The Oriental Business and Innovation Center (OBIC) was set up by the Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences and the Central Bank of Hungary in 2016. One of the main goals of the initiative was to contribute to a better understanding of Asian cultures, economies, and languages in Hungary. OBIC’s activities aim to improve the improvement of our students’ language skills, enhancing academic mobility towards Asia, and support of Asia-related research. This collection book is the third in the OBIC Book Series and the second in the China-related issues. In recent years, the question has been fiercely debated whether China is following the path of the Asian developmental states, such as Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc. or China’s outstanding economic development is fundamentally different from the success stories of the Asian developmental states. The discussion was becoming more intensive when Chinese economic growth remained stable despite predictions forecasting a slow-down of Chinese economic growth or even the collapse of the economic giant after the financial meltdown of 2008-2009. Since the Great Recession (2008-2009), the pace of Chinese economic development earned the admiration of many countries trying to catch up with advanced states. It must be also added that not only developing countries, but also middle-income countries in Central Europe are experimenting with alternative economic development models to those suggested by the Washington-consensus in the early 90s. This volume of the OBIC Book Series attempts to collect papers that focus on a very special aspect of the Chinese economic model with one fundamental question underlying these papers: what role is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) playing in Chinese economic policy. The book covers three main topics: the implementation of the BRI, the interpretation of the BRI, and its effects and links to the Chinese economic policy. In her paper, Judit Szilágyi gives a systematic overview on how the BRI is implemented in the Eurasian region, and Ma Junchi focuses on the China-Europe railway connections. These papers look at the implementation, while the interpretation of the BRI is covered by Pickus and Nicolea-Nicolea. David Pickus highlights the educational 12 elements and lessons from the BRI launch, while Nicolea-Nicolea make attempts to interpret the Belt and Road Initiative in a Romanian context. Szilárd Boros links the BRI to the broader goals of Chinese economic policy, while Karpov’s paper investigates the multi-track price systems of China. In his paper, Moldicz makes attempts to identify the elements the Chinese economy model shares with the so-called Asian developmental states. the Oriental Business and Innovation Center prepared this book with the goal to give an overview of the state of Chinese economic policy and how it ties to the Belt and Road Initiative. We are thankful for the financial assistance of the Central Bank of Hungary, and the leadership of the Budapest Business School and all the people who supported our efforts in the making of this collection book.  

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.

Our epoch is inseparably connected with revolutionary technological, social and political changes which herald the transition to the new post-industrial civilization. This civilization transit is the third one in the history of humankind. It has a number of peculiarities that are not completely clear and thus require scientific description and analysis. The present-day post-industrial transit opens up huge possibilities for the development of humankind but simultaneously generates new challenges. It seems important to find these challenges and try to predict possible ways of overcoming them. Another considerable problem is interaction between the civilization of the planet whose development accelerates due to tendencies for universalization characteristic of post-industrial transit and local civilizations. The way it exists nowadays and the prospects of this interaction in the future, and also the question of whether local civilizations will be preserved in the future, all these issues are of considerable scientific interest.

The problems and issues above form the object of consideration in this report. The prognostic frame of the report is limited by the next 15-20 years as the end of this period will be characterized by the time of technological revolution which may change the biological basics of human existence. All that will mean formation of a radically new civilization on our planet whose contours are not even visible right now. According to the well-known British physicist, Stephen Hawking, “computers will overtake people…over the next 100 years” and “development of full artificial intelligence may spell the end of human race.”

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?

The past few decades have witnessed the development of an increasingly globalised and multipolar world order, in which the demand for multilateralism becomes ever more pronounced. The BRICS group established in 2009, has evolved into a plurilateral summit institution recognized both by sceptics and proponents as a major participant in the international system.

Addressing the BRICS’s role in global governance, this book critically examines the club’s birth and evolution, mechanisms of inter-BRICS cooperation, its agenda priorities, BRICS countries’ interests, decisions made by members, their collective and individual compliance with the agreed commitments, and the patterns of BRICS engagement with other international institutions. This volume advances the current state of knowledge on global governance architecture, the BRICS role in this system, and the benefits it has provided and can provide for world order.

This book will interest scholars and graduate students who are researching the rise and role of emerging powers, global governance, China and India’s approach to global order and relationship with the United States, Great Power politics, democratization as a foreign policy strategy, realist theory-building and hegemonic transitions, and the (crisis of) liberal world order.

The forecast covers the period up to 2035. It describes dynamic trends that will shape the future of the world during the nearest 20 years. The aim of this study is to foresee the challenges awaiting the world and the forthcoming opportunities which can be used in the interests of the Russian state, ensuring its role as an active participant in the formation of the future world order. The book presents a general analysis of the main trends of world development, its spiritual culture, ideology, politics, innovation, economy, social sphere and interna tional security, the problems of globalization and regionalism. The final section of the book presents strategic recommendations for Russia. Prospective readers of this book include staff members of government institutions and management bodies, research, expert and business communities. It also may be recommended for student scholars of international affairs.

In this CNA Occasional Paper, Russian East Asia expert Vasily Kashin examines the current state of Russian-Chinese defense and security cooperation, Russia’s approach to developing it, and the possible outcomes of a further Russia-China rapprochement. He highlights the historical antecedents to the unprecedently long period of close ties between the two countries, focusing on the mutual advantages derived by both countries from defense industrial cooperation. The paper describes the gradually depending nature of bilateral military cooperation across a number of domains, including arms sales and joint exercises. The paper also addresses Russia’s evolving views on China’s increasing global role and the potential for an even closer Russia-China strategic alliance in the future, concluding that although the two countries are not ready for Western-style cooperation in defense technology, they are gradually moving toward a security partnership characterized by greater integration and interdependence.

This volume offers profound analyses of the main theoretical and practical aspects of the concept of sustainable development: namely, current environmental problems; the building of green economies; climate policies; specifics of international cooperation in the sphere of sustainable development; specific features of business and government involvement in implementing sustainable development; the role of civil society; its social and gender aspects; and specific characteristics of national models of sustainable development. The focus on the international aspects of the implementation of sustainable development ideas makes the insights offered here fresh and unique.

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.

The current international order is in transition, driven by the interplay of its main actors, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and less significantly, the European Union and other emerging forces. If successful, a multipolar global order will eventually be created. However, the transient international order is characterised by chronic instability, regional and global turmoil, and dramatically complicated governance. The central question is whether the emerging multipolar order can provide security and welfare for the international community. Or, will we see policies based on narrow national interests, being bound to bound to reawaken memories of the bipolar Cold War era and its proxy wars? In this book, twelve authors from the US, Russia, Europe and China analyse what the multipolar world order could bring about and how it will affect the predominant powers in the international system.

Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the “progressive” imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the “more advanced” Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between “progressive” and “retrograde” forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the “White Ribbons” social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (2013–2014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpetntier, this book shows how “progressive” articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

While workers movements have been largely phased out and considered out-dated in most parts of the world during the 1990s, the 21st century has seen a surge in new and unprecedented forms of strikes and workers organisations. The collection of essays in this book, spanning countries across global South and North, provides an account of strikes and working class resistance in the 21st century. Through original case studies, the book looks at the various shades of workers’ movements, analysing different forms of popular organisation as responses to new social and economic conditions, such as restructuring of work and new areas of investment.

The Report predicts that the coming five years will witness the five countries keep improving in national innovative competitiveness, with China and Russia maintaining their strong growth momentum, India growing at a moderate rate, and Brazil and South Africa gradually picking up speed and climbing out of the trough. It estimates that the five countries’ national innovative competitiveness will be keeping steady growth by 2030. 

 

The General Reports part presents a comprehensive analysis of the current status and achievements of STI cooperation between China and other BRICS countries and proposes priority areas of BRICS STI cooperation to provide valuable decision inputs for the BRICS countries to accelerate the improvement of their national innovative competitiveness. The Country Reports part respectively analyzes and makes predictions on the national innovative competitiveness of the BRICS countries based on a survey of their STI development and STI cooperation within the BRICS framework. The Thematic Reports part focuses on four thematic areas closely related to STI, i.e. digital economy, financial inclusion, energy, and agriculture, and offers detailed analysis of the STI development and potential of the countries in relevant areas, providing additional inputs for a further understanding of the national innovative competitiveness of the BRICS countries.

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 formed and 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 Artic.

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.

With many predicting the end of US hegemony, Russia and China's growing cooperation in a number of key strategic areas looks set to have a major impact on global power dynamics. But what lies behind this Sino-Russian rapprochement? Is it simply the result of deteriorated Russo-US and Sino-US relations or does it date back to a more fundamental alignment of interests after the Cold War? This book by leading expert on Sino-Russian relations Alexander Lukin attempts to answerthese questions by offering a deeply-informed and nuanced assessment of Russia andChina's ever-closer ties. Tracing the evolution of this partnership from the 1990s to the present day, he shows how economic and geopolitical interests drove the two counties together in spite of political and cultural differences. Key areas of cooperation and possible conflict are explored from bilateral trade and investment to immigration andsecurity. Ultimately, Lukin argues that China and Russia's informal alliance is part of agrowing system of cooperation in the non-Western world, which has also seen theemergence of a new political community: Greater Eurasia. Combining accessibility withexpert sensitivity to the complexities of the subject, Lukin's vision of the new China-Russia rapprochement will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding this evolving partnership and the way in which it is altering the contemporary geopolitical landscape.

The global community confronts a comprehensive and interconnected array of compelling economic, development and security challenges which require effective global governance. At the centre of world governance stand the new plurilateral summit institutions; the G8 and G20, and UN summits on subjects such as sustainable development and climate change. Many observers and participants regard the performance of these summits as inadequate and doubt their ability to cope with increasingly complex and numerous global challenges.   This book critically examines how effectively central global institutions comply with their commitments and how their effectiveness can be improved through accountability measures designed to raise compliance and deliver better results.   Expert contributors assess compliance and accountability at the key global institutions to provide an important resource for policymakers and scholars in political science, governance and accountability.

 

How do Russian leaders balance the need to decentralize governance in a socially and politically complex country with the need to guarantee political control of the state? 

Since the early 2000’s Russian federal authorities have arranged a system of political control on regional elites and their leaders providing a ‘police control’ of special bodies subordinated by the federal centre on policy implementation in the regions. Different mechanisms of fiscal federalism and investment policy were used to ensure regional elites’ loyalty and a politically centralized but administratively decentralized system was created. 

Asking clear, direct and theoretically informed questions about the relationship between federalism, decentralisation and authoritarianism, this book explores the political survival of authoritarian leaders, the determinants of policy formulation and theories of federalism and decentralization, to reach a new understanding of territorial governance in contemporary Russia. An important work for students and researchers in Russian studies and regional and federal studies.

Authoritarian regimes differ by the degree to which the leader is constrained in his ability to influence the decision-making process. It has been argued that unlimited executive can either lead to adverse economic policy outcomes or improve economic performance. In this work, I reassess the effect of executive constraints on economic performance. While most of the previous research in this area focuses on regime typologies, I use observable indicators of power personalisation in 90 autocratic countries from 1960-2010 and estimate their effect on economic performance. I focus on power concentration, the extent of the decision-making power of chief executives and leaders’ ability to dismiss the elites form political institutions as the indicators for measuring leaders’ ability to influence the decision-making process. I discover that countries, where leaders are able to stay in office longer and are able to change the cabinet, concentrate more power in their hands and tend to be more opportunistic. The results imply that strong leaders establish such power-sharing mode that allows them to act in a self-interest way.

Do economic sanctions turn the public against the target government or cause it to rally around the flag? How do sanctions affect attitudes toward the sanctioner? How does bad economic performance under sanctions shape support for the target government? Despite their importance, these questions have rarely been explored with survey data. Results from two surveys in Russia find that exposure to information about economic sanctions does not generate a rally around the flag, leads some groups to withdraw support from the target government, and reduces support for the sanctioner. Respondents also react more strongly to the reasons why sanctions were put in place—the annexation of Crimea—than to the sanctions themselves. These results suggest the need to reevaluate theories of the impact of economic sanctions and blame-shifting under autocracy.

While it is widely admitted that Afghanistan can contribute to connectivity in Eurasia, one may not also deny that Afghanistan’s regional role is dependent on regional conditions. This article takes Afghanistan’s security and geostrategic trends in Eurasia as the two major variables, defining conditions for Afghanistan’s regional role. They are reviewed and then synthesized as dependent and independent variable to form taxonomy of possible regional roles for Afghanistan. 

This study investigates the institutional influence on Russia’s regional voter turnout and establishes differences between federal and regional voter participation. Given the regional turnout in the 2011-2016 national and regional elections, the authors test the hypothesis that Russia’s turnout largely hinges on institutional rather than socio-economic factors. For deeper analysis of electoral behavior, the researchers consider a range of institutional aspects applicable to the country’s regional peculiarities. Such an empirical approach demonstrates that different types of elections are conditioned by different indicators and metrics. Consequently, the analysis proves the relevance of institutional factors to voter turnout.

Polish and Russian “shock therapy” policies in 1990 and 1992 respectively were – in fact - forced deregulation packages, aimed at preventing total macroeconomic and institutional collapse. Some important features of these packages were contrary to neo-classical prescriptions, since the “shock therapists” operated in unprecedented setting of imploding “command economy”. This setting as such never was a subject of neo-liberal theoreticians before it became empirical reality.

            Marxist-Leninist single party-state regimes are prone to macroeconomic implosion, since the socio-economic actors they create during forced “transition to market” prefer neither “plan”, nor “market”, but a grey “no-man’s land” between the two. This position allows them to “privatize the profits” and to “nationalize the costs”, contributing to accumulation of tremendous macroeconomic imbalances on the aggregate systemic level. It also creates socio-economic, political and institutional impasse of financial deleveraging, which may eventually turn into a forced “big-bang” package amidst systemic implosion.

            Chinese “gradual transition” – with all singularities – still fits quite well into this dynamic empirical pattern. Sharp decline in the Chinese growth rate since spring 2013 was a manmade phenomenon. The leadership’s intend to deregulate interest rates and upgrade financial discipline scared investors making them to withdraw money from the state and non-state assets. The overall systemic setting increases the chances of financial deleveraging in China to turn eventually into a forced “big-bang” upheaval.

           

After the start of political crisis in Ukraine, growth of Russian involvement in it and subsequent sharp deterioration of relations between Moscow and the West, there is much talk in Russia and abroad about Russia “turning to the East” and upgrading her relations with China to the level of “strategic alliance”. However, even the existing framework of ambiguous “strategic cooperation” would be problematic to sustain in the medium term, since the main structural prerequisites for Sino-Russian interaction almost in all fields are bad enough.

By the turn of 2012-2013 years, Sino-Russian bilateral trade reached its “structural ceiling”. For both countries to jump over these limits means to introduce deep systemic change in their respective economic strategies and policies, which seem now highly improbable. In addition, in January of 2015 came the collapse, logically derived from a general contraction of the Russian economy.

The mutual vision of both countries is in many ways incomplete or openly erroneous. The perception of the Chinese reform experience in Russia today has much more emotional than sober, derived from the traumatic defeat in the “Cold War”. This is indeed a kind of “surrealistic” “realistic” discourse, reaching up to fantastic expectations of China supporting Russia militarily or bailing out Russian state and corporate budgets simply because Moscow is defending her national interests in Ukraine against “Western encroachments”.

It is true that China may relish the prospect of fishing in troubled waters of the disagreements between Russia and the West. It may be also true that Beijing – in principle – has nothing against gaining as much economic, financial and even political preferences in Russia, as possible. However, all this has its price and limits. It was not in Beijing’s calculus to have a full-scale confrontation, to say nothing about the new edition of the “Cold War” between Moscow and the West. Chinese were also far from happy to see the first signs of Russian economy melting down in autumn 2014, reasonably fearing its eventual collapse. By late 2014, Beijing leaders became finally aware of the fact that they cannot fully comprehend the dynamics, direction and possible outcomes of Russian-Western relations, Ukrainian crisis and Moscow’s domestic policies. At the same time, China was far from eager to pay for the risks of Russian unpredictability on both foreign and domestic fronts. Moscow’s policy has moved beyond the limits of profitability that Beijing could have derived from the conflict between Russia and the West.

The combination of these factors in the medium-term perspective (from three to five years) may lead to what seems now quite an improbable situation with Russia-Western relations substantially stabilized and Sino-Russian interaction perceptibly cooling down. There will be no Russian-Chinese confrontation. What seems more plausible is a certain distancing from each other based on incomplete trust, the objective limits of interaction and some mutual fatigue.

After the start of political crisis in Ukraine, growth of Russian involvement in it and subsequent sharp deterioration of relations between Moscow and the West, there is much talk in Russia and abroad about Russia “turning to the East” and upgrading her relations with China to the level of “strategic alliance”. However, even the existing framework of ambiguous “strategic cooperation” would be problematic to sustain in the medium term, since the main structural prerequisites for Sino-Russian interaction almost in all fields are bad enough.

By the turn of 2012-2013 years, Sino-Russian bilateral trade reached its “structural ceiling”. For both countries to jump over these limits means to introduce deep systemic change in their respective economic strategies and policies, which seem now highly improbable. In addition, in January of 2015 came the collapse, logically derived from a general contraction of the Russian economy.

The mutual vision of both countries is in many ways incomplete or openly erroneous. The perception of the Chinese reform experience in Russia today has much more emotional than sober, derived from the traumatic defeat in the “Cold War”. This is indeed a kind of “surrealistic” “realistic” discourse, reaching up to fantastic expectations of China supporting Russia militarily or bailing out Russian state and corporate budgets simply because Moscow is defending her national interests in Ukraine against “Western encroachments”.

It is true that China may relish the prospect of fishing in troubled waters of the disagreements between Russia and the West. It may be also true that Beijing – in principle – has nothing against gaining as much economic, financial and even political preferences in Russia, as possible. However, all this has its price and limits. It was not in Beijing’s calculus to have a full-scale confrontation, to say nothing about the new edition of the “Cold War” between Moscow and the West. Chinese were also far from happy to see the first signs of Russian economy melting down in autumn 2014, reasonably fearing its eventual collapse. By late 2014, Beijing leaders became finally aware of the fact that they cannot fully comprehend the dynamics, direction and possible outcomes of Russian-Western relations, Ukrainian crisis and Moscow’s domestic policies. At the same time, China was far from eager to pay for the risks of Russian unpredictability on both foreign and domestic fronts. Moscow’s policy has moved beyond the limits of profitability that Beijing could have derived from the conflict between Russia and the West.

The combination of these factors in the medium-term perspective (from three to five years) may lead to what seems now quite an improbable situation with Russia-Western relations substantially stabilized and Sino-Russian interaction perceptibly cooling down. There will be no Russian-Chinese confrontation. What seems more plausible is a certain distancing from each other based on incomplete trust, the objective limits of interaction and some mutual fatigue.

 

For the first-world citizens, globalisation seems to be an all-pervasive phenomenon. Our research reveals that global connectivity rates differ dramatically for various countries and correspondingly, their populations. What will this picture look like in, say, 50 years? We combine demographic projections with our knowledge on the recent dynamics of national rates of global connectivity to estimate the proportion of world population which is expected to live in countries with varying rates of global connectivity. We show that the distribution of world population among the states with various rates of global connectivity is bound to experience significant changes in the coming decades, which should be taken into account at various attempts of providing global foresight.

The paper explores the state of academic dialogue between the Russian and Western scholarly communities studying the European Union (EU)–Russia relations in Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). By analyzing the citation patterns of the academic articles on the EU–Russia cooperation in this area, we arrive at the conclusion that the Russian scholarship mostly does not engage in a transnational academic dialogue with the Western counterparts. In other words, it has turned into a sealed ‘indigenous’ scholarly community. And what is more, it is also disintegrated within itself since the Russian scholars do not refer to the research produced by their compatriots either. To qualitatively substantiate our findings, in the last section of the paper, we review the universe of all articles written on the topic in Russian to distinguish five trends typical of the research published in Russian academic journals. We believe that these features are the result of the lack of engagement with the Western scholarship and simultaneously the cause which prevents the communication between the two scholarly communities. This, in turn, undermines the accumulation of the transnational multifaceted policy-relevant expertise essential for normalizing the relations between Brussels and Moscow in general and in JHA in particular.

This article attempts to open up the black box of the Russian Presidential Administration (‘the Kremlin’). Borrowing from literature on ‘institutional presidencies’ and institutional approaches to authoritarianism, I argue that the administration institutionalised over the years. More stable and predictable procedures enhanced administrative presidential powers, but personalism and non-compliance with presidential orders remained. Original data on budget, staff, units, organisational structure, and presidential assignments demonstrates that presidential power should be conceptualised as a polymorphous phenomenon that varies depending on the level of analysis. Researchers should aim to depersonalise their analyses and focus on ‘institutional presidencies’ and ‘centres of government’ instead.

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. 

The Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) has over time developed a practice of adopting so-called “positive dismissals” (Pozitivnoe Opredelenie) which complements (but also undermines) the existent formal procedure of only delivering decisions on merits with Rulings (Postanovlenie). The paper explores the uses of this peculiar practice. I show that Positive Dismissals are used by the Court to overcome the rigidity of the formal procedure where this is necessary for reasons of intraorganizational or political expediency. To do that I construct and analyze quantitatively a unique comprehensive dataset of all decisions handed down by the RCC roughly in the first two decades of its existence (1995-2015, N=22334). I show that “positive dismissals” are used whenever the case is deemed too important to be simply dismissed (for example, if it is submitted by a powerful petitioner), or when the Court cannot dismiss a case but wants to keep low profile to avoid political risks (for example, with the politically salient cases during election years).

As of 2017, the main principles, values and goals of the Russian health care system are still under discussion, but the role of non-profit organisations in this sphere remains poorly defined and little understood, following the introduction of a controversial 2012 law restricting the role of foreign funding of Russian NGOs. We find that the evolution of civil society in Russia has given rise to a unique model of civil-state interaction, characterised as an uneasy union, in pursuit of scarce financial resources, between the most influential NGOs in the health sphere and the public authorities.

Asia is changing its production and trade framework from "Asia for World" to "Asia for Asia" and Russia wants to get involved in this process by launching “Turn to the East”. This working paper analyzes how FTAs with Northeast Asian countries can contribute to this process. First part presents review of academic literature focused on FTA repercussions for NTB sector. The second one shows the evolution of trade barriers. The third assesses current trade relations between Russia and North-East Asian countries: People Republic of China, Republic of Korea and Japan. The last section covers their last Free Trade Agreements in tariff and non-tariff barriers (NTB) sectors. The key finding is that Russia is interested in FTA with Northeast Asian countries to eliminate frankly discreditable non-tariff barriers such as embargo for cereals. Russian exporters need maximum support from the state: through negotiations on reducing and eliminating barriers, especially non-tariff barriers, and creating opportunities for rapid and qualitative adaptation to such barriers.

The present paper operationalizes one of the oldest concepts in the sociological literature about social stratification. Relying on Weber’s theory, the authors consider life chances in terms of positive and negative privileges. This framework is fertile ground for constructing a series of indices measuring opportunities and risks in key areas of life such as economic conditions, work situation, human capital accumulation, and consumption and leisure activities. Drawing on empirical data from three 2015 representative Russian surveys, the authors classified the Russian population on a continuum of life chances. The majority of Russians obtain just one third of the maximum scores on the life-chance scale. It is also shown that the life-chance scale has a strong correlation with the peaks of income distribution; however, the relationship between lower- and middle-income groups are not that salient. Finally, we show that life chances are uniquely distributed across different localities in contemporary Russia. We admit therefore the high analytical power of the neo-Weberian concept of life chances in stratification studies. Measured via a multidimensional index, life chances appear a good alternative to a gradational approach and the relational stratification schema developed particularly for the working population. 

This research is focused on the issue of differences in results received in elections for regional and federal legislatures that are held according to the proportional system. In particular, the question of whether the authorities’ decision to favour the combination of synchronous regional and federal elections has proved effective. This research showed that, in simultaneous elections held at different territorial levels, United Russia always delivers better results at a federal level than at a regional level, while oppositional parties, conversely, perform better at a regional level than they do at a federal level. This can be explained by the phenomenon of strategic voting, according to which voters prefer to cast their votes for more stable and major players in federal elections, and that they are more likely to vote sincerely in regional elections. However, in separate elections these trends are not retained, and United Russia in particular has been noted to perform better in regional campaigns held during the inter-election period, than it did in the preceding and subsequent federal elections. Analysis of the degree of competitiveness showed that differences in the level of competitiveness in federal and regional elections are almost always lower in combined elections than in separate elections.

There have been numerous studies concerning productivity, representing two general approaches toward measuring the concept. Parametric approaches specify the actual form of the production function based on theoretical assumptions, while non-parametric approaches use empirical best-practice cases as a benchmark for productivity measures. We propose a new approach to obtain cross-country total factor productivity estimates and a method to derive the production function, which builds on empirical data and does not require a priori assumptions about its functional specification. The approach is based on radial model of data envelopment analysis. The obtained TFP estimates are validated through comparing to PWT and UNIDO datasets. Some preliminary analysis is also provided concerning application of the TFP estimates to cross-country divergence/convergence in productivity. We also demonstrate the potential utility of the estimates for political science research.

Donald Trump and his team have often been accused of having close ties to Russia and Russians expressed much greater support for Trump than residents of other countries. This article provides the first systematic analysis of Russian media coverage of Trump's activities during and after the election campaign. It concludes, on the basis of a sentiment analysis of relevant articles and network agendas of 500 Russian magazines and 250 leading federal newspapers, that Trump's media portrayal was not necessarily positive. During the election, Trump was portrayed by the Russian media not as Russia's favorite candidate, but as Hillary Clinton's opponent and a critic of U.S. recent policies. Only for a short period after Trump's victory in the elections, did the Russian media represent him as a friend of Russia, since there was hope that the new president would lift political and economic sanctions. Trump's policies failed to meet the expectations of the Russian people, and from the beginning of 2017, media coverage of Trump has become critical, hopes for lifting of political sanctions have weakened, and public opinion about the U.S. president has turned negative.

Economic sanctions, like the most of political events involving numerous states, are almost always explicitly aimed to alter internal policies and affect domestic issues. Sanctions are not a discrete event, rather they are a long lasting insidious process. It is significant to consider not only the state of the country under sanctions or without them, but also the effect of the time under sanctions. Hence, the research question is as follows: How does cumulative effect of sanctions influence the dictators behavior in terms of repressions and co-optation? In order to find a feasible answer to that question, first, we build a theoretical model and draw empirical implications from it. The main argument that we develop in the paper is as follows. The overall effect of sanction is robustly important for the dictator, fostering repressions and co-optation (separately treated) as the ways of buttressing the regime legitimacy. Moreover, cumulative effect of sanctions (i.e. the influence of all the previous periods under sanctions) increases the levels of repressions with decreasing marginal effects.

The purpose of this study is to test the agenda-setting theory, according to which the media has a significant impact on what people consider to be important events. We compare the results of the Levada Center surveys on the most memorable events of the month with the number of publications on these issues in the press. We focused on the period from January 2014 to December 2016. A total of 884 events were analyzed in the article. The results of the study confirm the impact of discussions in the media on people's attention to the problem. The results also show that the discussions in the media one week before the date of polling are more important than the issues covered over the entire month. People better remember those events which took place shortly before the polling, as well as the events the discussion of which intensified during this period. It is also important to note the role of regional publications in the sensitization of the public to various issues. The issues covered by the national newspapers and news agencies, but ignored by the regional press, are much worse remembered by the population. The results of the study are controlled for background of the discussion: the presence of important events in each relevant month, which monopolized the public attention, is taken into account.