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 series publishes monographs and edited volumes devoted to studies on the political, economic and social developments of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Volumes cover in-depth analyses of individual countries, regions, cases and comparative studies, and they include both a specific and a general focus on the latest advances of the various aspects of development. It provides a platform for researchers globally to carry out rigorous economic, social and political analyses, to promote, share, and discuss current quantitative and analytical work on issues, findings and perspectives in various areas of economics and development of the MENA region. Perspectives on Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region allows for a deeper appreciation of the various past, present, and future issues around MENA’s development with high quality, peer-reviewed contributions. The topics may include, but not limited to economics and business, natural resources, governance, politics, security and international relations, gender, culture, religion and society, economics and social development, reconstruction, and Jewish, Islamic, Arab, Iranian, Israeli, Kurdish and Turkish studies. Volumes published in the series will be important reading offering an original approach along theoretical lines supported empirically for researchers and students, as well as consultants and policymakers, interested in the development of the MENA region.

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.

Religious violence is surely as old as both faith and fighting themselves. In the Russian Federation, as elsewhere in the world, religious teachings and philosophies are used both to justify and combat violence. But what forms does this take, and with what implications for Russian society, Russian policy, and Russia's future? This volume examines the many ways in which religion and violence intersect in Russia, and offers recommendations for both policymakers and scholars as they chart paths forward. Presenting the results of original research by collaborative teams of Russian and western authors, it takes on topics from violent radical Islamic jihadism to religious propaganda employed by violent right-wing groups; from repression of religious communities to conflict within religious confessions. In each case, it offers not only new analysis, but prospective policy solutions to make Russia and Russians of all religions (and no religion) safer and more secure.

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.

A complex analysis of the social and economic consequences of China, Ukraine, and Russia’s accession to the WTO was used to identify recommendations for the most successful adaptation of Russia to WTO standards. Russia tries to adapt to the WTO standards. The study focuses on the Chinese experience. China’s membership in the WTO is extremely useful for Russia from due to China’s positive influence on the development of its economy , as there has been expansion in the industrial and production sectors of its economy and promotion of goods in world markets, as well as an opportunity to use the WTO’s legal instruments for national domestic market protection.

China’s positive experience as a WTO member somehow contrasts with the described experience of Ukraine. An assessment of Ukraine’s versatile policy and its association with the EU allowed concluded that it is impossible for Ukraine to follow two ways at once: that of Eurasian integration and that of European integration.

Recently, the aggravated trade, economic and political confrontations between Russia and its American and European partners spurred radical changes in Russia’s economic strategy. Areas of such transformations can be determined by understanding both the positive and negative experiences of Russia’s old trade partners, namely China and Ukraine as they joined the world economic environment.

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. Edited by Irvin Studin, the book includes contributions from a tremendous list of Russia’s leading thinkers and specialists, including Alexei Kudrin, Vladimir Mau, Alexander Auzan, Simon Kordonsky, Fyodor Lukyanov, Natalia Zubarevich and Andrey Melville.

The development and use of Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been a contentios subject for the last three decades. while there has been a number of social science analysis of the issues, this is the first book to assess the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the debate at such wide geographic scale. The various posiotions, for and against GMOs, particularly with regards to trangenic crops, articulated by NGOs in the debate are dissected, classified and juxtaposed to corresponding campaigns. these are discussed in the context of paradigms, including nature fundamentalism and the organic movement, post-colonialism, food sovereignty, anti-globalism, sustainability and feminism. This book also analyses how NGOs interprete the debate and the persuasive communication tactics. 

 

The publication is the latest in the African Studies in Russia series of compilations and contains full articles and annotations of the most important – from the point of view of editors – works of Russian Africanists over a certain period. The authors work at the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The present issue covers the years 2014 to 2016 and consists of two sections. The first section presents conceptual articles on Africa published in authoritative journals. The second section offers synopses of books by Russian authors on economics, cultural anthropology, social and political development, gender studies, and international relations of African countries. The main objective of the triennial series of compilations is to introduce new findings of Russian Africanists to interested foreign scholars who do not speak Russian.

This collective monograph is a study of one of the most important problems in today’s world: state and nation building in multi-ethnic and multi-national societies. It presents a comparative analysis of the experience of state and nation building in Russia and South Africa, two countries, which recently and practically simultaneously went through a period of abrupt social, political and economic transition. In both this transition resulted in an upsurge of ethno-national and racial tensions. Such an analysis is of great interest to all those who study similar problems both at an academic and practical levels.

 

Why has there been a human rights backlash in Russia despite the country having been part of the European human rights protection system since the late 1990s? To what extent does Russia implement judgments of the Strasbourg Court, and to what extent does it resist the implementation? This fascinating study investigates Russia's turbulent relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and examines whether the Strasbourg court has indeed had the effect of increasing the protection of human rights in Russia. Researchers and scholars of law and political science with a particular interest in human rights and Russia will benefit from this in-depth exploration of the background of this subject.

After the collapse of the bipolar world order, politicians and experts almost everywhere wiped the slate clean, leaving many political and socioeconomic theories behind. Decolonization as a dominant global development trend was among them. This happened partly because the global balance of power had changed drastically and partly because the prevailing political concepts and narratives had become universal for a short time, but mainly because this benefitted the political establishment in the United States and former colonial powers. They proclaimed the process of decolonization completed and referred to it as a past era. In reality, however, only two of its stages - attainment of formal political independence and sovereignty over natural resources - became history. Actual decolonization came with the third stage when China and a large group of rapidly developing economies had turned into the world’s manufacturing and assembly factories. This process was bolstered up and further spurred by the emancipation of Russia which had reemerged as one of the leading global players. Coming up is the next, and final, stage of actual decolonization. Its purpose is to acquire technological and financial independence and ability to parry military power or threat of force whatever its origin. There are many factors, objective and subjective, that get in the way. These include political destabilization and pressure, redirection of financial flows, sanctions, wars, etc.. But they will not have a critical impact if they are countered cleverly and all constructive forces around the world pool their efforts towards cooperation. With such an understanding of global processes, ongoing worldwide transformations no longer look like unpredictable and tragic chaotization of international relations but are being taken for what they actually are: the struggle for complete decolonization of the parts of the planet that used to be dependent territories.

In March 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, relations between Moscow and the West descended into their deepest crisis since the end of the Cold War. For the rest of that year and into the next, the Ukraine crisis made headlines around the world. It emerged as the most urgent security challenge facing Western nations. The response to this crisis, from Western leaders, in particular, is key to understanding why ‘spheres of influence’ are the subject of political discourse today, and why this discourse alters our understanding of the past, present and future.

The paper investigates the link between the sub-national variation of political regimes in a (at the federal level) non-democratic country and the appointments of federal officials in the sub-national provinces. In particular, we look at the appointment of the chief federal inspectors to the regions in Putin’s Russia in 2000–2012. Our main research question is whether appointment patterns can be explained by top-down concerns of the central government willing to keep control over the most unruly regions or by bottom-up self-selection of bureaucrats belonging to influential groups into more attractive positions more suitable for rent-seeking. The advantage of our case is that data we have at hand allow us to distinguish these two logics. Our results indicate that for the Russian chief federal inspectors in 2000–2012 bottom-up self-selection appears to be the more plausible explanation of the link between sub-national political regimes and appointment patterns.

Although a general task of social science is to measure and predict change, international relations (IR) paradigms and theories have been unable to keep up with the rapid pace and destabilizing effects of change in international politics. When addressing Russia, IR’s “change problem” becomes clearer: the world’s largest country is treated as an object struggling to adjust to changes rather than a protagonist introducing them into the system. Yet, twice within the last quarter century, Russia has acted as a catalyst for changes in international politics that few saw coming and which confounded IR paradigms. The Soviet leadership’s decision to withdraw from the Cold War standoff and dismantle its empire in Eastern Europe was one of the most surprising events of the twentieth century. Russia’s interventions in Ukraine, Syria, and the 2016 US presidential elections have similarly caught most observers by surprise. IR theories have struggled to account for these actions and have not been able to integrate Soviet/Russian behavior into their larger understanding of change in international politics. Our underlying premise is to treat Russia (in both its Soviet and present-day incarnations) seriously as an agent of transformational change in international politics. Most theories that deal with transformational change focus on the effects of larger social and economic forces. However, change is seldom a smooth, linear process. Larger global forces may be operating, but individual agents catalyze changes produced by these deeper historical forces. What is needed to understand Russian foreign policy decision making is an evolutionary theory of change that is able to integrate historical (root) causes of change with proximate and contingent ones. In both cases examined in this paper, larger historical root causes push the international system toward change, but Russia’s status aspirations and status dissatisfaction have been the proximate causes catalyzing change.

This paper investigates to what extent activity of a social movement on a social networking site is related to participation in offline collective action. Through this research, we seek to contribute to a broader theory of effective communicative structures of social movements. We use the data of roughly 12,000 individuals from 17 online groups representing the branches of the ‘Observers for Fair Elections’ movement in 17 districts of St. Petersburg, Russia, and compare their online properties to real offline participation of movement members in elections in the role of electoral observers. We find that while prediction of individual offline participation with this online data is of limited power, association between district participation rates and online group features is very strong. Large, more inclusive and evenly connected networks, where people are engaged in high-threshold online activities, produce more offline participants; weak individual-level prediction, combined with strong group-level prediction, suggests either the presence of the ‘network effect’ or of third factors – such as prior contentious experience or the effect of leaders.

Our empirical tests generally support the hypothesis that up to certain values of the average per capita income its growth tends to lead to increased risks of sociopolitical destabilization, and only in the upper range of this indicator its growth tends to be associated with the decrease of sociopolitical destabilization risks. However, our analysis has shown that for various indices of sociopolitical destabilization this curvilinear relationship can be quite different in some important details. On the other hand, we detect the presence of a very important exception. We show that the relationship between per capita GDP and the intensity of coups and coup attempts is not curvilinear; in this case we are rather dealing with a pronounced negative correlation; a particularly strong negative correlation is observed between this index and the logarithm of GDP per capita. We demonstrate that this fact makes the abovementioned bell-shaped relationship with respect to the integral index of sociopolitical destabilization considerably less distinct and makes a very significant contribution to the formation of its asymmetry (when the negative correlation between per capita GDP and sociopolitical destabilization among the richer countries looks much stronger than the positive correlation among poorer countries). However, our analysis shows that for all the other indices of sociopolitical destabilization we do witness the bell-shaped relationship. On the other hand, for example, in relation to such indices, as political strikes, riots and anti-government demonstrations we deal with such an asymmetry that is directly opposite to that mentioned above - with such an asymmetry, when a positive correlation between GDP and instability for poorer countries is much stronger than the negative correlation for richer countries.

April International Academic Conference

After the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011, explosive global growth was observed for the majority of indicators of sociopolitical destabilization in all parts of the World System. In order to identify the structure of this destabilization wave, we apply a series of statistical techniques such as trend analysis and t-tests to study the degrees of intensification of various instability indicators (as recorded by the Cross-National Time Series database). We reveal explosive global growth in anti-government demonstrations, riots, general strikes, terrorist attacks/guerrilla warfare and purges, as well as in the global integral index of sociopolitical destabilization. On the other hand, no statistically significant growth has been detected for assassinations and major government crises, whereas for such an important indicator of global sociopolitical destabilization, as the global number of coups and coup attempts, we find a statistically significant decrease.

 

This paper argues that Russia’s strategic objective of developing its Asiatic regions is tied to its serious intentions in Asia as a whole. It stresses that Russia can only connect to the political, economic, and cultural life of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific through its own Asian regions. Moreover, leaders’ claims that Russia belongs to both Europe and Asia will carry little weight with their Asiatic neighbors if Russia’s own Asiatic regions remain underdeveloped and subject to shrinking populations. The paper critically analyzes the results of various projects of development of Asiatic Russia beginning from late tsarist period until the 21st century and shows that Russia needs to put forward a formal strategy for developing the Eurasian infrastructure that is comparable to the SREB, Kazakhstan’s NurlyZhol (Bright Path) economic stimulus plan, Mongolia’s Steppe Road, and others. This strategy should reflect Russia’s objectives for the economic development of its own Asiatic regions, and through them, the co-development with its neighbors of Eurasia generally. It argues that the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development, put forward by several Russia think tanks, could become Russia’s contribution to the development of the Eurasian space and mesh with the Chinese, Kazakh, Mongolian, and other partner initiatives. Its implementation would help spur the economic development of Asiatic Russia, enabling that region to become part of the larger economic development of Eurasia. That would help turn Russia into a more important independent and constructive player in the Eurasian space, acting in close coordination with its partners in both the East and the West.

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 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.

December 19, 2016, saw three tragedies simultaneously, that could not go unnoticed by the Russian media: dozens of people died as a result of a surrogate alcohol poisoning in Irkutsk, a Russian ambassador was killed in Turkey, and a terrorist attack took place at the Christmas market in Berlin. In this article using the network agenda theory we analyze how these tragedies were covered by various types of mass media: on 11 federal TV channels, in 1,974 print newspapers, in 34,905 online newspapers and 2,574 blogs. We believe that direct and indirect control of the agenda by the state can be exercised by creating a network of events that will canalize correctly discussions about tragedies. We showed that ties between the tragedy and a network of other acute issues are more important than objective circumstances, such as the number of victims or a geography of the event. The context in which the events were looked at led to greater attention to the killing of the ambassador and less attention to surrogate alcohol poisoning. The Russian mass media paid significantly less attention to the Berlin terror attack, it yet was used as a supplement to the demonstration of importance of the fight against terrorism.

Our empirical tests generally confirm the validity of the Olson - Huntington hypothesis suggesting a bell-shaped relationship between the level of economic development and the level of sociopolitical instability. According to this hypothesis, up to certain values of the average per capita income its growth tends to lead to increased risks of sociopolitical destabilization, and only in the upper range of this indicator its growth tends to be associated with the decrease of sociopolitical destabilization risks. Thus, for higher values of per capita income we deal with a negative correlation between per capita income and the risk of sociopolitical instability, and for lower values this correlation is positive. As a result, the maximum values of political instability tend to be observed in the mid-range of the GDP per capita spectrum rather than among the poorest or the richest countries.  However, our analysis has shown that for various indices of sociopolitical destabilization this curvilinear relationship can be quite different in some important details. On the other hand, we detect the presence of a very important exception. We show that the relationship between per capita GDP and the intensity of coups and coup attempts is not curvilinear; in this case we are rather dealing with a pronounced negative correlation; a particularly strong negative correlation is observed between this index and the logarithm of GDP per capita. We demonstrate that this fact makes the abovementioned bell-shaped relationship with respect to the integral index of sociopolitical destabilization considerably less distinct and makes a very significant contribution to the formation of its asymmetry (when the negative correlation between per capita GDP and sociopolitical destabilization among the richer countries looks much stronger than the positive correlation among poorer countries). However, our analysis shows that for all the other indices of sociopolitical destabilization we do witness the bell-shaped relationship assumed by the Olson - Huntington hypothesis. On the other hand, for example, in relation to such indices, as political strikes, riots and anti-government demonstrations we deal with such an asymmetry that is directly opposite to that mentioned above - with such an asymmetry, when a positive correlation between GDP and instability for poorer countries is much stronger than the negative correlation for richer countries. An especially strong asymmetry of this kind is found for such an important index of social and political destabilization, as the intensity of anti-government demonstrations. Thus, we arrive at the following conclusions. (1) Different types of political instability events have different functional relationships to changing levels of GDP/capita.  Some do have a curvilinear response, others have a monotonic one. They also are more frequent at certain ranges of GDP/capita that are not the same, but rather are particular to certain types of events. (2) These findings show that certain types of events are more common at lower levels of income and political development, while others are more common at mid-levels, and yet others (anti-government protests, strikes) are more common at higher levels. (3) The functional relationships are most often linear in rising stages, but exponential or logarithmic in their declines. There are thus generally strong asymmetries in how such events react to changes in GDP/cap in the lower vs. upper ranges. (4) The overall notion of a curvilinear relationship between instability and GDP/capita is thus too simple, obscuring important patterns that reveal a trajectory of varying kinds of instability developing and peaking at different levels of economic development.

This paper focuses on transformations of gender attitudes in a set of Arab societies covered by the Arab Barometer. We analyze age and cohort differences in thirteen countries using generalized additive modeling (GAM). We argue that stagnation or even retrogression of gender attitudes in some societies may be caused in part by an ideological shift of the 1970s–1980s, from largely secular and socialist-oriented national movements of the 1950s–1960s to the more conservative period often associated with the rise of political Islam. On the other hand, the youngest cohorts in those societies that have always promoted conservative gender attitudes are getting somewhat more liberal, although they remain slightly less gender egalitarian compared to other societies. We test our assumptions using the example of Yemen that was divided into two parts between 1967 and 1990: The South supported by the Soviet Union and the North influenced by Saudi Arabia and the Western bloc. We trace the support for gender egalitarianism across generations in the two parts of Yemen and show that the secular socialist ideology made a profound imprint on the attitudes of a whole generation and made those who were in their twenties back in the 1960s more egalitarian than the young people these days. The same is true for the other countries of the region that had some socialist experience.