Suchergebnisse

After the disintegration of the USSR, the Central Asian countries started to pursue independent development strategies and identified new domestic policy priorities. It is of special scholarly interest to compare the efforts by Central Asian governments to improve female representation in politics. The article is devoted to the consideration of state policies and measures aimed at increasing the participation of women in political institutions in Central Asia. The most and the least effective strategies for women's political empowerment were highlighted based on the analysis of the regulatory framework in the field of women's empowerment, as well as on the degree of application of gender statistics and gender budgeting. In particular, the authors address the matter of electoral gender quotas, which are already introduced by Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It is stressed that the adoption of this policy tool in the two counties has had its limitations, taking into consideration the existence of legal ways to circumvent the gender-quota requirements. The authors also indicate Kazakhstan's progress in collecting gender data that is "open, accessible, comparable, free and understandable". Improving data quality and representativeness facilitates the development of practical steps to achieve gender equality in politics. At the same time, theьauthors point out a negative trend in the region: some countries are gradually moving away from having aьdistinct strategy pertaining to genderьissues. Such approach may shift the focus from closing the gender gap to solving a wider range of social policy issues. The article shows that in general the countries in question implement a conservative gender policy and are not inclined to fully effect such practices as gender budgeting and the collection of relevant and complete gender statistics. It is concluded that Russia has an opportunity to act as a trendsetter, in particular by applying a gender-sensitive approach in providing development assistance to the countries of Central Asia.

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.