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Professor Graeme Gill from University of Sydney has conducted the seminar on ‘Symbolic politics and social constructions of past’ at HSE Moscow. He presented the paper ‘Symbols and Post-Communism: an inherent ambiguity?’ and talked about how the transformation of communist regimes created an imperative for the development of a new system of symbols to legitimise the new status quo.

What is a сenter of excellence, and how to establish one – these were the topics of the talk delivered by the Professor of the Academy of Finland and of the University of Helsinki Uskali Mäkiat at the seminar of the Department of Political Science on May 19.

The seminar ‘Symbolic politics and social constructions of past”, organized by the School of Political Science of the Higher School of Economics and the RC on political ideas and ideologies of the Russian Political Science Association was held on the 12th of May.  Prof. Graeme Gill presented the paper ‘Symbols and Post-Communism: an inherent ambiguity?’

From April 7 – 10, 2016, the 74th annual Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) Conference took place in Chicago. The MPSA Conference is one of the most respected events in the political scientists’ professional community. Papers in over than 80 sections in various political science research areas were presented at the conference. The conference attracted over 6,000 political scientists, economists and sociologists from 70 countries, including Nikita Savin, lecturer at the HSE School of Political Science.

On January 31st – February 3^rd 2016, the Winter School of the Faculty of Social Sciences was held at the ‘Voronovo’ Learning Centre, HSE. During the event, potential master’s students took part in master classes, business cases and meetings with students and graduates of the faculty’s educational programmes.

Transitional constitutionalism remains the subject of intensive political controversies. A conflict between the new legal regulation and the existing social reality can be settled in favor of either the former via constitutionalization or the latter via reconstitutionalization. Read an interview with Andrey Medushevskiy to “The Great Epoch”.

Comparative studies of modernization in Russia and China  involves the broader spectrum of argumentation over  relationships between positive law, ethical principles and historical tradition, and  of their reciprocal relations and practical implementations. A number of problems have become particularly relevant to current transformation of both countries. Read an interview with Andrey Medushevskiy to “The Great Epoch”.

Social scientist, Assistant Professor at the School of Political Science in HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, Michael Rochlitz uses photography as a way of looking at people in contrast to studying them at his desk. An exhibition of his photographs taken in many different countries including North Korea opened on December 10 on the 4th Floor (British 3rd) at 9/11 Myasnitskaya Ulitsa.

More than twenty years after the collapse of the socialist bloc, virtually none of the post-communist countries have attained the level of socioeconomic development characteristic of advanced democracies. Likewise, none of the post-communist countries have emerged as successful autocracies with high-quality public institutions, such as those found in Singapore or Oman. Professor Andrei Melville, Dean of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, and Mikhail Mironyuk, Associate Professor of the HSE School of Political Science, examine possible reasons why it is so.

The book ‘Democracy in a Russian Mirror’ edited by Adam Przeworski was issued by Cambridge University Press in May 2015. Three of the authors — Boris Makarenko, Andrei Melville and Mikhail Ilyin — are staff members of the School of Political Science.