Suchergebnisse

The article analyses the main factors determining the logic of American policy in Transcaucasia. The paper studies the positioning of the subregion and each of its countries individually in a wide range of strategic planning documents of the United States foreign policy from the end of the 19th century to the present. The article also examines the U.S. bilateral relations in the economic, investment and foreign aid spheres. The author comes to the conclusion that the US strategic logic towards South Caucasus is significantly dependent on the dynamics of Russian-American relations. Author also concludes, that there is a significant potential for the rise of American foreign policy activity in the region, especially with regard to Armenia.

The article investigates how the dynamics of economic aid from the United States and its trade and investment relations with a country affect the latter's voting solidarity at the United Nations General Assembly. First, the approaches of Democrats and Republicans to financing the UN in connection with voting in the General Assembly are delineated. It is worth noting that Democrats tend to support multilateral institutions and policies, while Republicans have historically favored unilateral foreign policy. Still, both parties consistently prioritize allocating the U.S. funding for the United Nations to certain countries. The author uses data on financial flows directed toward multilateral institutions, along with other U.S. bilateral foreign aid, trade, and investment statistics, to explore whether economic interconnectivity affects the degree of the UN member states' solidarity with the United States' voting patterns at the General Assembly. It is concluded that economic relations with the United States do not significantly determine the increase in voting solidarity at the General Assembly. A group of 58 states is identified that, over a 25-year period (from 1996 to 2021), displayed a growing alignment with the United States in situations where it voted differently from the majority of other UN members. However, the increase in aid, trade, and investments from the United States to this group is primarily driven just by 13 major U.S. economic partners and aid recipients. Remarkably, the voting behavior of this select group of 13 states mirrors that of the remaining members of this focus group of 58 states.

The article presents an approach to assessment of how independent an international actor can be from the political point of view. The author formulates a coordinate system composed of four spaces (fields) of social communication. The first one is the space of ideological interaction. In this space, governments have a possibility to manipulate the policies of their counteragents via exploiting psychological sentiments in the short term or fortifying specific worldview attitudes in the long run among the peoples in foreign countries. The second is the space of international norms. Unlike on the national level, the international relations system does not imply an existence of a common decision-making mechanism that serves as a generator of communication norms. Therefore, states use their national might to establish a normative order, which they are trying to fortify by consequently repeating specific actions in the international arena. In the third space, international actors try to integrate their counteragents into a specific type of economic relations that would serve as a determinant of their behavior. Finally, in the security space, the relations of states are defined by their internal understanding of what specific international trends and policies could threaten their own interests of national survival and development. The author concludes that the state of affairs in these four spaces determines the nature of subjectivity (sovereignty) of international actors on the global political stage. Through this lens, their bilateral relations could be classified into one of three types: subject-subject (interdependent), subject-object (unilaterally dependent) or object-object (independent). Therefore, the assessment of the nature of interstate bilateral relations could serve as a good starting point to characterize the whole structure of the international relations system: whether it is functioning in a unipolar, bipolar or multipolar manner. Moreover, the presented methodology could help to evaluate a degree of effectiveness of the foreign policy strategies implementation, since it presents a measurable coordinate system of the state and the structure of international affairs.

The article presents a theoretical model of how ideological concepts may impact the foreign political strategies of states. The author thinks that the necessity to build a more concrete understanding of the strategic goal setting process is more relevant these days due to the increasing ochlocratic influence on the governmental behavior in the international arena. The model is based on three logically intertwined pillars. The first of them analyzes the socio-psychological mechanism of the transformation of ideas into specific actions on the part of an individual or a collective body. Special attention is paid to the phenomenon of ideologemes as compact expressions of normative attitude towards the surrounding events. The article also takes into consideration psychological predispositions that made the conversion of some ideas into actions more probable. The second pillar accounts for the decision-making process. It analyses the most significant elements of the mechanism, that determine how long-term national interests and specific goals are formulated within the political establishment, the expert and governmental officials' community. The author also presents a vision in which an overall national might, presence or absence of political will define the spectrum of potentially made decisions. This approach can give a more detailed and concrete understanding of the nature of subjectivity in world affairs. The third pillar is based on the analysis of how a governmental actor perceives through its ideological lens its own interaction with the surrounding international environment. This pillar considers the actors' self-positioning in the world, the foreign policy instruments this actor uses to affect external objects in order to fortify its place on the global stage. The model may be useful for research of the long-term foreign policy strategic planning, establishing specific criteria of effectiveness of its implementation, and forecasting the decision-making process.

The article presents an assessment of strategic importance of the Central Asian states for the United States. The analysis is based on the positioning of these states in key strategic documents of the U.S. since early 1990s, and also on trade, investments, aid, and military statistics. Author comes to the conclusion that Central Asian states do not present vital strategical interest for the United States, and the U.S. relations with them are mainly determined by Washington's strategies in the nearby regions. In this regard these relations have good potential for development in the midterm, but do not present significant importance in the long-term.

Relations between the United States and Turkey, the two military-political allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), are experiencing an unprecedented crisis in their history. Its depth and scale is so significant that it affects the long-term foreign policy strategies of both countries, as well as the process of building a unified security architecture. In the study the author raises a question to what extent the current crisis in the US-Turkish relations is systemic? How high is the probability that it will turn out to be a long-term one? To answer this question, the study is divided into two parts.The first part analyzes the evolution of American approaches to Turkey in US foreign policy, the implementation of these approaches since the end of World War II till nowadays. On the basis of a system-historical approach, the author analyses the evolution the Turkey's strategic positioning in the US foreign policy strategy and the transformation of political, economic and military relations between the two states since the moment of their institutionalization. The author distinguishes two stages of this evolution. During the first one, for the United States Turkey was one of the key countries that was blocking the Soviet expansion southward towards the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal. The author notes that by the end of the bipolar confrontation, Turkey was de-facto losing its functional purpose in the logic of the Cold War. During the second stage, the US regards Turkey as one of the key NATO allies, whose geo-strategic location can be used for pursuing American national interests in the nearby regions. Author posits, that bilateral relations are gradually moving away from such a model of interaction. This happens because of the Turkish desire to diversify foreign relations and accumulation of contradictions between Washington and Ankara due to the divergence of their foreign policy strategies.The second part analyzes the contradictions in the American-Turkish relations under the presidency of Donald Trump on political, military and economic issues. The author comes to the conclusion that the crisis is indeed a systemic one. Firstly, the existing problems began to affect significant elements of the military-technical infrastructure of their relations. Secondly, it is difficult to resolve these problems without reformatting the interaction as between equivalent actors of international relations. Thirdly, the expert and political communities have not presented any kind of a new approach to rethink the allied status of American-Turkish relations.

AbstractIt has been proved on the wide empirical material that social systems of various levels are in the state of intermedity between order and chaos. It has been shown that various phenomena in social systems (power dependences of variables, quasiperiodical variations, hyperbolic distributions of elements, avalanche‐like processes, etc.) are caused by the state of intermedity.

AbstractThe basic postulates of the theory, which unites proportions in statics and dynamics, explain their ties with the social system functions. Verification of the theory has been carried out. Its value is explained in the concrete examples, not only for forecasting social processes and determining optimal correlations in society, but also for development of the general theory of systems.

Teil I. Einführung -- Teil II. Gedenkstättenschutz und Gedenkstättenverwaltung -- Teil III. Denkmalschutz und Erinnerungskultur -- Teil IV. Erinnerungskultur im Archivwesen -- Teil V. Erinnerungskultur in Museen -- Teil VI. Totengedenken und Gräberverwaltung -- Teil VII. Institutionelles Gedächtnis -- Teil VIII. Erinnerungskultur und Rechtsschutz -- Teil IX. Erinnern und Gedenken in Europa.

This book offers a comparative perspective on the technological, economic, and political aspects of Internet development in the post-Soviet countries. In doing so, international experts analyze similarities and differences in various countries throughout the chapters. The volume consists of two parts. The chapters of the first part examine the post-Soviet area as a whole. The second part includes specific case studies on the development of the Internet, either in individual countries or in groups of countries. Countries analyzed are Estonia, Ukraine, Russia as well as three Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Topics covered in the volume include, but are not limited to measurement, dynamics, and structure of each national Internet audience; the history of the Internet in the post-Soviet countries; development of infrastructure; Internet regulation and institutional aspects; online markets such as telecommunications, online advertising, e-commerce, and digital content; social and cultural aspects; as well as the transformation of the national media systems. This book is a must-read for students, researchers, and scholars of political science and economics, as well as policymakers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of Internet development in the post-Soviet area

Part I -- Theory and History -- Digital Inequalities in European Post-Soviet States -- The Internet in the Structure of the Russian Media System -- The Rise of Runet and the Main Stages of Its History -- Part II -- Economy and Regulation -- Investments in Runet -- Regulation of Online Freedom of Expression in Russia in the Context of the Council of Europe Standards -- Part III -- Digital Culture -- Digital Literacy Concepts and Measurement -- Journalistic Cultures: New Times, New Gaps? -- Diversity of the Internet in Russia's Regions: Towards an Alternative Research Agenda -- Data Turn And Datascape in Russia -- Elite Russian Students' Internet Strategies: Trust, Persuasion, and Rejection -- Part IV -- Participation, Representations and Discussions -- Russia in International Social Media Discussions: Pro and Contra -- Runet in Crisis Situations -- Gender Activism in the Russian Segment of the Internet -- The Internet: Its Influences on Environmental Communication and Environmental Movements -- Making Ruins Great Again: Documentation and Participation on Instagram -- Afterwords.