Publications

The performed cross-national tests with negative binomial regression models support the presence of a curvilinear relationship between the quantitative expansion of education (measured with mean years of schooling) and terrorist attack intensity. Growth of schooling in the least educationally developed countries is associated with a significant ten- dency towards the growth of terrorist attack intensity. This tendency remains significant when controlled for income level, type of political regime, unemployment, inequality, and urbanization; wherein the peak of the terrorist attack intensity is observed for a relatively low, but not zero level of the quantitative expansion of formal education (approximately three to six years of schooling). Further growth of schooling in more developed countries is associated with a significant trend toward the decrease of terrorist attack intensity. This tendency remains significant after being controlled for income level, political regime, unemployment, inequality, and urbanization. The most radical decrease is observed for the interval between seven and eight mean years of schooling. In addi- tion, this quantitative analysis indicates the presence of a similar curvi- linear relationship between GDP per capita and terrorist attack intensity with a wide peak from $4000 to $14,000. The explanation of a curvilinear relationship between GDP per capita and terrorist activity through mean years of schooling intermediary can only be partial. The regression ana- lysis suggests that the growth of mean years of schooling with economic development of middle and high income countries may really be one of the factors accounting for the decrease of terrorist attacks in countries with GDP per capita growth. However, this regression analysis indicates that a partial role in the explanation of negative correlation between GDP per capita and terrorist attack intensity for middle and high income countries is also played by a lower level of unemployment rate in the high income countries, as well as by a very high share of consolidated democracies and an extremely low share of factional democracies among the high income states. It is especially worth noting that after the intro- duction of all controls, the coefficient sign for per capita GDP changes from negative to positive, i.e., GDP growth in middle and high income countries after the introduction of controls for inequality, education, unemployment, type of regime, etc. turns out to be a factor of increase rather than decline of the intensity of terrorist activity. On the one hand, this suggests that the negative correlation between per capita GDP and the level of terrorist activity in these countries is actually explained to an extremely high degree by the fact that per capita GDP growth here tends to be accompanied by an increase in the educational level of the popula- tion, a decrease in unemployment, a reduction in inequality, a decrease in the number of factional democracies, and an increase in the number of consolidated democracies. On the other hand, the positive sign (with a statistically significant correlation) indicates here that if in the middle and high countries economic growth is not accompanied by an increase in economic equality and education of the population, a decrease in unemployment, a decrease in the number of unstable factional democ- racies, and an increase in the number of consolidated democracies (that is, if in fact all the fruits of economic growth are captured by the elites, and almost nothing gets from this growth to the commoner population), then such economic growth would tend to lead to an increase in terrorist activity (and not to its reduction).

In this chapter we aim to consider the interdependence between total factor productivity, economic welfare, and political institutions using BRICS as an empirical example. While relationships between each pair of factors have already been subject to scientific inquiry, we attempt to look at the productivity-institutions nexus in conjunction with economic development. We utilize nonparametric methods (data envelopment analysis) to estimate productivity levels for a large sample of countries and investigate the mutual relationships between productivity, GDP, and institutions for every year in the sample, as well as look into possible connections between dynamics of the three factors. We also analyze productivity trajectories of the BRICS countries in order to gain further insight into how capital-labor ratios might affect further economic development given each country’s institutional context. We show that levels of institutional development are a significant predictor for per capita GDP levels, as well as TFP levels. However, our tests for differences in TFP and growth remain inconclusive.

In 1976 Richard Dawkins coined the term meme as a way to metaphorically project bio-evolutionary principles upon the processes of cultural and social development. The works of Dawkins and of some other enthusiasts had contributed to a rise in popularity of the concept of memetics ("study of memes"), but the interest to this new field started to decline quite soon. The conceptual apparatus of memetics was based on a number of quasi-biological terms, but the emerging discipline failed to go beyond those initial metaphors. This article is an attempt to rebuild the toolkit of memetics with the help of the more fundamental concepts taken from semiotics and to propose a synthetic conceptual framework connecting genetics and memetics, in which semiotics is used as the transdisciplinary methodology for both disciplines. The concept of sign is used as the meta-lingual equivalent for both the concepts of gene and meme. In the most general understanding, sign is a thing which stands for another thing. In genetics this translates into gene that is a section of DNA that stands for the algorithm of how a particular biomolecule is built. In memetics, the similar principle works in meme that is a thing that stands for the rules of how a particular cultural practice is performed.

What conditions enable governments, educational institutions, and enterprises to organise joint, comprehensive technical and vocational education systems (TVET) in developing and transitional countries? This paper explores this question on the basis of an original survey of enterprises in 12 Russian regions designed to determine the factors affecting local adoption of German-style ‘dual education’ in TVET. We distinguish between firm-level and regional-level factors influencing firms to form institutionally costly partnerships with vocational schools and government entities for the sake of upgrading skill formation. Our findings point to the importance of state intervention in fostering and enforcing firm-school partnerships in settings lacking the dense network of labor and business organizations characteristic of coordinated market economies in Western Europe.

The article analyzes relative deprivation as a possible factor of sociopolitical instability during the Arab Spring events using the methods of correlation and multiple regression analysis. In this case, relative deprivation is operationalized in two ways: (a) through the indicator of subjective feeling of happiness on the eve of the events of the Arab Spring, and (b) through the scale of decrease of the subjective feeling of happiness on the eve of the events of Arab Spring. It is shown that the change in the level of subjective feeling of happiness between 2009 and 2010 is a powerful, statistically significant predictor of the level of destabilization in Arab countries in 2011. The next most powerful predictor is the mean value of the subjective feeling of happiness in the corresponding country for 2010. At the same time, the fundamental economic indicators we tested, while controlling for them, have turned out to be extremely weak and at the same time statistically insignificant predictors of the level of sociopolitical instability in the Arab countries in 2011.

This review explores the book French Populism and Discourses on Secularism written by Per-Erik Nilsson and published in 2018. The book deals with the phenomenon of populism from a unique perspective: by placing populist discourses on French secularism – la laïcité – at the centre of the analysis. Nilsson’s study lies at the intersection of three major strands of empirical research focusing on French secularism, radical nationalism and populism, and anti-Muslim activism but offers an in-depth analysis combining simultaneously all the three above-mentioned perspectives.

The article tests the extent to which Russia’s “pivot to the East” was supported by shared visions of the American and the Chinese “Other” after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. It compares representations of the United States and China as Russia’s Others in discourses of Vladimir Putin, major political parties, and policy experts at a time when Russian–American relations experienced a considerable downturn and relations with China surged. The method of analysis is frames coding. The article demonstrates that for most of the actors considered, the United States plays a much more important role as constitutive Other than China.

In the Post‐Soviet period, domestic policies of Central and Eastern European countries have been marked by a ‘problem of minorities’. ‘Nationalizing’ state policies in regard to large Russian minority in Estonia and Latvia have been the issue of concern for both the kin‐state and European institutions ever since. Could pressure from Russia be effective in terms of change of minority policies in the Baltic states? What are the effects of EU accession on minority policies? These are the principle questions addressed by Jennie L. Schulze in Strategic Frames: Europe, Russia, and Minority Inclusion in Estonia and Latvia. The book focuses on the indirect influence of the EU institutions and Russia, adopting a framing approach. It consists of comparative cases covering the areas of language, citizenship and electoral policies.

The Gezi protests in 2013 were the largest urban resistance in the history of modern Turkey, both in terms of their intensity and the number of participants. They revitalized grassroots movements, further polarized the already-divided Turkish society, altered the political landscape, and sent shock waves among the incumbent elite who believed they were ruling without serious public opposition until the protests. The trajectory of the regime and the elite survival strategies profoundly changed after 2013 to meet this new challenge.

The protest publics model proposes a new theoretical framework for examining this emerging protest pattern, which can also shed light on our understanding of the Gezi events. In this chapter, the Gezi protests will be analyzed under the analytical framework of protest publics. First, I will show why this framework is appropriate for understanding the Gezi protests. Secondly, I will briefly discuss the political outcomes of these events by focusing on the transformative potential of protest publics in semi-authoritarian settings.

This chapter explores the influence of social landscapes, focusing on Russian gender and sexuality (G&S) education under a conservative turn. While the policy banning of ‘propaganda of homosexuality’ declared by the authorities should change public opinion against homosexuality and gender equality in theory, this chapter shows policy is only the beginning of Russian debates. Drawing on interview and survey data, this chapter shows that the laws have not stabilised the narratives of how to deal with gender and sexualities in education completely; and that the Russian education system’s attempts at inculcation of the younger generation in some ways inspired youth curiosity.

The article attempts to identify major factors of the nationalization of the vote in contemporary Russia using the two level approach: the between- and within-region. The former compares regions as units of analysis while the latter additionally takes into account voting in municipalities to obtain levels of voting homogeneity within the regions. The study uses data from the last 2012–2016 national-regional electoral cycle investigating both federal and regional election results. Following Ishiyama (2002) for the between-region level of analysis the Regional Party Vote Inequality index has been utilized. The Party Nationalization Score proposed by Jones and Mainwaring (2003) has been applied to the measurement of voting territorial diversity at the within-region level. The results show that regional political factors may be still considered as major drivers of the nationalization of the vote as it did in the 1990s. The difference is that in politically recentralized Russia non-competitive regions headed by politically strong governors provides between-region inequality rather than contributing to nationalization. At the same time, the similarity continues in the ability of governors’ “political machines” to contribute homogeneity of the vote, but only within their regions.

This chapter deals with emerging illiberal challenges—international and domestic—and their impact on the current state and prospects of liberalism, particularly in Russia. Is the liberal world order in peril and, if so, how grave is the threat? Has liberalism really failed ideologically speaking and in terms of policy? As happened during the New Deal, can liberalism in general—and Russian liberalism in particular—be “rebooted” conceptually and programmatically in response to pressing challenges? What are the fundamental issues of the liberal ideological and political agenda that need to be reevaluated? How can modern liberalism be “reset”? These are some of the fundamental issues addressed in this chapter. It provides a tentative typology of today’s illiberal challenges, a conceptual differentiation between the institutional and normative aspects of the global liberal world order, an analysis of the political and ideological context that may, at least partly, explain the miseries Russian liberals experience at the present moment, and also a tentative blueprint for the path forward of liberalism in non-liberal Russia.

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.

Effective systems of vocational education are crucial to economic and social development.  However, coordination of labor market demand and supply of skill requires either well-functioning labor market institutions or institutionally-embedded strategic partnerships among government, labor, and employers.  In particular, the transplantation of German-style dual education methods to a different environment poses significant institutional dilemmas. Russia presents a useful case for examining the conditions under which such arrangements can be established.  Based on a series of interviews in six Russian regions and a set of case histories, we seek to draw testable hypotheses that can be applied to other settings.

Experts code latent quantities for many influential political science datasets. Although scholars are aware of the importance of accounting for variation in expert reliability when aggregating such data, they have not systematically explored either the factors affecting expert reliability or the degree to which these factors influence estimates of latent concepts. Here we provide a template for examining potential correlates of expert reliability, using coder-level data for six randomly selected variables from a cross-national panel dataset. We aggregate these data with an ordinal item response theory model that parameterizes expert reliability, and regress the resulting reliability estimates on both expert demographic characteristics and measures of their coding behavior. We find little evidence of a consistent substantial relationship between most expert characteristics and reliability, and these null results extend to potentially problematic sources of bias in estimates, such as gender. The exceptions to these results are intuitive, and provide baseline guidance for expert recruitment and retention in future expert coding projects: attentive and confident experts who have contextual knowledge tend to be more reliable. Taken as a whole, these findings reinforce arguments that item response theory models are a relatively safe method for aggregating expert-coded data.

There is a striking opposition within the current discourse on Russia’s position in the world. On the one hand, there are well-known arguments about Russia’s “weak hand” (relatively small and stagnating economy, vulnerability to sanctions, technological backwardness, deteriorating demography, corruption, bad institutions, etc.). On the other hand, Russia is accused of “global revisionism”, attempts to reshape and undermine the liberal world order, and Western democracy itself. There seems to be a paradox: Russia with a perceived decline of major resources of national power, exercises dramatically increased international influence. This paradox of power and/or influence is further explored. This paper introduces a new complex Index of national power. On the basis of ratings of countries authors compare the dynamics of distribution of power in the world with a focus on Russia’s national power in world politics since 1995. The analysis brings evidence that the cumulative resources of Russia’s power in international affairs did not increase during the last two decades. However, Russia’s influence in world politics has significantly increased as demonstrated by assertive foreign policy in different parts of the world and its perception by the international political community and the public. Russia remains a major power in today’s world, although some of its power resources are stagnating or decreasing in comparison to the US and rising China. To compensate for weaknesses Russia is using both traditional and nontraditional capabilities of international influence.

The article is devoted to socio-cultural and politico-anthropological analysis of national-populism growth and electoral support of politicians and political parties advocate its ideology in the USA and Europe at present. It is shown that this process constitutes the new wave of “vertical invasion of barbarians” prerequisites of which are conditioned by coming of new civilization reality. It deforms habitual social environment for the “mass man” and makes him feel uncomfortable. Traditional democratic political systems do not respond adequately and timely to these changes. The new wave of “vertical invasion of barbarianism” brought two significant results and both in Anglo-Saxon countries – Brexit in Great Britain and election Donald Trump as president of the United States. In the states of continental Europe it did not bring results of this level. It is assumed this is conditioned that the states of continental Europe which transferred decease of national-populism in severe forms in XX century developed resistance to this phenomenon. However in the states of Anglo-Saxon group required protective mechanisms do not exist.