Suchergebnisse

The editor-in-chief proposes a context for examining the crisis processes in American society explored in the articles. The author suggests that this crisis should be viewed in the context of the American history cycles. Many of the current conflicts in the USA have a similar internal source, which is a sharp intra-elite conflict involving a significant part of society. This conflict is unusual in its depth, given that for many decades the «trademark» of the American political class has been its consensus character. One important element of this consensus can be seen as an unquestioned focus on global American leadership and a shared commitment among members of the community to the force imperatives in foreign policy – either the classic "hard" or "flexible" power. Among the sources of American foreign policy continuity are a number of factors. First, it is the stability of institutional mechanisms of decision-making, which, in turn, is based on a stable system of representation of dominant interests. Second, the stability of formal and informal institutions that ensure a high degree of elite cohesion; and the specificity of American political culture, which is based on a set of political and philosophical views of messianic nature. The consensual nature of the political elite was the system-forming basis of liberal democracy, so the breakdown of this consensus may entail – and partially has already entailed – a crisis of the US political system.

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The article is devoted to the changes in the configuration of the modern state. The author analyzes the world and domestic experience in the governance reform, determining the content, the main direction, reform technology. The article concerns the theoretical models that have become the basis of governance reform. An informative and functional aspects of governance reforms are considered in the context of modern approaches to the state functions. Considering the results of the governance reform, it should be taken into account that the implementation of these reforms was accompanied by a number of costs. In this regard, a number of experts, including experts from the World Bank, who prepared the materials for the Government Commission on lessons learned from reforms NPM, present restrained assessment of the reform results in various countries, noting their ambiguity and limited scope in relation to the objectives. "Undoubtedly, there are many examples of concrete improvements in certain specific services or in ministries and other organizations in each specific case. However, data on the overall impact of the reforms is very little ... Generally there is no accurate data on the actual results achieved by the majority of implemented reforms... In many cases ... there is difference of opinion about the results of the reform programs "[6, p. 74-75, 36, 40, 47, 78, 82-83, 92].

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Статья посвящена анализу конфигурации и роли государства в постсоветских странах. По мнению автора, ключевой проблемой выступает слабость государс- тва в качестве агента модернизации. Несмотря на значительную культурно-ци- вилизационную, политико-культурную и внутриполитическую специфику ранее входивших в состав СССР стран, для последних характерно сходство по целому ряду значимых параметров. Среди этих параметров доминирование тяготеющих к жестким политическим формам режимов и фактическое фиаско модеризаци- онных проектов. Сочетание данных характеристик дает основание определить политико-инструментальный дизайн данных государственных образований как авторитаризм без развития. Последнее служит анти-тезисом по отношению к известному из опыта большинства модернизаций ХХ в. (СССР, Испания, новые индустриальные страны Юго-Восточной Азии, Латинская Америка, Китай послед- них трех десятилетий) суждению о том, что ключевым агентом модернизаций выступало государство развития, действовавшее преимущественно в режиме авторитаризма развития.

The authors view the main issues raised in Charles Merriam's article The Present State of the Study of Politics in the context of the current trends in the development of political knowledge in Russia and worldwide. Merriam proposed a new view of Political Science as a scientific discipline with its own research goals related to the empirical study of the political behavior of people. Merriam's approach to determining the status of Political Science within the framework of social knowledge assumed delineating its own problem field and identifying those factors that determine events taking place in this field. Merriam emphasized the relativity of both the autonomy of politics and the significance of the impacts that are exerted upon politics. Professional organization and coordination of political studies (one of Merriam's key initiatives) at the beginning of the 21st century are associated with the competition between hierarchical and network models of interaction between representatives of the Political Science community. Moreover, the current state of discipline in Russia is largely determined by the specifics of its institutionalization. Unlike the United States, where the evolution of Political Science took place under the decisive influence of formalized knowledge, the Russian Political Science is still influenced by some of the approaches inherent in the old-fashioned institutionalism. The movement of Political Science in the direction of interdisciplinary synthesis, which received its impetus from the scientific and organizational activities of Merriam, was not linear. The current methodological configuration of the discipline is most adequately expressed in the concept of "multiparadigmality", which does not solve the problem of b ringing together conflicting methodologies.

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