Moscow University Bulletin. Series 12. Political Science. 2017. 5.

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.

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.

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.

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.