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The author points out empirical indicators to distinguish "consultants" from analysts as "independent policy actors". The complexity of decision-making processes in modern states created demand for independent expert support. This demand has been satisfied by new institutes of intellectual political support -- think tanks. Support, an estimation of political decisions and alternatives, generating of ideas, education and elite formation became their functions. According to the functional approach, due to the complexity and scale of modern administrative problems, the expert became an integral part of the decision-making process. In differentiated social systems, in order to increase the efficiency of decisions and to maintain the social "feedback" mechanism, policy-makers involve experts, including think tanks, to work out new and to estimate old political decisions. In these processes think tanks are engaged, conducting researches and consultations for the decision-makers. So in modern states the mechanism of "feedback" is carried out. In practice, we can see some analysts and experts who pretend to play a dominant role in policy; some who legitimize policy of the government, decisions of a political leader or a current political regime; some who conduct professional research and development of the "feedback mechanism" within a policy cycle; and some who have real power on minds of the elites and/or citizens. The author aims to figure out the factors that influence the changing political status of the analysts, what makes them independent political actors, and in what conditions they come to serve the elites' interest. And, most importantly, how we can fix or stabilize the analysts' status as independent and powerful political actors even in an unfavorable political climate. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract
This paper evaluates the policy impact of analytical communities in three Russian regions (Karelia, Tatarstan and Saratov). Based on the existing methods to assess the political power of think tanks, the authors develop a method to evaluate this impact. The authors test this method using the empirical data and findings from interviews, workshops with representatives of analytical communities of the three regions, and from observations and assessments of experts in regional politics. In conclusion, the authors argue that the capacity of analytical communities to impact policy change in a region depends on the level of political competition and pluralism and democratic institutions in the region; the level of consolidation of the analytical community, its autonomous political status and authority.

Self-Organized Publics in Mass Protests: An Introduction -- PART I: Dimensions of Protest Publics in the Recent Wave of Unrest -- Exploring Protest Publics: A New Conceptual Frame for Civil Participation Analysis -- Shoulder to Shoulder against Fascism: Publics in Gezi Protests -- Emergent Protest Publics in India and Bangladesh: A Comparative Study of Anti-Corruption and Shahbag Protests -- The Grammar of Protest Publics in Skopje, Macedonia, May 2015 -- Retracing Public Protest in Portugal: A Generation in Trouble -- Justification in Protest Publics: The Homeless Workers' Movement in Brazil's Crisis -- So Strong, Yet So Weak: The Emergence of Protest Publics in Iceland in the Wake of the Financial Crisis -- Five Stars of Change: The Transformation of Italian Protest Publics into a Movement Party through Grillo's Blog -- PART II: Protest Publics and Political Change in Different Political Regimes -- Cross-national Comparison of Protest Publics' Roles as Drivers of Change: from Clusters to Models -- Protesters as the "Challengers of the Status-Quo" in Embedded Democracies: The Cases of Iceland, the United Kingdom and the United States -- Protest Publics as the "Watchdogs" of the Quality of Democracy in Global South -- Protest Publics as the Triggers of Political Changes in Hybrid Regimes: The Cases of Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt -- Protest Publics as Democratic Innovators in an Authoritarian Environment -- The Transforming Role of Protest Publics in Processes of Sociopolitical Change in the Global South and Southern Europe: From Occasional Challengers to Institutionalized Watchdogs -- Conclusion: The Common Features and Different Roles of Protest Publics in Political Contestation

AbstractThe Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) explains the role of narratives in policy processes. The NPF was developed for democratic contexts and has not been systematically applied in a nondemocratic setting. This study fills this gap with an empirical analysis of narrative strategies used by governmental and oppositional actors in urban policy debates in Moscow. Results show how governmental actors consistently use angel shifts, contain issues, and avoid using causal mechanisms, while actors opposing governmental policy use devil shifts, expand issues, and use intentional causal mechanisms. The findings suggest that narrative strategies differ depending on whether policy actors seek to promote policy reforms or draw attention to problems. We argue that policy actors' objectives are a well‐suited predictor for narrative strategies in both democratic and nondemocratic contexts.