Research & Expertise – News

On April 5 and 6, Professor Staffan Lindberg from the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg (Sweden) was invited to speak at HSE as part of a workshop on the Varieties of Democracy. The workshop was hosted by HSE’s School of Political Science and the Modernization Mobilization in Eurasia (MME) Project. The MME team carries out data-oriented studies of political participation and institutional transformation in China, Russia, Germany, Iran, Turkey and Japan.

Springer, one of the world's leading publishers of scientific literature, has launched a new book series, entitled ‘Societies and political orders in transition’. The series has been initiated by the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, and three HSE representatives are members of the series International Advisory Board, with the other four members coming from universities in Germany, UK and the USA.

On Tuesday, May 23, William Reisinger, Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, will deliver a seminar at the HSE School of Political Science entitled ‘The Impact of Petty Corruption on Political Support in Post-Soviet Societies’. Ahead of his seminar, Professor Reisinger spoke with the HSE News Service about the topic of his research, how his impressions of Russia and the post-Soviet world have changed since he began visiting the region, and the changing interest in Russia that he has observed among Western students over the past several decades.

Navid Hassanpour, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences (School of Political Science) at the Higher School of Economics, is the author of ‘Leading from the Periphery and Network Collective Action’ published by Cambridge University Press in December 2016. He recently spoke with the HSE News Service about his current course at HSE, expansion of the Master’s programme in Applied Political Science, and his plans for upcoming research.

On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved and the Russian flag was raised over Kremlin. Taylor & Francis Group gathered a large collection of studies on Soviet and post-Soviet periods containing 150 research articles to celebrate the 25th anniversary of this event. Articles by staff from the School of Political Science were also included in the collection ‘The Dissolution of the Soviet Union: 25 Years On’.  All the publications will be available free of charge until the end of June 2017.

At the beginning of September, the American Political Science Associate (APSA) awards ceremony took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the ceremony, two awards were given to the work Misperceiving Inequality* by Vladimir Gimpelson and Daniel Treisman for the best research project presented at the 2015 APSA congress. The comparative public policy section gave one award, while the comparative political research section gave out the other.

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.

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.

An article “Bad enough governance': state capacity and quality of institutions in post-Soviet autocracies” written by Andrei Melville and Mikhail Mironyuk was published in the Post-Soviet Affairs journal. The article contributes to current discussions on state capacity, quality of institutions, and political regimes.