Articles

This article examines aspects of the interaction between transnational elites and civil society in the modern world. The author focuses in the main on the infl uence 20 of transnational elites on organizations of the “third sector,” political parties and their leadership, and on the media. The articles sets out the principal content borne by the concepts “transnational elites” and “civil society.” The analysis shows that transnational elites tend to turn a well-developed “third sector” into an eff ective counterbalance to the national state. Thus they actively fi nance and support its activities, since the opposition of the “third sector” and the national state weakens them as the main competitors of transnational elites on the world stage. According to the author, political practice of the second half of the 20th century and the fi rst decades of the 21st shows that transnational elites have managed to bring their proteges to political leadership in a number of countries, thus increasing their infl uence on the adoption of many political decisions. In order to achieve their own goals, these elites use and indeed monopolize the media in various countries of the world community as a powerful means of infl uencing public opinion, in the process violating one of the fundamental principles of democracy: equal access to the media for all citizens.

This article presents an analysis of political processes in the post-Soviet space from the 1990s to the fi rst half of the 2010s through the prism of the foreign policy doctrines of Russia and the United States. For Russia, the region of “near abroad” is a zone of vital interests and priorities. At the same time, the basis of the Russian foreign policy in the CIS space in the post-Soviet period is the goal of political and economic reintegration of the region. The reintegration eff orts of the Russian Federation in the post-Soviet space are an important component of the course towards strengthening Russia’s position in the world as one of the global centers capable of implementing an independent foreign policy. For the United States, the most important task in the region is countering the integration eff orts of Russia, which, in turn, is viewed in the context of preventing the formation of a political and economic pole in Eurasia that could undermine American global leadership. Both Russian and American approaches to politics in the post-Soviet space are closely linked with their understanding of European and Eurasian integration projects as well as the principles of building a common European security system. The revitalization of Russia in the international arena and the consistent development of the Eurasian integration project led to an aggravation of the Russian-American confrontation in the region, a natural consequence and manifestation of which was the Ukraine crisis.

This article examines the increasing infl uence of real practices of civic activism in online communities on the specifi cs of incorporating civic activists’ projects into the political agenda. The institutionalization of network civic activism in recent years 8 has made it possible to implement network practices into political reality, moving them to a new level of infl uence thanks to the construction of numerous inclusive horizontal connections. The fact is that global changes in the post-information society have contributed to a steady “deliverance” from communications monopolies, creating a delicate balance of state interests and the interests of society and the individual. The fi rst part of the article shows that current network communities are not a shapeless mass but clearly structured by horizontal non-hierarchical ties. The information and communication abundance of today allows actors to eff ectively apply individual and collective actions in implementing political and non-political activities. According to the author, civic activity is capable of forming important vectors of socio-political development; grass-roots mobilization of citizens is a coordinating tool of civil society and is contributing to the slow transformation of the political system in Russia.

The leading states of the modern world declare the creation and implementation of large-scale political projects aimed at changing certain areas of world politics in accordance with their economic, social, military-strategic and socio-cultural interests. In 2014, Vladimir Putin outlined the contours of the “great project” of the Russian state-civilization in his address to the Federal Assembly. In the same year, Barack Obama, speaking from the United Nations rostrum, laid out the general characteristics of the new American civilizational project. In 2016, Martin Schultz formulated the concept of an updated “Europe” civilizational project. From 2017 to 2019 Latin American, Asian and African political leaders presented their own political projects at the regional and global levels. Conceptualization of such projects is successfully carried out in modern social sciences and humanities studies. This takes place on transcontinental, civilizational, geopolitical, ideological and military-strategic grounds. At the same time, the terminological apparatus of the last four has been developed in detail and has passed the necessary testing in modern social sciences and humanities studies. That notwithstanding, the transcontinental basis for the identifi cation of large-scale political projects has not received proper conceptualization. This article presents the author’s formulation of the concept of “transcontinental political project,” defi ned by its essential characteristics, the mechanisms of formation of such projects and the diff erences between a transcontinental political project and civilizational and global projects.

This essay’s part contains two relatively independent sections. At the beginning of the text, the authors discuss the mental and civilizational mission of Christianity in England, in particular the Catholic and Celtic churches. The mental and civilizational foundations, as well as the distinctive statehood of the future British nation, were laid in the process of their multidimensional interaction. The second section describes the stages of the transition from impersonal, undogmatic, autochthonous polymentality to the formation of a subjective, dogmatic, monotheistic mentality among the inhabitants of the British Isles. The fundamental political and psychological result of the Christianization of the British elites was the emergence of new mental properties. First of all, subjective identity as awareness of the exclusivity of one’s potential, and also the ability to political refl ection and to identify oneself with the goal of political activity. The British elite’s uniqueness is due to the peculiarities of the historical development and formation of their subjectivity, which gave rise to a special ruling regime and original political culture.

This study reconstructs the ideas of patriotism and nationalism in the perception of modern Japanese youth, analyzing the two concepts through the prism of such categories as the image of the country, the image of a political leader, shame and pride, national problems and international relations. The author presents the results of interviews with Japanese students, drawing conclusions on this basis about the patriotism of modern Japanese youth. The main trend can be considered an orientation towards culture and cooperation. Japanese youth convey a commitment to soft power and disclaim the possibility of military confl icts. The author draws a conclusion about the peace-loving nature of modern Japanese youth and its commitment to “constructive” patriotism.

With the advent of a suffi ciently large number of young politicians, a comprehensive study of this generation not previously undertaken in our research has become possible. The political-psychological approach proposed by the author takes into account the subject-object character of youth in politics and is based on a combination of political, institutional and psychological principles of research. The approach is to study young political leaders both as separate individuals and as a generational community, combining generalized analysis with individual case studies. The fi rst of these methods makes it possible to obtain a socio-demographic profi le of the young political elite, revealing gender relations, prevailing levels and directions of education, their compliance with the positions held, as well as mechanisms and ways of entering the world of politics among young people. The method of studying individual cases involves the study of young politicians from the standpoint of analyzing their personal characteristics, among which the author highlights the self-concept, motivation, style of interpersonal relations and style of political behavior. The study of individual representatives of the young elite from this position allows us to get an idea about this generation’s ways of exercising power as well as to assess the prognostic potential of the young elite. The proposed approach to the study of the younger generation of politicians can contribute to the process of optimization of personnel policy and the formation of an eff ective system of recruiting young leaders.

The focus of this article is the state policy of the Russian Federation in the fi eld of physical education of undergraduate students. The subject of the study is an indicative assessment of this public policy from the perspective of an integrative approach. The author raises the question of the validity of the current quality indicator, enshrined in regulatory legal acts, of the implementation of state policy in the fi eld of undergraduate physical education. Based on an analysis of the strategic objectives and the regulatory framework of this policy as well as the characteristics of the infl uence of students’ physical education on human capital indicators, the article demonstrates the unsatisfactory quality of the selection of quality indicators for the implementation of state policy. As an alternative, the author proposes to consider the quality of the formation at the university of a motivational-value attitude among students towards physical education and sports. The article further describes the methodology for assessing this indicator, which is based on the use of sociological survey methods and mathematical modeling. The author concludes by presenting the results of testing this methodology using the example of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Several decades ago, coding systems were developed for event analysis: Charles McClelland introduced the event analysis coding system WEIS (World Event Interaction Survey) and Edward Azar developed COPDAB (Confl ict and Peace Data Bank). In these systems the encoding process is performed by translating a verbal message about an event into a formalized set of data in a specifi c format. Both systems were created during the Cold War to analyze inter-state interactions; their use did not involve analysis of ethnic confl icts, organized crime, multilateral interventions or other threats. They were replaced by the integrated Confl ict Early Warning System (ICEWS). However, this system is still not widely used and all existing real-event analysis systems are based on WEIS and COPDAB. If one takes into account modern methods of interaction between states and introduce new indicators into the initial WEIS event analysis, the system can be used to study interstate relations at the present stage. The author attempts to use this system for the analysis of relationships between the Russian Federation and a selection of Caribbean countries.

In the analysis of the political process time can be represented as an institution — a set of temporal rules that are meant to be a resource and a constraint at the same time. These temporal rules are a constitutive element for any political system. They become a key point in the institutionalization of political order owing to their infl uence on the process of political decision-making and the choice of political instruments. The theoretical and methodological foundations of this approach, however, remain understudied. Turning to the theoretical basis of historical institutionalism and historical sociology, the author highlights the main methods of analyzing time as an institution in political science. The fi rst is the method of analytical decomposition of an event series: the emergence and development of temporal rules are presented in a sequence of decision-making series. Possible alternatives, the cumulative eff ects of time and the multiplicity of temporal variants of institutional functions are the focus of analysis here. The second method is that of structural-conditional analysis. For various types of political regimes, as well as in conditions of social, technological and bureaucratic acceleration and the forms of political participation generated by it, time can be understood as one of the limiting factors necessary for the articulation, discussion, adoption, implementation and consolidation of a decision.