Suchergebnisse

.

This paper explores the Estonian vision of Baltic identity. Estonia's authorities have repeatedly articulated their scepticism towards the concept of a stand-alone 'Baltic region' and the inclusion of Estonia in it, preferring to position their state as a Nordic country. Yet, in numerous cases, they have clearly labelled Estonia as a Baltic State. To identify the contexts and meanings labelling the country as a Baltic State, this contribution provides a content analysis of official speeches given by Estonia's political leadership. It is concluded that, despite the visibility of socioeconomic issues in the discourse, the most comprehensive image of Estonian 'Balticness' is constructed by interconnected narratives built around the Soviet past and the 'security threats' associated with Russia. The theoretical framework of regionalism, which allows one to consider the Baltics as a social construct rather than a set of material factors, provides an additional explanatory model.

Many observers expect artificial intelligence (AI) to become one of the most important technologies of the 21st century, whose development will be a decisive factor in shaping the future global technological balance of power. A practical confirmation of this statement is the fact that today an increasing number of states are striving to accelerate their national AI development programmes. Russia is one of them, although it is generally not perceived in the West as a potential leader in this emerging competition. At the same time, Russia's demonstrated ability to build its own successful national IT ecosystem is attracting increased international interest in its national AI development efforts. The purpose of this paper is to outline the contours of these efforts, and to trace the evolution of the regulatory framework and its underlying principles. The authors draw the following conclusions. Russia is developing a flexible and science-based approach to AI and its potential humanitarian impacts, combining its own historical experience with international practices. Strategically, Russia sees the development of national AI as an important means of advancing its economic and technological development in a way that benefits its citizens and businesses, as well as preventing a possible economic and technological slowdown. Significant progress has been made on legal and ethical issues. The focus of Russian efforts in this area is more on soft law norms and self-regulation rather than on prohibitive legislative norms. This approach leaves a lot of room for the development of AI and reduces the possibility of its premature bureaucratisation, which could hinder innovation in the field. There are certain similarities between the Russian and European approaches to AI development and regulation. Human security concerns, data protection and a risk-based approach to the development of AI technologies are prioritised by the state and supranational institutions (respectively) as the main actors responsible for safeguarding the well-being, interests and rights of the citizens.

The West is concerned over the crisis of the liberal world order attributing it to the conduct of emerging powers, such as China, India and Russia. Are its concerns legitimate? Drawing on social identity theory, the authors analyze the emerging powers' stances on international development through the lens of status dynamics. In particular, three issue areas are investigated: the debate over the UN development agenda, which has revealed differences between Western and non-Western approaches, the changes in the membership of donor and recipient groups over the last decade and the discourse of emerging countries concerning science and technology, which betrays their self-image of a "developed" or "laggard" state.The key finding of the paper is that the crisis of the liberal world order as a set of institutions created by the US-led countries after WWII manifests itself in the distorting symbolic exchange between developed and developing countries. The emerging states are unwilling to recognize the authority of the West and its leadership in setting the direction of global development. Meanwhile, they are trying to gain the status of development front-runners using their own foreign aid programs and science and technology development strategies. However, the rising states are not uniform and consistent in posing a symbolic challenge to the liberal order – while the Russia is striving for a "developed non-western country" status (thereby copying the USSR's image), India and China, though to different degrees, are positioning themselves both as developed industrial states and as developing countries which receive aid packages from richer members of the international community. What leads to the distortions in this symbolic exchange is the desire of some emerging powers to use the resources of the West and reap the benefits of the world order created by it while denying it a high status. Thus, a classic economic "free-rider problem" arises in international relations: while benefiting from the liberal order created by the West, the rising states do not recognize the status it ascribes itself ignoring the symbolic hierarchy which, as viewed by western countries, underlies this order.The authors declare the absence of conflict of interest.