of the media to Navalny does not allow him to gain the maximum benefit from owning this story.

This article aims to add to the exiting poststructuralism literature on Russian sovereignty two more dimensions. In the first part of the article we show the evolution of the symbolic representations of sovereignty in speeches of three Russian presidents and make their comparative analysis. The second part of the article highlights issues of “blame” and “moral duty” and to what degree they enable Russian elites to authoritatively claim to be the agent of its people. Analysis of key metaphors of Russian sovereignty is also exploring whether symbolic representations of sovereignty could be considered a Russian version of “state simulacrum”. Based on inductive approach this research explores sovereignty as a discursive practice narrated as part of official political discourse of Russian Federation. We seek to answer who and how is talking about Russian sovereignty, what are symbolic practices and new frames of its articulation. As an empirical base paper uses 1994-2018 Addresses of Russian president to Federal Assembly as well as several other principal text on sovereignty.