Coherently organised into seven parts, the book provides a structure through which EU-Russia relations can be studied in a comprehensive yet manageable fashion. It provides readers with the tools to deliver critical analysis of this sometimes volatile and polarising relationship, so new events and facts can be conceptualised in an objective and critical manner. Informed by high-quality academic research and key bilateral data/statistics, it further brings scope, balance and depth, with chapters contributed by a range of experts from the EU, Russia and beyond. Chapters deal with a wide range of policy areas and issues that are highly topical and fundamental to understanding the continuing development of EU-Russia relations, such as political and security relations, economic relations, social relations and regional and global governance.

This textbook on political geography is devoted to a discipline concerned with the spatial dimensions of politics. This course is an introduction to the study of political science, international relations and area studies, providing a systemic approach to the spatial dimension of political processes at all levels. It covers their basic elements, including states, supranational unions, geopolitical systems, regions, borders, capitals, dependent, and internationally administered territories. Political geography develops fundamental theoretical approaches that give insight into the peculiarities of foreign and domestic policies. The ability to use spatial analysis techniques allows determining patterns and regularities of political phenomena both at the global and the regional and local levels.

The opening chapter of Public Administration: Perspectives, Management and Challenges is devoted addressing new challenges in public administration in Russia, including law requirements regarding the transparency of public policy and the difficulties surrounding their implementation. Following this, the authors assess historical and contemporary examples of innovation in Norwegian municipalities. The criticisms and limits of the results management model implemented in the Brazilian subnational units are analyzed based on specialized literature and three case studies. In closing, in the context of spatial integrated complex solutions regarding the poverty alleviation and social cohesion needs increasing in rural areas in Romania, the authors suggest a conceptual and analytical framework based on risk identification.  

This book develops the concept of China’s model of modernization in three key fields – economic, political and military. Explanations of the Russian analysts are original because of their first-hand knowledge of China and their unique professional experience. It is an original research product, it has insights on the issue of China’s model of modernization, and it is related to policy and practice and touches upon policy as well as practice. The book concentrates on the most important issues of modernization. The book has an impact on analytical and policy-making community because it explains the key issues of China’s modernization and its consequences in the most important spheres.

This book examines the Chinese model of modernization in three key fields – economic, political and military. The explanations provided here, prepared by Russian analysts, are original because of the authors’ first-hand knowledge of China and their unique professional experience. They share essential insights on China’s model of modernization and its connections to both policy and practice. Focusing on the most vital issues surrounding modernization, and on its impacts on the most important spheres in China, the book offers a valuable asset for the analytical and policy-making community.

The publication was carried out within the framework of a joint project of HSE University and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR / Russia and the Republic of Indonesia. The project heads are Dr. Evgeny Kanaev (HSE University) and Dr. Dmitry Mosyakov (IOS RAS).

The Mediterranean region has faced a significant number of challenges that have stemmed from turbulent events taking place on its Southern shores: conflicts and instability, the migration crisis, disruptions of regional value chains, souring regional relations, and foreign power interferences that have severely affected the region. The Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the Southern Mediterranean, but the health crisis had ambiguous effects on the underlying economic, social, and political trends of the region. It has exposed and exacerbated much of the previous sources of tension and, obscured many of them as public attention moved towards facing the public health emergency. Will the Covid-19 pandemic spur governments and civil societies to action? Or will it just serve as another smokescreen behind which to hide the region's longstanding problems?

This book is an analysis of the developments associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (B&RI) five years after Xi Jinping announced both the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st Maritime Silk Road (21MSR). Together, these two dimensions constitute the B&RI, providing the so-called Chinese ‘project of the century’ with regional, inter-regional and global reach. This book aims at assessing the impact of the B&RI in all these dimensions and levels of influence. This is a current and promising theme, not only in the short and medium terms, but also within a broader timescale, reflecting Chinese strategic thinking itself, since Chinese philosophy and culture are oriented towards long-term and inter-generational perspectives. Likewise, both the title of this publication and the way it has been organized result from the empirical perception that China asserts a conservative attitude towards foreign affairs, redesigned in multiple dimensions, to create a perception of domestic unity and global prestige. In this vein of thought, the B&RI is already influencing and will continue to influence, directly or indirectly, the current economic and political order.

This textbook covers the main theoretical issues of international security analysis (definitions of basic notions/categories, methodological issues, description of concepts and theories), as well as practical and political aspects of the activities of world powers and key international organizations (UN, OSCE, EU, NATO, CSTO, SCO, etc.) in the areas of war and peace, conflict resolution and settlement, limitation and reduction of armaments, combating terrorism, and other contemporary threats and challenges to international security. The publication contains extensive analysis of facts/events, infographics, and a bibliography. It is addressed to researchers, graduate students, master 's students, postgraduate students, and anyone interested in international security issues.

A collection of essays written in 2012-2019 on the evolution of Putin's regime in Russia in the perspective of Russian history, society and political culture. 

This book explores Russia’s efforts towards both adapting to and shaping a world in transformation. Russia has been largely marginalized in the post-Cold War era and has struggled to find its place in the world, which means that the chaotic changes in the world present Russia with both threats and opportunities. The rapid shift in the international distribution of power and emergence of a multipolar world disrupts the existing order, although it also enables Russia to diversify it partnerships and restore balance. Adapting to these changes involves restructuring its economy and evolving the foreign policy. The crises in liberalism, environmental degradation, and challenge to state sovereignty undermine political and economic stability while also widening Russia’s room for diplomatic maneuvering. This book analyzes how Russia interprets these developments and its ability to implement the appropriate responses. 

This book addresses the challenges and opportunities of contemporary and future development of Eurasia. The main theme of the first part of the book is examining the reaction evoked in different countries by the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative.” The second part analyses other national and international integration and infrastructure projects in Eurasia. This unique publication brings together in one volume works by leading researchers from different countries, all united by their common interest in the political and economic processes unfolding in the Eurasian continent. By offering various points of view from experts from all over the world, this book provides a multi-dimensional analysis of the Eurasian future and will be of value to a wide range of readers, including scholars, publicists, the international business community and decision-makers.

The book focuses most of all on women's and partly on men's agency, to discuss variant ways in which women and men actively use their scopes of action - through political activism, protest, movements, in the military. The book is aiming to dicuss variant perspectives on these issues in different contexts witin Eastern Europe.  How do these in change affect conservative societies and the concepts of masculinity?

The volume is structured in four parts:

I) Floating concepts of Femininities and Masculinities

    (essentially this is a discussion on the role of feminism in the transformation period in Eastern Europe)

II) Political Activism

    (this part deals with political participation of women - also within conservative parties - and of variant forms of protest)

III) Nationalism and Militarization of societies

 (also papers on violence)

IV) Social Roles and Concepts of Women and Men

Authors focus on the fact that in the practice of modern Russian and Chinese scientific thought, mainly investigated the issues of national security, leaving behind scientific discussions of sociocultural security, which are covered very poorly. Cross-border cooperation in this context is considered not only as an incentive for co-development, but also as a special area of interregional cooperation, including the context of Russia-China cross-years of interregional cooperation (2018-2019) implementation. Article deals with the issues of ensuring Russian-Chinese borderland sociocultural security, which authors define as the subject of philosophical reflection. The peculiarities of "sociocultural security" concept in Russian and Chinese scientific discourse correlate with the specifics of Chinese scientific schools in using "cultural security" concept as having similar characteristics with "sociocultural security" concept. Based on works of Russian and Chinese authors, differences and common features in understanding the borderland sociocultural security phenomenon are distinguished. Historical genesis of Russia-China sociocultural frontier spaces formation is described as a two-way process. Emphasis is placed on the formation of "border defensive ideological line" in the territory of Chinese border region as an integral element of ensuring its sociocultural security, allowing a high degree of Chinese culture confidence and marking the ability of foreign culture to attack and discredit resources of traditional Chinese culture.  Authors show main directions of cultural elements historical transmission in Russian-Chinese border region space (regional cultures formation), and also offer recommendations on the modern institutionalization of this process. Cultural policy of Russia and China in the sociocultural space of cross-borderinteraction is analyzed and the conclusion is made about implementation of a special sociocultural policy in the development of Chinese Dongbei borderregions. As a result, authors substantiate the importance of including the educational component as a resource of "soft power" in the process of ensuring border areas sociocultural security, and also establish the basis for complementing the strategy of Russia-China border regions socioeconomic development with sociocultural co-development tasks.

Understanding the connections between climate change policies and sustainable development is critically important for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Well-designed climate mitigation policy can lead to significant co-benefits for a range of development priorities, including enhanced energy security and safety and reduced indoor air pollution; however, if not properly managed, mitigation can also lead to trade-offs. Maximizing synergies and avoiding trade-offs thus requires an integrated strategy based on a new generation of technological and socio-economic pathways that includes climate-resilient adaptation strategies. Over the last four years, CD-LINKS brought together an international team of interdisciplinary researchers with both global and national expertise. Funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union, the project applied cutting-edge scientific tools and models to explore the linkages between climate policies and sustainable development. Major achievements of the project include the development of globally consistent national low-carbon development pathways, and the formation of a research network and capacity building platform to leverage knowledge exchange among institutions. The project also improved understanding of the linkages between climate change policies and multiple sustainable development objectives and greatly enhanced the existing evidence base on policy effectiveness. A particular asset of the project are the insights related to policy designs that adequately account for mitigation trade-offs across sectors, actors, and objectives. We invite you to learn more about this ground-breaking work in the pages that follow.

The MENA Region: A Great Power Competition volume deals with competition among regional and external players for the redistribution of power and international status in the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Russia’s renewed role and the implications for US interests. Over the last few years, a crisis of legitimacy has beset the liberal international order. In this context, the configuration of regional orders has come into question, as in the extreme case of the current collapse in the Middle East. The idea of a ‘Russian resurgence' in the Middle East set against a perceived American withdrawal has captured the attention of policymakers and scholars alike, warranting further examination. This volume, a joint publication by ISPI and the Atlantic Council, gathers analysis on Washington's and Moscow's policy choices in the MENA region and develops case studies of the two powers’ engagament in the countries beset by major crises.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest regional security organisation, possesses most of the attributes traditionally ascribed to an international organisation, but lacks a constitutive treaty and an established international legal personality. Moreover, OSCE decisions are considered mere political commitments and thus not legally binding. As such, it seems to correspond to the general zeitgeist, in which new, less formal actors and forms of international cooperation gain prominence, while traditional actors and instruments of international law are in stagnation. However, an increasing number of voices - including the OSCE participating states - have been advocating for more formal and autonomous OSCE institutional structures, for international legal personality, or even for the adoption of a constitutive treaty. The book analyses why and how these demands have emerged, critically analyses the reform proposals and provides new arguments for revisiting the OSCE legal framework.

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.

The paper presents the results of a study conducted in 2018 in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia. The big part of the territory of this region is located in the Arctic, which has a low population density and large distances between settlements, which increases the importance of public consent for the effectiveness of public administration. The aim of the study was to determine the level of transparency of public authorities in their interaction with civil society. The authors did a corpus-based content analysis of administrative regulations and conduct the questionnaire survey (N=439). It has been established that Russian civil society has a request to participate in the adoption of state decisions, but at the same time, citizens are not ready to fully implement public control.

Central Asian states are usually considered as passive elements rather than active agents of integration in Greater Eurasia. This article considers the role of these states as active agents shaping integration processes according to their own interests and perspectives. All Central Asian states conduct so-called “multivector” foreign policies balancing relations with the key great powers (Russia, China, and “collective West”) as well as with Middle Eastern and South Asian nations. From their point of view, the ideal formula for Greater Eurasia should include the entire continent. However, the current geopolitical situation in the world turns integration of Central Asian nations with Russia and China into the only available option. Political and military integration with Russia within the CSTO as well as economic integration with Russia within the Eurasian Economic Union are key elements of this. The SCO is also very important as the key structure shaping regional security system. The general framework for the construction of Greater Eurasia including Russia, China, and Central Asian nations in the economic sphere is mostly connected to the Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative and to the agreement on cooperation between this initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union. However, between Central Asian nations, on one hand, and Moscow and Beijing, on the other hand, there are still many practical issues that must be solved to push integration forward, and currently there are no indicators that these issues would be solved in the near future.

This article examines the current trends in the development of the energy sector in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is a key factor in the country’s competitiveness and a driver of the comprehensive modernization of Kazakhstani society. Considerable attention is heeded to the development risks in various sectors of the fuel and energy complex that affect Kazakhstan’s multi-vector energy policy. The urgent task of the country’s instrument sustainable development and the creation of a more balanced energy sector lead to the conclusion that a synergetic approach is prioritized in Kazakhstan’s policy. This approach entails the development of “energy pluralism” with the prospect of further diversification of the country’s energy balance and an emphasis on innovative development.

 

Political Internet memes are an underresearched phenomenon situated at the intersection of digital and political communication. Regarded as a unit of cultural information transmitted online, such a meme can be considered as both a manifestation of anonymous networked creativity and a mechanism of political participation. The article presents the results of an investigation into Internet memes generated by protest discourses on Runet (Russian Internet). The examination of Internet content allows us to draw conclusions as to the thematic emphases of protest actions represented in Runet’s memosphere and the specifics of the image of Russian protest as reflected in memes.

Russian policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has undergone significant changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moscow’s actions in the region have began to acquire a less ideologically driving and more pragmatic character. However, the Arab Spring and conflict in Ukraine have underscored a more aggressive policy on the part of Russia, the quintessence of which was military intervention in an armed conflict far from its borders, in Syria. Largely Russian intervention to Syria was a tool for Kremlin to resolve internal problems, and a bargaining chip in relations with global and regional actors. At the same time the declining in public interest in foreign policy, as well as the high costs of military presence in the Middle East, in the short term will force the Kremlin to respond to demands from domestic audiences. The resolution of this problem will define the future of Russia in the MENA region. It will either be an ‘honest broker’ in regional conflicts, or have to be content with the role of ‘junior partner’ to Washington, Beijing or other actors.

The interaction between Russia and Gulf countries represents the story of ups and downs, severe conflicts and sharp warmings that can largely be explained by the permanently changing role and place of each of these players at the global and Middle Eastern political arenas. After Russia's “return” to the Middle East in 2012–2015, Moscow's foreign policy towards the Gulf can be explained in terms of a bargaining strategy. On the one hand, Russia is trying to underline its importance and relevance to the GCC by putting forward diplomatic and political initiatives. The Kremlin uses its direct or indirect presence in the key regional conflicts such as the Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni civil wars as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran’s nuclear issue. On the other hand, Russia is interested in building up stronger economic cooperation with the GCC, drawing bigger volumes of investments from the Gulf to Russia’s broken economy, as well as coordinating efforts with Saudi Arabia in the global oil market. While, in the near future, the qualitative evolution of Russia’s relations with the GCC is hardly possible, there are still options for their deepening within the current level of interaction between Moscow and the Gulf.

Aims

Non-beverage alcohol was a major cause of preventable mortality of working-age males in Izhevsk (Russia) in 2003–2004. The Russian government has since taken measures to reduce availability of non-beverage alcohol. Yet, some types of non-beverage alcohol still remain available for consumers. The aim of this study was to assess the availability and sources of non-beverage alcohol in Udmurtia.

Methods

A survey of adults on the streets of Izhevsk and its environs was performed on workdays to assess non-beverage drinking patterns in 2018. The questionnaire included questions about socio-demographic status and alcohol use, including non-beverage alcohol consumption and drinking patterns.

Results

One hundred and sixty-eight people were questioned, of whom, 28% reported consuming non-beverage alcohol. Non-beverage alcohol consumers were more likely to be single, unemployed or retired, younger or older than 19–29 years, have lower educational status and income, have hangovers and drink moonshine.

Conclusion

Non-beverage alcohol consumption still took place at Izhevsk, a typical Russian city, in 2018, and its availability was still high. Untaxed and cheap medicinal non-beverage alcohol consumption seems to have become the major source of non-beverage alcohol consumption. Further regulation of non-beverage alcohol may be required in Russia.

The aim of the study is to compare the strategies of the Russian and American media in justifying the need to comply with international obligations on atmosphere and climate protection in the context of solving national propaganda tasks and to describe their dominant propaganda models. The research methods comprise the technique of intent-analysis by Ushakova and Pavlova, as well as the technique of rhetorical deconstruction by Ibarra and Kitsuse. Empirical materials of the research include texts of the of Russian and American media (“Izvestia”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, “Gazeta.Ru”, “The New York Times”, “The Washington Post”, “USA Today”: 104 articles; 01/01/2012 - 01/01/2017). It was found that the propaganda models of the Russian and American media correspond to the description of propaganda within the state by Ellul under the two-party system of the state: the ruling party conducts propaganda for itself, the opposition party conducts propaganda against the ruling party. The propaganda model of the American media in this area of information competition between the two states can be characterized as the “propaganda model of the leader”, and the propaganda model of the Russian media - the “opposition propaganda model”

The current study investigates the effect that formal education, as a factor of socio-economic development, have on the intensity and forms of political protest. By way of increased socialization of democratic values, increased cognitive understanding of the society at large, and human capital to participate in protests, increases in a country's level of formal education should theoretically lead to increased levels of peaceful protest. On the other hand, increases in formal education are also theorized to play a mitigating role on the intensity of violent protests (riots) for the previously mentioned reasons as well as the fact that education acts as a strong factor in increasing social mobility. With data from 1960 to 2010 and spanning 216 countries,

Globalisation has provoked a deep transformation in international law, political affairs and governance with contradictory consequences. It has stimulated the cosmopolitan project of global constitutionalism, transnational integration and the unification of democratic standards. However, it also resulted in the fragmentation of international affairs, the deterioration of constitutional democracy and a feeling of a growing shortage in democracy on national and international levels of governance. The international debate on global legal stability therefore cannot ignore the problem of constitutional transformation. The most simple solution to the dilemma consists in the polarised opposition of two trends in the development of the international legal order, namely, integration (in the form of the constitutionalisation of international law) and its fragmentation (in form of the separation of different global constitutional regions, supra-national actors or regimes). According this view, the two rival trends cannot be coordinated and a sharp collision cannot be avoided. The result could be described as a “zero-sum game”, as progress in integration means an equal regress in fragmentation and vice versa. This approach is therefore useful as a methodological presumption grounded on the very abstract, linear and teleological vision of globalisation considering its development from a black and white perspective and associating it strictly with positive results—progress in human rights protection, the supremacy of law and law-based states. The current global pandemic, however, reveals the other side of globalisation—economic recession, legal contradictions, the prevalence of egoistic motives, and the perceived interests of separate regions and national states over general international values or a different interpretation of its content and “common” character. That simple fact makes it important to reconsider the complex character of legal globalisation and the reciprocal relations between its opposite sides—constitutionalisation and the fragmentation of international constitutionalism. Trying to balance the impact of these two opposing trends, the author analyses the positive and negative effects of globalisation on constitutional development regarding such issues as transnational constitutionalisation, democracy and national sovereignty, the changing place of multilayer constitutionalism, the international separation of powers, and the system of global governance in the establishment of transnational constitutional democratic legitimacy. From this point of view, the populist backslide in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) looks dangerous and unforeseen, but it is a systemic and potentially predictable reaction of global regions on the uneven character of integration, the lack of democratic legitimacy and a new answer to the contortions and dysfunctions of global governance. An adequate response to these challenges could be found in a new concept of constitutional integration based on ongoing dialogue between the transnational and national actors of legal globalisation. This dialogue is possible by using a conflict-mediation strategy, elaborated by international experts, especially, for the deliberation of complex and protracted conflicts, which have no clear practical solutions in the short to medium term.

This research is based on theories of federalized party systems, second-order elections and nationalization of party system comparing long-established democratic federations in terms of actual autonomy of their subnational party systems. The study shows that despite obvious prerequisites for subnational autonomy (such as federal institutions, different timing of elections, freedom to establish regional parties and blocs) most federations have created solidly nationalized party systems. Nevertheless, we explore striking differences among the federations in terms of presence and strength of regional parties, while our thorough comparative analysis of electoral turnout and parties support at federal and regional levels of elections reveals that federations are very different and sometimes unique. Also, we see that the theory of second-order elections does not work consistently which in our point of view means the decisive role of regional agenda and emphasizes the presence of national parties consistently inclined to local politics. We conclude that the development of partially autonomous subnational party systems and biases of electoral outcomes in federal and regional elections depend on the historical evolution of political institutions in the state rather than create similar patterns across the federations.

State information policy becomes especially important in times of political crises. The government has not only to solve the problem efficiently, but also preserve its positive image for the audience to restore order, retain its legitimacy and prevent citizens from any harmful collective actions. Media as the main link between the state and the citizens become, thus, one of the main means to solve this political crisis. In this study, the author takes the case of Hong Kong protests in summer-fall 2019 as the example of how state media work in order to resolve the crisis. By creating the network of Chinese media with the SNA method, we analyze how government controls the main information flows and what role local prodemocratic Hong Kong newspapers play in the information network of China. The results of the study show the decisive role of state media in creating the information agenda around Hong Kong protests. Moreover, there is close interconnectivity between Hong Kong media and government newspapers and between Hong Kong media and foreign sources of information, which makes local newspapers an important bridge between Eastern and mainland Chinese political views.

In this paper, the author considers the main external and internal factors of the formation of the Eurasian track of the foreign policy of the Republic of Moldova from 2009 to 2020. Among the main internal factors influencing the development of Eurasian track (as opposed to European) of foreign policy, the author singles out: the coming to power of the pro-Russian President I. Dodon in 2016, and the pro-Western contingent of the parliament headed by M. Sandu, who, on the contrary, helps blur this track. Among external factors, the author considers such as: the influence of the Ukrainian crisis on the opinion of citizens of the Republic of Moldova towards Western institutions, and as a result, the growing popularity of the “Russian” foreign policy direction; the current orientation of the economy on the market of the CIS countries; “Soft power” of the Russian Federation, mostly concentrated on a common language (Russian) and cultural values (literature, historical past, etc.); the willingness of Eurasian partners (it is mainly about the Russian Federation, as well as the PRC) to provide assistance in crisis situations at no cost, unlike European and Western institutions, which traditionally indicate a number of democratic transformations in the country as one of the conditions for providing assistance to the recipient. In general, the author comes to the conclusion that the Eurasian track of the foreign policy of the Republic of Moldova is still in its infancy, but it has great potential and promises interesting prospects for a small state with a favorable geographical position and located at the crossroads of the most important transport routes between the West and the East.

This paper explores how international trade flows contribute to democracy and shows that countries' trade partners define the nature of this relationship: higher volumes of trade with democracies are conducive to democracy, while higher trade levels with autocracies undermine it. Moreover, the effects of trade are uneven and are pronounced only for 49 states (34% of the sample). Results also indicate that trade with democracies does not sufficiently influence democratic transitions but rather helps already established democracies to endure. The "autocratic trade", on the opposite, undermines democratic survival, and it also reduces the probability of transition from partial democracies. Therefore, trade only partially supports democratic promotion when it is, indeed, a source of authoritarian promotion and consolidation. These findings are robust to accounting for autocorrelation, checking sensitivity of model specifications and acknowledging that democracy is measured with error. Finally, Instrumental Variable estimation, using predicted trade volumes from the Gravity Equation, shows that these effects are also causal.

In the end of the XX century the PLA faced a challenge of the possibility of the outbreak of a high-tech war, which required it to improve technical capacity and raise the quality of human resources. The latter was ensured by establishing cooperation with civilian universities and colleges used as a source of qualified science and engineering personnel. The PLA strategy to attract highly-qualified personnel has changed over time, including the experiments with the establishment of the model resembling the US ROTC program aimed at combining advantages of military and civilian education. Notably, though guofansheng or defense students program used to be one of the prominent channels of attracting students from civilian universities and colleges, it has been terminated. The paper focuses on revealing the reasons behind the termination as well as specifics of the program. It is concluded that the program has failed to overcome civil-military divide and successfully integrate guofangsheng into the army. It is noted that at the current moment, there is a gradual shift towards recruitment primarily from among university graduates having served in the army, while adapting the enrolment structure of undergraduate students in military academies.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the centrifugal tendencies in 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain by demonstrating that certain differences in the configurations of factors have lead to varying degrees of the loss of autonomy. The main conclusion is that for the configurations leading to less autonomy, there is a low level of economic development, a low volume of EU funding, and an absence of local languages as a factor of identity. The cases of Andalusia, Asturias, and Galicia are of particular importance in these configurations. For the configurations that lead to greater autonomy, two patterns are identified. The first group (Catalonia and the Basque Country) demonstrates a link between centrifugal tendencies and three conditions: the existence of regionalist parties in the parliaments of Autonomous Communities (AC), a high level of economic development and a high level of identification with a regional language. The second group of cases (Valencia and the Canary Islands) demonstrates the added importance of funding under the EU regional policy programs for the period from 2014 to 2020. The scientific novelty of the article lies in its analysis of the dynamics of centrifugal tendencies in Spain via crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA).

The paper investigates the impact of an electoral support for president for short- and long-term transfers between national and provincial governments in tutelary regimes. The research uses the case of Iran; the database covers 330 observations for 30/31 provinces for 2005-2015. The results show that Iranian presidents target short-term transfers for disloyal provincial elites, while long-term transfers do not show political connection with voting patterns. The results also allow for assuming that the key factor for the logic of distribution is a political competition.

The democratic deficit problem in the EU polity is becoming more relevant in the context of the multifaceted crisis and the politicization of European integration. Taking into account that the category of resilience is actively used in the official EU discourse as a system’s ability to reform and to counter threats, it is interesting, from a research point of view, to consider the use of resilience as an analytical optics to view the current EU internal political development. This article analyzes, in terms of resilience, the attempts of the EU’s mainstream actors to improve the democratic elements of the EU’s institutional structure during the European Parliament (EP) elections 2019 and their relationships with the agents of EU politicization – right-wing populist actors. The main findings suggest that (1) EU politicization exacerbates the problem of the democratic deficit and forces mainstream actors to seek strategies to increase the resilience of the whole system; (2) in order to preserve their own subjectness in the face of growing populism and the politicization of European integration, mainstream actors choose a strategy of depoliticization, which has decreased the EU resilience; (3) right-wing populist actors are agents of politicization, they play an ambivalent role in relation to EU resilience, being a resource and a threat.

Vecchione et al. (2015) demonstrated effects of four higher-order values on political participation across 20 European countries. In their Study 1, they found that political participation was related positively to self-transcendence and openness to change values while negatively to conservation and ambiguously to self-enhancement values. Moreover, these effects were stronger in more democratic countries. The current study attempted a replication of the Vecchione et al.’s Study 1 using more rigorous modeling approach. The multilevel structural equation models with latent variables for both participation and basic values replicated the main effects of self-transcendence and conservation values but demonstrated a negative effect of openness values (vs positive in the original study), a positive effect of self-enhancement values (vs ambiguous or insignificant in the original study), and counter-intuitive cross-level interactions pointing to a lower effects of values in more democratic countries (vs the opposite in the original study). Overall model fit and explanatory power was much larger in the models with less assumptions. These discrepancies resulted mostly due to the original study’s implicit assumption that basic values’ measurement errors were zero. The new results have an important substantive contribution as they indicate a counter-intuitive similarity of effects of the supposedly opposite values. I suggest that self-transcendence – self-enhancement is a politically activating value dimension, whereas openness to change – conservation is a dimension that discourages political participation regardless of a preferred extreme.

This paper seeks to test if the disillusionment theory developed by Sokolov et al. (2018) to explain the rise of anti-Americanism in post-Soviet Russia, can also explain the recent growth of Euroscepticism in East-Central Europe (ECE). We provide anecdotal evidence of anti-EU disillusionment in the region and then test several empirical implications of the disillusionment theory using mass-level survey data from the European Social Survey (ESS). Our empirical findings are, however, contradictory. This suggests that the disillusionment model cannot be directly applied to the ECE case and should be modified to some extent. We propose two potential modifications. The first is based on David Laitin’s concept of “the most favored lords” and the second underscores the benefits that EU membership offers to the upper strata of Eastern European societies.

Unlike in the 1990s and early 2000s, nowadays scholars rarely address the issue of international activity of Russian regions (phenomenon known as paradiplomacy). Due to the successful centralization efforts, Russian governors almost lost their domestic as well as external agency. However, there is still a considerable variation in the levels of their international activity which remains unexplained. Employing an original dataset on the international activity of Russian governors from 2005 to 2015 I investigate the effect local political regime, ethnicity and other factors have on the level of gubernatorial participation in paradiplomacy. Contrary to other studies I find that ethnicity has a positive effect on the external activity. I argue that paradiplomacy of republics serves as a tool of their ethnic policy. I also find that more democratic local political regimes bolster the willingness of the governors to participate in paradiplomacy. Varyag governors with no prior connections to the region are also more active internationally.

The paper examines collective memory of British and Russian youth. The authors use the results of surveys conducted among Russian and British students. They focus primarily on the structure of pride in the collective memory of young people. They propose to analyze the category of pride among young people across several dimensions. First, they look at the qualitative content of national pride: pride in the realization of tasks relating to “soft power” (for example, culture, education, sports), and pride in manifestations of “hard power” (for example, pride in military victories or power politics). Second, they analyze the temporal localization of national pride: were are the main events, personalities, and phenomena study participants take pride in, both in the past and in the present. Third, an important element of understanding pride in a country is the relationship of pride to shame. In this paper, two types of national cultures are identified: a culture where pride prevails over shape (we call this “culture of pride”), and cultures where shame prevails (“culture of shame”).

The 1980 Olympiad in Moscow (the first Olympiad in Eastern Europe and the socialist  state) is viewed through the prism of the successes and failures of the cultural and sports diplomacy of the Soviet state. Olympics-80 as a kind of mega-project "developed socialism" promoted (albeit temporarily) not only to strengthening the position of the Soviet Union in the international arena (especially in the background of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), but also unity of Soviet citizens in the face of "Western threat". The situation was somewhat more complicated with attempts to use the Olympic project to strengthen the socialist camp.  The source base of the research was the materials of the State archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian state archive of socio-political history and the Central archive of Moscow, as well as the published documents of the Russian state archive of modern history.  It is shown that, despite the boycott of the Olympics, its consequences did not have a particularly strong impact on the development of sports ties and international tourism in the USSR. For example, in 1980, at the suggestion of the delegation of the USSR, the participants of the world conference on tourism, when adopting the Manila Declaration on world tourism, included in the Declaration all the initiatives of the Soviet delegation. And since 1982, the process of restoring international sports contacts began. 

  PublicationReportTitleThe Tip of the Iceberg : Prop. 1975:26 and its Freedom of Choice Goal in Sweden’s Multiculturalism PolicyAuthorTawat, MahamaEditorHellström, AndersDate2019English abstractIn the expansive literature on Swedish multiculturalism policy, the Freedom of Choice Goal (FCG) of the Bill, Prop. 1975:26, Guidelines for an Immigrant and Minority Policy is often presented as its founding document. But this belies the fact that the Goal was beset by a controversy about its multicultural scope in the years that followed its adoption in 1975 that was never really settled. This article revisits the question and shows that the Goal indeed represented a multicultural vision. However, it was just the tip of an iceberg formed by socioeconomic integration policies. Earlier and more consistent multicultural policy provisions were present most notably in the state cultural policy. The article draws evidence from multiple sources including comparison with Norway.

The crisis in relations with the West and the subsequent sanctions hampered the development of Moscow’s cooperation with a number of foreign partners. Under these conditions, the role of the EAEU as an agent for promoting Russia's foreign trade interests has dramatically increased, including the formation of Greater Eurasian Partnership, Moscow’s flagship initiative. Russia’s officials have repeatedly stressed that ASEAN is one of the major pillars of the emerging geostrategic space. The 3rd ASEAN-Russian Federation Summit on Strategic Partnership held in Singapore in November 2018 resulted in signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ASEAN and Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) on Economic Cooperation which aims to unlock the potential of cooperation between two integration blocks. The paper addresses the following question – to what extent can RussiaASEAN strategic partnership create a positive spillover effect on the EAEU-ASEAN ties and trigger the Greater Eurasian Partnership concept. In doing so, the paper focuses on factors which stand behind ASEAN’s rising interest in Eurasian space, EAEU’s strive to develop relationships with Association and the limits of bilateral cooperation in a broader Greater Eurasian framework. It is concluded that the full engagement of ASEAN member states into Eurasian initiatives (even taking into account their successful implementation) depends on several factors. Firstly, to what extent EAEU member states can eliminate structural problems - institutional imbalances, limited export supplies, internal disagreements between the participants. Secondly, it will depend on whether Russia and ASEAN will be able to back up the status of strategic partnership with economic projects. Finally, will the EAEU partners be able to offer ASEAN an attractive interaction format, for example, the Great Eurasian Partnership, which needs to be conceptually filled and linked with ASEAN key initiatives and plans.

Correct aggregation of individual preferences into collective one is central problem of nowadays Social Choice theory. After the Arrow’s and Gibbard–Satterthwaite impossibility theorems it became clear that our desire to justify an electoral procedure is doomed to failure. At the same time a lot of scholars continued exploring different properties of existing voting rules and constructing the new ones. Contemporary research in this area explore two main properties of aggregation procedures — their degree of manipulability and computational complexity of manipulation. Quantitative evaluations of these properties tend to be main criteria of voting procedure selection. But last decades it turned out that another threat for theory of voting is incompatibilities and unexpected outcomes of different kind, usually called paradoxes. This article provides complete systematization of voting paradoxes known for today. We also presented an attempt to formulate a complete proof of the (in)stability of seven most common used voting rules to paradoxes of any type, which had not been undertaken before. Our results show that different voting procedures are qualitatively different in the sense of vulnerability to voting paradoxes which makes reasonable to propose additional criteria of voting procedure selection and opens the gate for further quantitative research.

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.