This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China.

China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.

As the EU’s relations with Russia remain at an all-time low and continue to be in a state of paralysis, marked by de-institutionalisation, inertia and estrangement, the EU’s policy towards Russia seems up for review. By taking stock of the implementation of the EU’s Global Strategy and the five principles that are guiding EU-Russia relations, this volume provides a forward-looking angle and contributes to a better understanding of the current EU-Russia relationship and the prospects for overcoming the existing deadlock. By bringing together European and Russian scholars and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines insights from EU studies, international relations, and European and international law, the book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the state of affairs in EU-Russia relations.

Given Australia’s lack of energy security strategy, it is not surprising that the country is void of institutional knowledge and know-how of Russian foreign energy strategy. The ‘lucky country’ as it were, relies entirely on sea-lines of communication to the north to supply fuel and to export Australian coal and natural gas. Australia has entered the 2020s as the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter; however, maintaining complacency in Canberra’s current export activities will ultimately lead to a long-term security crisis. This book critically examines Russian energy strategy in the Asia-Pacific, with a view to determining the security implications for Australia. Russia is important for global energy security chains because of its vast resource wealth and its geographical position – a pivotal position to supply both the European and Asian markets. Australia has no such luxury, geographically constrained as an island continent; it relies on the nearby Asia-Pacific import market to demand our energy and to facilitate the delivery of our national oil supplies. Understanding Russian foreign energy strategy in the region is crucial given the growing energy requirements in Australia’s emerging Asia-Pacific arena.

The book aims to trace and explain the historical evolution of Moscow, the capital of the Tsardom of Russia, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, as a political entity and political community, and to understand what place Moscow occupied within the Russian political space and what role it played in Russian political life for centuries until 2018. The authors consistently examine the dramatic political history of the contemporary Russian capital in the Moscow (13th – 17th centuries) and St. Petersburg (18th – 19th centuries) epochs, in the Soviet period, in the post-Soviet era, and identify its key points and the most pivotal events.

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

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

This book presents the very first, interdisciplinarily grounded, comprehensive appraisal of a future “Common European Law on Investment Screening”. Thereby, it provides a foundation for a European administrative law framework for investment screening by setting out viable solutions and evaluating their pros and cons.

Daimler, the harbour terminal in Zeebrugge, or Saxo Bank are only three recent examples of controversially discussed company takeovers in Europe. The “elephant in the room” is China and its “Belt and Road Initiative”. The political will in Europe is growing to more actively control investments flowing into the EU. The current regulatory initiatives raise several fundamental, constitutional and regulatory issues. Surprisingly, they have not been addressed in any depth so far. The book takes stock of the current rather fragmented regulatory approaches and combines contributions from leading international academics, practitioners, and policy makers in their respective fields. Due to the volume’s comprehensive approach, it is expected to influence the broader debate on the EU’s upcoming regulation of this matter.

The book is addressed to participants from academia as well as to representatives from government, business, and civil society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The creation of a social climate where all ethnic groups can harmoniously coexist is a central challenge for many countries today. Should we emphasize similarities and common ground or, conversely, recognize that there are important differences between groups? The current study examined relations between diversity ideologies (assimilation, colorblindness, multiculturalism, polyculturalism) and generalized and specific intergroup bias (against Chechens, Belarusians, Uzbeks, Chinese, and Jews and Muslims) among ethnic Russians (N = 701). In Study 1, colorblindness (ignoring differences) and polyculturalism (emphasizing interconnectivity) were associated with lower generalized intergroup bias and lower bias against Chechens, Uzbeks, and Chinese, but not Belarusians. Bias against Belarusians was lower among those who endorsed multiculturalism (emphasizing differences). In Study 2, multiculturalism was associated with higher implicit bias when the target was a Chechen but in general more proximal variables (positive or negative contact experience and perceived group similarity) were more robust predictors of intergroup bias than diversity ideologies. In Study 3, colorblindness and polyculturalism were related to lower levels of fearful attitudes against Muslims. Colorblindness was also associated with lower levels of Antisemitism in contrast to multiculturalism that had an opposite association. We place these results in the context of cultural distance and existing cultural stereotypes about different groups among the majority of Russians. The strengths and weaknesses of each diversity ideology for the mainstream cultural group are discussed. The results of the current study suggest that the most fruitful strategy for mainstream cultural groups for maintaining harmonious intergroup relations in diverse societies might be that of optimal distinctiveness.

The deployment of the resilient city concept remains divided between those who see resilience as a set of (bottom-up) enabling capacities, and those who accuse it of (top- down) post-political tendencies that normalize the status quo and cast off the vulnerable. This paper offers a conceptual framework that overcomes this binary. We argue that a critical and trans-historical deployment of resilience to the actually-existing conditions of urban crisis can re-politicize the very conditions necessitating cities to be resilient. Politicizing the lived experiences of resilience draws attention to the relationality and agency of resilience: how resilience is constructed, negotiated and resourced, at which temporal and spatial scales, and with what political antecedents, consequences and power struggles. The paper considers the lived politics of the resilient city juxtaposed across two purposefully disparate case studies: Leningrad during the 872-day siege in 1941-1944, and New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This unorthodox comparison both transgresses clear-cut ideological and epistemological conventions and develops a complex picture of how resilience unfolds in reality. These tragic events show a range of conditions that incorporated state-imposed cast-off top-down resilience and, in response, individual and community-led bottom-up resilience. We demonstrate the pre-eminent role of the state in how both disaster and resilience are constructed and (mis)managed, but also how cast-off resilience compels citizens and communities to activate mechanisms for negotiating disaster and recovery, generating a co-constituted resilience of cities and individuals.

This paper reviews the emergence and development of the “smart energy city” as an academic, normative, and applied concept. An examination of the academic literature since the early 2000s reveals the unfolding of spatiotemporal trends relating to this concept. It has been emerging to represent a sector-specified version of its sister concept of smart cities, also popularized in the past decade. However, the idea of the smart energy city has its own historic precursors and nationally specific trajectories. It rose from concerns with energy efficient/green buildings as well as smart grids for low carbon and distributed energy generation and distribution, which were later scaled up to the whole urban scale, and to embrace multiple other urban sectors and urban domains. By so doing, and combining the developments in ICT-led smart cities and sustainable energy, the notion of the smart energy city has come close to represent a digitally-mediated variant of low carbon cities. It can, thus, be conceptualized as a blend of smart cities and low carbon cities. National and urban case studies help to further distinguish “actually existing” projects, patterns, and conceptualization relating to both smart cities and smart energy cities and barriers to their practical integration. A greater focus on intersystem integration and a multistakeholder approach more recently offers a stronger representation of interdisciplinarity and conveys the complexity of the system involved, where humans and social systems become increasingly more central.

This paper is an empirical study that used econometric techniques to analyze the causal relationship between income inequality and financial disturbances in developed economies. The author used annual data from panels of OECD countries. In this study, income distribution is represented by the share of GDP that accrued to the top 10 percent earners, wage share of GDP, and disposable income Gini Coefficient in annual data series. The test included three channels, through which income inequality may affect the financial system. The results suggest that the effect of income inequality on the national financial stability is ambiguous, as the study concluded that this effect is radically different according to the channel tested. The study found that a rise in income inequality has a negative impact on public finance, but it has a positive effect on the private debt market, and on the external balance from a financial stability standpoint

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region after the Arab Spring, monarchy has turned out

to be a far stronger negative predictor of destabilization than it was before 2011. For the MENA, the

period after 2010 can be subdivided into three periods: a mass protests period (2011–2012), the period

of explosive growth of radical Islamist activities (2013–2016), and the second mass protest period (since

2016). Our analysis demonstrates that monarchies’ stabilization capacity was preserved in 2011–2012 and

grew substantially during 2013–2016, as MENA monarchies turned out to be more resilient in the face of

the outbreak of radical Islamism in the region.

В данной статье представлен анализ и общая таксономия межгрупповых идеологий, а также представлен список их индикаторов. Эта таксономия связана с восемью идеологиями, которые первоначально были изложены в ранних работах. Эти идеологии были созданы на основе трех измерений межкультурных отношений: сохранение культуры; социальное участие; и относительная власть. Предлагаемая здесь таксономия межгрупповых идеологий следует этим трем измерениям, которые связаны с двумя проблемами: (i) отношение к культурному многообразию; и (ii) формы инклюзии этнокультурных групп в более широкое общество (включая вопрос о групповой иерархии). Можно оценить, как эти проблемы решаются, используя четыре индикатора: (1) приветствие различий, (2) статус групп, (3) возможности для социальной интеракции и (4) способ обеспечения единства общества. Ориентация на эти индикаторы позволяет понять, какие межгрупповые идеологии, охватывающие межкультурные установки и межгрупповые отношения, существуют в странах, и описать их.

Using a statecraft framework, the article analyses Cold War US-Soviet exchange programs with a specific focus on scientific-technical exchanges. The practice of scientific-technical exchanges is meaningful at least in three ways: (1) it helps to better understand the art of American and Soviet statecraft that had a major impact on the course of events in maintaining inter-state relations; (2) it shows that statecraft does not make itself, but is accomplished through various tools of public diplomacy in which exchange programs are one; and (3) it allows to utilize a long-term perspective and evaluate the legacy of the exchanges of persons and their impact on bilateral relations despite the Cold War tensions. The legacy of scientific-technical exchanges and their impact on bilateral relations might be incorporated into the contemporary academic and practitioner discourse on public diplomacy.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, the previous democratization progress was partly reversed. It is well seen in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe but also in other geographic regions. In search for causes of this warning trend, many authors point out economic factors such as economic stagnation, unemployment, inequality, consequences of the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 and side-effects of globalization. Not negating the role of economic factors, it is important, however, to see noneconomic determinants such as immature political institutions and their dysfunctionality, nationalism and cultural prejudices, and side-effects of the ICT revolution, which destroyed traditional media and public debate. The antidemocratic drift is dangerous not only for political and civil freedom but also has a negative impact on economic governance, making economies less open and competitive and easy victims of oligarchic predation (‘crony’ capitalism).

How are candidates without official party affiliation able to succeed in authoritarian elections? We analyzed 1,101 independents who took part in city council elections in Russia’s regional capitals between 2014 and 2018. We found that independent candidates’ electoral fortunes depended both on their personal resources enabling them to attract voters’ support and pre-electoral deals with the regime. We also discovered that the chances of being elected were higher for those formally independent candidates who were the regime’s hidden representatives. For the latter group, the chances to win the race were boosted mostly by pre-electoral deals, rather than their personal resources.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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