Articles

A round table devoted to the analysis of ways to achieve civil harmony in various socio-historical conditions was recently staged by the Department of Political Science at Lomonosov Moscow State University as part of the department’s “Lomonosov Readings-2017” conference. The purpose of the round table was to discuss possible trajectories of the preservation of civil peace in phases of confl ict and harmony under a complex ideological situation that features, at the present stage of development of society and the state, the segmentation of public discourse and the absence of a common language. The round table demonstrated that the study of citizenship – as both a phenomenon connecting history, politics and culture, and at the same time as a particular kind of socio-political practice — entails a rather wide range of methodological approaches. Within the framework of the round table, this issue was discussed in aspects of confl ict and harmony, including material from various periods of the history of Russia, as well as in the contexts of historical memory, in the perspective of the problem of constructing a civil nation-state, of a common civil identity and of schismatic disruption — all of which fi nd refl ection in discussions of topical issues on the Russian Internet and in Russia’s media space.

Partisan governments play an important role in the elaboration of macroeconomic policies of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries: they manage fiscal policy and coordinate with a Central Bank that conducts monetary policy. Ideology is a crucial parameter of the ruling coalition. This study focuses on the infl uence of the ideology of the ruling coalition on macroeconomic policies of the OECD countries. Using statistical methods, the analysis examines the relationship between the “rightism” of the ruling coalition and such characteristics of budgetary policy as budget balancing, state expenditures and tax collection. The fi ndings show that the infl uence of ideology is determined by a set of social and economic factors, so the nature of the infl uence that ideology wields may work in diff erent directions depending on the conditions.

The purpose of this article is to identify political factors in the institutionalization of the civil service in Russia at the present stage, the problems associated with them and the prospects for overcoming them. The study demonstrates the applicability of institutional theories of public service; the author proposes a model of institutionalization of the civil service (which is examined in the light of recent reform experience in an appendix) and attempts to identify the roots of existing problems, in the end proposing options for their rectifi cation.
This study bears out the assertion that modern dysfunctions of the civil service have been largely determined by a non-optimal institutional choice made in the early 1990s. The design of civil service reforms is carried out by a narrow circle of the politico-bureaucratic elite, which contributes to the long-term preservation of the institutionalization of the civil service in an unfi nished stage. The more time that passes after the beginning of political transition in Russia, the more the dependence on the previous stage of development increases and the incomplete reform of the bureaucracy leads to increasing political and socioeconomic costs. The political factors for a successful continuation of the institutionalization of the civil service are its integration into the strategic course of the country’s president; provision of support for reform among the civil servants themselves; and the implementation of a one-stage reform permitting the attainment of the goal within a single presidential cycle.

This article examines the defi nition of political risk using the example of the Eurasian integration of the Republic of Armenia. The authors analyze the typology of the main political risks and their genesis in the current context, highlighting a wide variety of political risk factors and their subject-object relations. These create certain diffi culties, but at the same time open new opportunities for study. According to the authors, analysis of political risk may be in demand when optimizing Eurasian integration strategy via updated concepts of “multi-speed,” “asymmetric” and “flexible” integration.

In May 2017 a research project on Russian citizens’ perceptions of the former Soviet republics was presented at a round table held by the Department of Sociology and Psychology of Politics of the Faculty of Political Science of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The three main topics of discussion were: problems of perception of the states of the post-Soviet space; comparative analysis of the images of these countries; and factors that infl uence the formation of images of states in the mass political consciousness. As the discussion showed, the perception of other countries refl ects, fi rst of all, the psychological state of one’s own society: as the positive assessments of one’s own country grow, the assessments of other countries become more positive as well. The study showed a very low awareness of neighboring countries among the respondents. Maximum emotional response among them was elicited by Ukraine and Belarus. Further, in the images of all the post-Soviet countries, a marked contradiction between the positive assessments of the peoples and the negative assessments of the authorities of these countries was observed.

In this second part of their article, the authors attempt to consider what might be called British political personology. Since representatives of the ruling elites played a leading role in the formation and development of a unique British civilization, a politiсo-psychological study of their personal characteristics would seem to have considerable relevance. Yet in British political science, despite the great importance of the role of the Prime Minister and other high offi cials of the state, political personology has not yet developed as such. Nevertheless, the authors consider it possible to identify two main aspects in the study of national political leaders — historical and modern — as well as a number of research trends, including historiographical, biographical, linguistic, literary, and artistic subsets. Most of the analyses identifi ed are devoted to the study of the country's Prime Ministers, who historically occupy a special status in the structure of the British political system. The authors proffer examples of the application of concrete ideas and models in the study of English Prime Ministers.

This article analyzes the role of the infl uence of information media in political confl icts. The author emphasizes that the infl uence of the media and “new media” on these confl icts is signifi cant: any political confl ict, regardless of its scale or the composition of its participant group, is inscribed in a specifi c information context. The struggle for power of the parties to the confl ict is always accompanied by an information war, the conduct of which is impossible without the intermediary and transfer functions of the mass media. The author concludes that in contemporary confl icts, the mass media and “new media” act simultaneously as a special subject: an instrument and a channel for confl ict interaction.

The unblocking of the India-U.S. nuclear deal following President Barack Obama’s offi cial visit to New Delhi in January 2015 paved the way for bringing to fruition earlier nuclear agreements and helped to overcome a temporary cool-down in bilateral relations. This article discusses the pace of India-U.S. nuclear talks and the negotiation positions of all the parties concerned. The author analyzes the prospects of American private companies Westinghouse and General Electric-Hitachi of entering India’s nuclear market and evaluates potential avenues India might opt for in expanding nuclear cooperation with U.S. allies (Australia, Canada, the Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom) and other states (Argentina, China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Namibia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Sri Lanka) in the fi eld of uranium fuel and nuclear power equipment purchases.

This article focuses on the strategy of Indian “soft power” in the South Asian subregion as a key component of the modern geopolitics of New Delhi. The author addressed the understanding of “soft power” from the “rising powers” of Asia, then examines Indian-Chinese relations in the fi eld of “soft power” through the concept of “Chindia.” This neologism signifi es not only the competition between the two powers, but also the development of adjacent zones of Indian and Chinese civilizations, where as a result of intercultural dialogue and exchange there are peculiar geocultural hybrid spaces equally susceptible both to Indian and Chinese infl uence. The author concludes that although India’s “soft power” expansion was a response to China’s successful attempts to involve the countries of South Asia in its orbit of infl uence, India has now begun to apply the updated models of “soft power” on a systematic basis.