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Опыт изучения власти в городских сообществах: российская проекция
Can foreign cognitive models be successfully applied to the study of Russian politics? This issue is discussed via the analysis of the application of American research models for the study of power in European and Russian urban communities. For a long time the US theories has not been widely recognized outside of the US. The situation has changed since the 1990s with the emergence of the "urban regime theory" which overcame the shortcomings of earlier approaches to the study of power in local communities and gradually began to be used by researchers of Western and Eastern Europe in the authentic (classic) version and (more often) after certain modifications. In the European versions the concept of "urban regime" has become wider and more flexible that has allowed to take into account the specifics of the new political and institutional context. The first empirical studies of power in Russian urban communities performed in the tradition of urban regime analysis showed that despite the significant differences between Russian and western political and cultural contexts including those associated with the weakness of the legal framework and the strong authoritarian component of the Russian policy, the international experience is definitely relevant. It helps to clarify research issues, develop working hypotheses, systematize existing theoretical and conceptual resources, classify power forms and regimes, put the Russian power studies in a comparative perspective.