Articles

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.

The article provides an analysis of the fundamental foundations of the anti- Russian discourse in the European Union, suggesting possible explanations for its escalation in contemporary European politics, in both the academic and expert community and in the mass media. The author suggests that the anti-Russian discourse in the EU should not be viewed as a series of random coincidences and not even as a coordinated one-time campaign, but rather as a part of an integral geopolitical strategy. This strategy has an impact on the social space (informational, ideological, semantic), within which the anti-Russian discourse is one of the tools of the European Union and NATO expansion to the East, closer to the borders of the Russian Federation. One of the most important reasons for the constant anti- Russian rhetoric is associated with European Union’s problems in achieving its own “strategic autonomy,” i.e. a unifi ed security and defense policy. The growth of European Russophobia is also associated with the desire to gain competitive advantages in the growing economic rivalry on the world stage. Furthermore, the incessant attacks on Russia are rooted in the erosion of the common European identity, the loss of the attractiveness of European values, as they are understood in the modern establishment of the European Union. Finally, the scope of the anti-Russian rhetoric is explained by the diffi culties experienced by the so-called “European solidarity,” the internal cohesion of the European Union as an integral entity.

This article provides a review of theses presented at the round table “The Strategy of Sustainable Development in the Context of 21st c. Political Processes,” held at the Lomonosov Moscow State University Department of Political Science in conjunction with the V International Scholarly Congress “Global Studies-2017” (Moscow, September 25–30, 2017). Participants focused on the complex of political, philosophical, social and economic problems connected with the “sustainable development” category.

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.

This article focuses on corruption cases in the area of military-technological cooperation between India and other countries in the context of Indian political development from 1947 to the present. Among the biggest scandals that changed the political landscape of the nation were the cases of HDW and Bofors (both 1987), “Operation West End” (2001), Scorpene (2006) and AgustaWestland (2014). All of these contributed to political crises and aff ected the balance of political forces in India. The struggle against corruption has been and continues to be complicated by the fact that strong ties have emerged between government, business and the armed forces over the years of Indian independence. At the same time, in modern conditions politicians fi nd it increasingly diffi cult to hide their participation in corruption schemes thanks, on the one hand, to the increased capabilities of the media and public organizations and, on the other, to competition within political elites.

This article discusses the concept of global design in the USSR, focusing on the Soviet artistic futurology of the 1950s that contrasted Soviet ideals — the “Soviet man,” the Soviet system of interpersonal relations and ideas about communist society — with individualistic ideals of the Western type. Using the example of the novel “The Nebula of Andromeda” (1957) by Ivan Antonovich Efremov, the author examines the value foundations of ideal design — anthropological, ethical and ontological — that correspond to the level of a person, to interpersonal relations and to society as a whole. Efremov set himself the task of modeling the political system of the future and determining the ways in which it would be formed. The writer’s political project exists at the intersection of the interests of government and society, refl ecting both the offi cial guidelines of the Central Committee of the CPSU ( formulated in the text of the third party program of 1961) and the hopes of society inspired by scientifi c and technical romanticism.

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.

This article describes the mechanism of the behind-the-scenes displacement of N. V. Podgorny from the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to facilitate the installation in that position of L. I. Brezhnev. First Podgorny received 56 negative votes at a Kharkov Regional Party Conference; then at the XXV Congress of the CPSU (February 24 — March 5, 1976) he lost his post. The displacement was carried out by a troika of fi rst secretaries of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Committee of the party from diff erent periods who, over time, came to occupy time major posts in the party and the state: L. I. Brezhnev, A. P. Kirilenko and V. V. Scherbitsky. These three personally developed the removal operation and carried it out indirectly through a narrow circle of proxies, bypassing the offi cial procedures for resolving personnel issues that existed then in the party.

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.