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The article uses the socio-cultural methodology and comparative studies to examine the results of the transformation of national higher school systems in the former USSR on the eve of the post-Soviet thirtieth anniversary. It is established that over the past decades of the post–Soviet transformation, the higher school of 15 States of the former USSR has gone through two main stages: the first was primarily a stage of structural changes, and the second was integration into the European higher education space. A classification of the realities of organizational orientation of higher education systems is proposed, dividing them into westernized (the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), systems with specific educational balances (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia), and outsider countries (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan). It is shown that during this period unique cases of transformation of national higher schools emerged. They evolved from divergence in the direction of convergence through E-education and global unification. The purpose of the study was to show that in the near future post-Soviet structures of higher education will have to respond primarily to universal post-industrial challenges based on the identification of stages of higher education evolution.

This article invokes a combination of analytical and normative arguments that highlight the leading role of practices in explaining the expansion of security communities. The analytical argument is that collective meanings, on which peaceful change is based, cognitively evolve — i.e. they are established in individuals' expectations and dispositions and they are institutionalized in practice — because of communities of practice. By that we mean like-minded groups of practitioners who are bound, both informally and contextually, by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice. The normative argument is that security communities rest in part on the sharing of rational and moral expectations and dispositions of self-restraint. This thesis is illustrated by the example of the successful expansion of security-community identities from a core of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states to Central and Eastern European countries during the 1990s, which was facilitated by a `cooperative-security' community of practice that, emerging from the Helsinki Process, endowed NATO with the practices necessary for the spread of self-restraint.

Dyson explains the convergence and divergence between British, French and German defence reforms in the post-Cold War era. He engages with cultural and realist theories and develops a neoclassical realist approach to change and stasis in defence policy, bringing new material to bear on the factors which have affected defence reforms

Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe assesses the influence of electoral systems on political change in 20 post-communist European states. The main finding is that electoral institutions have systematic effects on the formation of representative structures. 'Party-enabling' aspects of electoral laws such as list proportional representation tend to foster popular inclusion in politics and institutionalized party systems, whereas 'politician-enabling' rules such as single-member districts and ballots that allow voters to select individuals often favour the development of weakly structured systems and high levels of popular exclusion from the representative process.

View that most Balkan states have made progress in terms of independent institutions, political contestation, and electoral procedure, but are hampered by low levels of economic development.