The book pursues the following three aims:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. organization theory, behavior, change and development

2. administrative theory and practice

3. bureaucracy

4. public budgeting and financial management

5. public finance and public management

6. public personnel and labor-management relations

7. crisis and emergency management

8. institutional theory and public administration

9. law and regulations

10. ethics and accountability  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This book examines how Russia, the world’s most complicated country, is governed. As it resumes its place at the centre of global affairs, the book explores Russia’s overarching strategies, and how it organizes itself (or not) in policy areas ranging from foreign policy and national security to health care, education, immigration, science, sport, agriculture, the environment and criminal justice. The book also discusses the structures and institutions on which Russia relies in order to deliver its goals in these areas of national life, as well as what’s to be done, in policy terms, to improve the country’s performance in its first post-Soviet century.

quarter of a century has passed since the Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted in 1993, yet the issue of the results and the prospects for constitutional transformation has not disappeared from the political agenda. For some, the Constitution signifies an ultimate break up with the communist past and a legal foundation for the advancement of the Russian society toward democracy and the rule of law; for the others, it is exactly the Constitution that is the culprit for the authoritarian trend that has prevailed, and for the sustained stagnation in Russia’s economic, social and political development. The author of this chapter is in the middle of these extreme viewpoints. He believes that the Constitution has truly played a pivotal role in Russia’s move toward democracy by establishing the basic principles of civil society and the rule of law, and in this respect, it remains of everlasting and paramount importance. Nevertheless, that does not mean that it should be utterly inaccessible for changes, especially given the elapsed time and the negative experience of the authoritarian transformation of the political regime, the amendments that were introduced between2008 and 2014, and the current objectives of the democratic movement. The rationale for changes is to return to the constitutional principles, reaffirm their initial democratic meaning by rejecting the excessive concentration of the Presidential power, the results of counter-reforms and the adulteration through legislative and regulatory compliance practices. Some of the proposed remedies aim to establish a new form of government (Presidential - Parliamentary), which would necessitate Constitutional amendments — adjustments that would regulate the separation of powers and redistribution of authority. Others seek to transform the system without changing the text of the Constitution through legislative reforms, judicial interpretation and the policy of law. Yet, the third approach prioritizes institutional reforms. Not everything in social development depends on the provisions of the law, political improvisation and practice can prove just as critical. In their cumulative entirety such initiatives can help avoid the two extremes: that of constitutional stagnation gravitating toward the bureaucratic asphyxiation, and that of constitutional populism which has a tendency to destabilize the political system. In its practical activities to transform the political regime, the opposition ought to remember the maximum repeatedly confirmed by experience, — the further a party is from power, the more radical tend to be its constitutional proposals. Conversely, empowered groups tend to be more moderate in their initiatives.

Corruption, fake news, and the “informational autocracy” sustaining Putin in power

After fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat—at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong.

Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia is neither a somewhat reduced version of the Soviet Union nor a classic police state. Corruption is prevalent at all levels of government and business, but Russia’s leaders pursue broader and more complex goals than one would expect in a typical kleptocracy, such as those in many developing countries. Nor does Russia fit the standard political science model of a “competitive authoritarian” regime; its parliament, political parties, and other political bodies are neither fakes to fool the West nor forums for bargaining among the elites.

The result of a two-year collaboration between top Russian experts and Western political scholars, Autocracy explores the complex roles of Russia’s presidency, security services, parliament, media and other actors. The authors argue that Putin has created an “informational autocracy,” which relies more on media manipulation than on the comprehensive repression of traditional dictatorships. The fake news, hackers, and trolls that featured in Russia’s foreign policy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election are also favored tools of Putin’s domestic regime—along with internet restrictions, state television, and copious in-house surveys. While these tactics have been successful in the short run, the regime that depends on them already shows signs of age: over-centralization, a narrowing of information flows, and a reliance on informal fixers to bypass the bureaucracy. The regime’s challenge will be to continue to block social modernization without undermining the leadership’s own capabilities.

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.”

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.

We integrated models of discrimination of immigrants by combining established approaches to prejudice and discrimination towards immigrants (proximate explanations) using assumptions of Evolutionary-Coalitional Theory (ultimate explanations). Based on this perspective, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and multicultural ideology (MCI) were considered as sociofunctional motives for attitudes towards immigrants. We examined relationships between individual differences in beliefs about the social world (dangerous worldview and competitive worldview) as more distal antecedents, and RWA, SDO, and MCI as more proximal antecedents, and the endorsement of discrimination of immigrants in the socioeconomic domain by Russian majority group members as the outcome. Data were collected among 576 participants from 33 regions in Russia, using online social media. MCI predicted endorsement of discrimination of immigrants by Russian majority group members better than did RWA and SDO. SDO predicted only economic aspects of the endorsement of discrimination. The results are discussed within the Russian context, with its ethnically diverse composition of the population and high migration rates.

The author argues that Russian–Chinese rapprochement is a fundamental feature of the current changing system of international relations. Apart from its own significance, it has become important because it stimulated and, in some cases, laid the foundation for many broader international processes: the creation of the multipolar world, the emergence of such international groups and organisations as BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the coordination between Eurasian Economic Union and the Chinese initiative of Silk Road Economic Belt and others. Recently, all these processes led to the idea of Greater Eurasia or Eurasian partnership. 

Do voters punish governments more severely during international economic crises or do they discount exogenous shocks as they recognize the government’s limited “room of manoeuvre”? The current literature provides conflicting answers to this question. This study argues that in such contexts citizens’ economic perceptions are less likely to predict their sanctioning behavior but that, nonetheless, governments experience a higher cost of ruling. We show that in the paradigmatic case of Italy, government popularity during the Great Recession, while being hardly explained by economic evaluations, suffers a stronger decline as a function of time in office. We account for this increased cost of ruling by economic policy debates and other political events, such as cabinet crises and large-scale scandals.

This essay examines the development of a form of Russian-speaking Belarusian national identity. While Belarus’s early post-Soviet nationalists relied upon Belarusian as the central pillar of national identity, this has been challenged by more ‘pragmatic’ nationalists using the ‘language of the people’, namely, Russian. Analysing history textbooks and popular history books that represent three key identity projects in Belarus, this study sheds light on the specific programmatic ideas of a new Russian-speaking Belarusian nationalism. Despite the emergence of the geopolitically-motivated Russian World (Russkii Mir) concept, some Russian-speaking nationalists have articulated a programme that paradoxically draws upon Russian neo-Eurasianist thought, but which is simultaneously anti-Russian.

Plastic bags create large amounts of waste and cause lasting environmental problems when inappropriately discarded. In 2015, England introduced a mandatory five pence (US$0.06/€0.06) charge to customers for each single-use plastic bag taken from large stores. Combining a longitudinal survey (n=1,230), supermarket observations (n=3,762), and a longitudinal interview study (n=43), we investigated people’s behavioural and attitudinal responses to the charge. We show that all age, gender, and income groups in England substantially reduced their plastic bag usage within one month after the charge was introduced, with interviewees highlighting the ease of taking their own bags. Support for the bag charge also increased among all key demographic groups. Increased support for the plastic bag charge in turn predicted greater support for other charges to reduce plastic waste, suggesting a ‘policy spillover’ effect. Results indicate a broad and positive effect of the bag charge, which appears to have catalysed wider waste awareness among the British public. This may facilitate the introduction of other policies to eliminate avoidable single-use plastics and packaging.

The Trump administration’s confrontational approach has prompted a serious debate in China about the country’s economic and political course.

The article examines a key attribute of Russian national identity—national pride—as it is reflected in mass consciousness. To trace the dynamics of multiple facets of national pride and related phenomena from 1996 to 2015, we use data from five surveys. The results demonstrate a substantial growth in Russian national pride in specific country achievements and general pride in Russian citizenship over the last 20 years. This change is the result of the population’s and state’s need for positive social identity as well as from both real and imagined progress in the Russian economy and political influence, and it started long before the Crimea mobilization and Olympics of 2014. The structural difference in pride in various achievements persisted for the 20 years examined here, but became less distinct. Across the years examined here, Russian national pride has become more strongly related to belief in the superiority of the country and is therefore increasingly competitive.

In this paper we examine the effects of valence in a continuous spatial voting model with two incumbent candidates and a potential entrant. All candidates are rank-motivated. We first consider the case where the low valence incumbent (LVC) and the entrant have zero valence, whereas the valence of the high valence incumbent (HVC) is positive. We show that a sufficiently large valence of HVC guarantees a unique equilibrium, where the two incumbents prevent the entry of the third candidate. We also show that an increase in valence allows HVC to adopt a more centrist policy position, while LVC selects a more extreme position. We also examine the existence of equilibrium for the cases where the LVC has higher or lower valence than the entrant.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The idea of the lagging Pivot suggests that the Russian policy of the “Pivot to the East” cannot last successfully on a long-term basis given the extensive lag between the political and economic dimensions of the Pivot, in Russia and abroad. One of the most inevitable and necessary conditions of bridging this gap can be found among the instruments of trade liberalization. Here we should shift our focus from Russian interests to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) which has a privileged mandate on merchandise trade negotiations with third countries and blocs like ASEAN: Russia has not been able sign any FTA on its own since 2015. However, this puzzle was relatively poorly studied both in Russia and abroad and this paper attempts to fill this gap. We briefly analyze the scope of trade between Russia and key Asian markets (which still remain mostly limited to North-East Asia) to define the most sensitive export markets for Russia, then we systematize existing barriers which could be potentially eliminated by international trade negotiations and compare them with existing international activity of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). The results of our study clearly demonstrate an objective demand for more intensive EAEU activity on trade liberalization in Asia with a particular focus on non-tariff barriers (NTBs).

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.