Articles

This article is devoted to the study of the problem of ubiquitous informatization and electronization, which has caused the formation of a peculiar virtual reality as an integral part of actual reality. The author analyzes the features of virtual reality and their infl uence on the political space. The term “post-reality” is used to designate the environment created by the features of the virtual space. The article views in detail such phenomena generated by post-reality as the post- truth created by the merging of politics with the virtual environment and the post-values that directly aff ect the political information agenda. In turn, post-values are divided into simulations of popularity and simulations of achievements because of which real personalities and actions, including those related to politics, are devalued. In turn, they are replaced by virtual analogues, which often do not register in actual reality. At the end of the article the author analyzes the reaction generated by the post-reality, off ering examples of this reaction in politics.

The question of the ratio of economic and political freedom is considered in this article through the analysis of the actual values of the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) and the Democracy Index (DI) for 162 countries. Despite the rather high correlation of both indices, the study reveals a signifi cant degree of their variability: there are enough countries that do not quite fi t into the expected model “countries with a high IEF have a high DI, and countries with low IEF — a low DI.” In countries with equivalent IEF values, the values of the DI can vary 2-3 times; likewise, countries with the same DI can vary signifi cantly in IEF. In practice, it is clear that economic freedom does not always require political freedom (United Arab Emirates), and political freedom can be realized in conditions of limited economic freedom (India). A country’s ability to deviate from the expected global trend line is infl uenced by the size of the population and the size of the territory. Among countries that deviate signifi cantly from the trend, a signifi cant proportion are countries with small populations and small territories. As an alternative to the traditional method of analysis, the article proposes an approach that takes into account the size of the population of countries and is based on the recognition that the subject of political and economic freedoms is not a country, but an individual. This approach shows that only 11 % of the population lives in “ free” countries, and the relationship between economic and political freedoms is less obvious than one would expect in theory.

Public diplomacy (PD), as a communication policy between societies of different states, is a relatively new tool in the foreign policies of Russia and Armenia. The culturological aspect is the most important element of public diplomacy, as it defi nes a set of values and cultural policies aimed at transmitting a state’s position to a foreign audience. Although the very objectives of public diplomacy diff er for Russia and Armenia, both states face the necessity of adjusting their policies, focusing not on comparing themselves with anyone or in opposition to anything but rather on the crystalization of their own cultural, ideological and integrational position (in the Russian case) and on preservation of the historical and spiritual unity of a state with communities living abroad (as is the case with Armenia). In light of the absence of a state concept of PD, it is especially important for Armenia to form a Council for Public Diplomacy to bring together theoreticians and practitioners specializing in the fi eld from the Republic of Armenia and unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, giving them an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the experience of public diplomacy in states that are among the most active initiators of this policy in international area.

This article examines problems of Russian-Polish cooperation in the preservation of the historical memory of the Second World War. The author analyzes attempts to build a dialogue and problems arising in the matter of preserving the common memory of the war, while also estimating the possibility of overcoming them. The issues of cooperation in this sphere at the interstate and interregional level are considered separately. Attention is drawn to the methods of interaction that give the greatest result: academic, intercultural cooperation, and the implementation of the projects of “people’s democracy.” The author also pays attention to the institutional aspect of the issue, considering the history of the formation and activities of the Polish state bodies concerned with the preservation of historical memory. Problems of the work of interstate bodies on interaction in this sphere are likewise examined. This work brings to bear information from the Polish and Russian press, archival sources and decisions of the current state authorities of the two countries.

This article attempts to analyze the evolution of the political identity of the Soviet Union in the context of the transformation of humanitarian discourse. This discourse can be defi ned as a set of ideas transmitted in a political language about the sociopolitical identity of a person, his rights and freedoms. Analyzing the development of the system of ideas about man, rights and freedoms in the offi cial Soviet discourse, the article demonstrates how such ideas formed the collective political identity of the Soviet state at various historical stages. The author concludes that Soviet ideology and offi cial political discourse throughout the entire period of existence of the Soviet state reproduced the concept of humanitarian universalism, which was an alternative to Western humanitarian discourse and constituted both the Soviet strategy of foreign policy and the international identity of the Soviet state overall.

This article discusses the formation of the Christian Democratic movement in Europe after World War II. Despite the existence of objective conditions for the success of either left-wing political parties or at least the left wing of the Christian Democrats, only conservatives could take over the leadership of post-war European countries for many years. Moreover, their coming to power allowed the implementation of the largest integration project on the European continent, ultimately leading to the creation of the European Union. Examining the main reasons for the success of the Christian Democrats, the author concludes that chief among them were Christian values as such — in contrast to previous people’s parties more signifi cant reliance on the Catholic Church and its teachings — and the absence of obstacles from the Holy See towards the participation of Catholics in political activities.

In the early 1990s in the Soviet Union, legislation was changed regarding the procedure for emigration abroad. This led to an increase of the fl ow of immigrants to the territory of Germany, where appropriate legal and social conditions for Russian-speaking immigrants were created in the 1980s. Publishing operations among the group became increasingly active in the “new” homeland. Currently, the Russian-speaking segment of the German media is one of the most numerous. A study of these Russian-language media shows that the ideological and political views of the Russian-speaking ethnic group in Germany have not fundamentally changed since the 1990s. The evaluations of political events have remained quite manipulative throughout the period under examination. Furthermore, the essence of this manipulation of the consciousness of the Russian-speaking population of Germany lies in shaping the image of Russia as a potentially aggressive extra-legal national entity with a weak economy — a state that represents a danger to other countries and to Germany in particular.

This article is devoted to the identifi cation of the specifi cs of blogging as a technology of public and political communication at the level of the Russian region. The authors address three research tasks: a comparison of the use of blogging as a tool and as a socio-communicative technology; identifi cation of the features of the event-thematic agenda in the blogosphere of the region; and a segmentation of the audience of political blogs in the province. Blogging in the region is characterized by identifying and analyzing the activities of the subjects that most shape the eventthematic agenda online. The authors demonstrate that the tendency of using blogging as a technology of political communication is becoming increasingly characteristic for Russian regions; this implies a signifi cant expansion of the tools used. The article further maintains that elections are becoming a kind of “growth point” for the political blogosphere of the region, a platform for testing new formats of political communication in the online environment. Further, the limitations of blogging as a socio-communicative technology in terms of the impact on regional communities are discussed and a defi nition of blogging is off ered that accounts for the subjective interests of bloggers.

Liberal democracy theory allows for the existence of the dominant party in the system recognized as a competitive democracy. Being an integral part of actual liberal democracies, dominant parties make a considerable impact on the theoretical underpinnings of such systems and their functioning, which is a justifi cation for studying their features and behaviour patterns with the aim of uncovering their emergence, development and decline mechanisms. The article looks into the phenomenon of the dominant party drawing on the seven widely acknowledged and signifi cant cases (Italy, Germany, India, Japan, South Africa, Ishuv-Israel, Sweden) and puts forward a new defi nition of the dominant party grounded in empirical data. The article also provides an analysis of the internal structure and the essential features of the functioning of dominant parties and presents conclusions about the causes of the emergence and development of dominant parties and the reasons for them retaining this status.

This article is devoted to the study of the food regime, a concept little known in Russian academic literature. The author identifi es the “theoretical and methodological platform” of the concept using a comparative approach and retrospective analysis. The ensemble of a comparative-historical approach, a method of analyzing secondary data and a forecasting method contributed to the consolidation of the concept of the food regime as a tool capable of streamlining the global stages of production, consumption and distribution of food in historical retrospect as well as in the foreseeable future. The author demonstrates that the consistent transformation of food regimes comes about due to the confl ict between two principles, “protectionism” and “ free trade,” which are eff ectively adapted to diff erent political and economic realities. The identifi ed “sequence” is consistent with the general position of the theory of Karl Polanyi (the Double Movement) and allows us to assert that the foundation of the Fourth Food Regime will be based on a modifi ed version of protectionism. This is confi rmed by the growing popularity of the transnational movement La Via Campesina and the growing demand for its revolutionary strategy of Food Sovereignty.