Regional elections of 2020 in the Irkutsk region: progress, results, and organization

The regular conduct of elections and the compliance of their procedure with the current legislation is a prerequisite for the functioning of a democratic political system. The occurrence of emergencies, such as military operations, pandemics, and the like, is a serious problem and challenge for the country’s leadership. The resulting social tension and instability, changes in the current electoral order and electoral procedures, pose a threat to the ruling regime and provide additional opportunities for the opposition. The article shows the activities of the leadership of Russia and the Irkutsk region in the context of a Covid pandemic during the regional elections of 2020. The legislation was changed and special measures were organized to ensure compliance with all epidemiological norms and to prevent a significant increase in the number of cases. A special feature of the elections in the Irkutsk region was the holding of early, really competitive elections for the governor, in which a Kremlin protege and a local representative of the Communist Party fought. In a really difficult situation, the elections were held calmly and without any special violations of the law and moral norms. Despite the fundamental nature of the struggle for the governor’s seat, the voter turnout was low and fundamentally lower than the plebiscite held in July of the same year to amend the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

On the history of the Sverdlovsk branch of the URSSR Art Fund of the 1940s: the birth of the organization and the beginning of its work

Изучение сохранившихся до наших дней архивных документов Свердловского отделения Оргкомитета Союза советских художников 1930–1940-х годов позволило реконструировать последовательность событий, связанных с возникновением и организацией работы местного представительства Художественного фонда СССР, чья деятельность до настоящего времени еще не находилась в поле зрения историков искусства. В статье рассматривается первое десятилетие существования этой организации в Свердловске, главной задачей которой, начиная с ее появления, являлась материальная и социальная поддержка творцов — художников и искусствоведов. The study of the archival documents of the Sverdlovsk branch of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Artists of the 1930s and 1940s that have survived to this day allowed us to reconstruct the sequence of events related to the emergence and organization of the work of the local representative office of the USSR Art Fund, whose activities have not yet been in the field of art historians. The article examines the first decade of the existence of this organization in Sverdlovsk, the main task of which, since its appearance, was the material and social support of creators — artists and art historians.

DALIT WOMEN PANCHAYAT MEMBERS IN HARYANA: GENDER, CASTE AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Drawing on the latest round of elections to Panchayati Raj Institutions in the state of Haryana in 2016, this article interrogates the substantial increase in the number of Dalit women representatives, based on fieldwork in a specific village. Since both Dalit and non-Dalit women present narratives of non-participation in the functioning of the village panchayat, it is argued that the increase in Dalit women representatives was not by design, but by default, due to an amendment of the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act 2015. Overall, in the studied village, women continue to remain marginalised in the local representative bodies, and gender-based quotas have only ensured numerical visibility of women.

Symmetry and Relative Equilibria of a Bicycle System

In this paper, we study the symmetry of a bicycle moving on a flat, level ground. Applying the Gibbs – Appell equations to the bicycle dynamics, we previously observed that the coefficients of these equations appeared to depend on the lean and steer angles only, and in one such equation, a term quadratic in the rear wheel’s angular velocity and a pseudoforce term would always vanish. These properties indeed arise from the symmetry of the bicycle system. From the point of view of the geometric mechanics, the bicycle’s configuration space is a trivial principal fiber bundle whose structure group plays the role of a symmetry group to keep the Lagrangian and constraint distribution invariant. We analyze the dimension relationship between the space of admissible velocities and the tangent space to the group orbit, and then employ the reduced nonholonomic Lagrange – d’Alembert equations to directly prove the previously observed properties of the bicycle dynamics. We then point out that the Gibbs – Appell equations give the local representative of the reduced dynamic system on the reduced constraint space, whose relative equilibria are related to the bicycle’s uniform upright straight or circular motion. Under the full rank condition of a Jacobian matrix, these relative equilibria are not isolated, but form several families of one-parameter solutions. Finally, we prove that these relative equilibria are Lyapunov (but not asymptotically) stable under certain conditions. However, an isolated asymptotically stable equilibrium may be achieved by restricting the system to an invariant manifold, which is the level set of the reduced constrained energy.

THE LEGAL BASIS FOR LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT REFORM IN RUSSIA AND MOLDOVA

The article analyses modern legal methods used by the post- Soviet states to improve the performance of local representative bodies of self-government. The experience of the Republic of Moldova and the Russian Federation in the period after gaining their independence (1991) is used as an example. The author reimagines the formation of the Russian and Moldovan systems of local government, thus showing that the process was attended by a radical breakdown of the former command and administrative structures and by the widespread introduction, too hasty at times, of new forms of the state power and governance, specifically, at the local level. The article delves into the successful and unsuccessful attempts of the Moldovan and Russian leadership to increase the performance of local representative authorities. In particular, the author focuses on identifying, systematizing and conducting a comprehensive analysis of the typical for the post-Soviet states conflicts between different levels of the power and administration, which the author believes are primarily caused by the distribution of power and the management of financial resources. Finally, the author attempts to put in perspective the prospects for the development and performance increase of local representative bodies in Moldova and Russia in the wake of the recent global crisis trends.

Recaptured image detection through multi-resolution residual-based correlation coefficients

With the great development of image display technologies and the widespread use of various image acquisition device, recapturing high-quality images from high-fidelity LCD (liquid crystal display) screens becomes relatively convenient. These recaptured images pose serious threats on image forensic technologies and bio-authentication systems. In order to prevent the security loophole of image recapture attack, we propose a recaptured image detection method based on multi-resolution residual-based correlation coefficients. Specifically, we first classify the divided image blocks into three categories according to their content complexity. Then, for each classified block, sharpness degree is used as metric to select the local representative block. Finally, pixel-wise correlation coefficients in the residual of the local representative blocks are adopted as features for training and testing. Single database experiments demonstrate that our proposed method not only performs very close to the state-of-the-art methods on relative low-quality NTU-ROSE and BJTU-IIS databases, but also improves the performance on the most difficult-to-detect ICL-COMMSP database obviously, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed multi-resolution strategy and the used residual-based correlation coefficients. Besides, mixed database experiments verify the superiority of the generalization ability of our proposed method. Moreover, it is robust to JPEG compression.

Evolution of legal regulation of activity forms of members of representative bodies of local self-government in the Ukrainian lands within Austria-Hungary and pre-revolutionary Russia

The article deals with historical and legal aspects of the normative regulation of the forms of activity of the representative bodies of local self-government and their members on the Ukrainian lands, which were part of Austria-Hungary and pre-revolutionary Russia. It is shown that during the 60-90s of the XIX century, there was an accumulation of experience in the normative consolidation of the legal status and organization of the work of local representative bodies, the formation of the main forms of their activity. Attention is drawn to the fact that in both empires the adoption of liberal legislation on local self-government led to the activation of local rule-making. The content of national and local acts regulating the forms of activity of representative bodies of the late XIX – early XX centuries is analyzed. In its modern form, local government developed in the nineteenth century. as a result of the victory of liberal-democratic reforms in the world's leading states. Therefore, consideration of the evolution of legal regulation of the forms of activity of deputies of domestic local representative bodies should begin in the 1860s, when in Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire, which at that time included Ukrainian lands, local government began almost simultaneously. The period of functioning of representative bodies of local self-government in the Ukrainian lands as a part of Austria-Hungary and pre-revolutionary Russia (1862-1917) should be considered as the first stage of evolution of forms of activity of deputies of local councils in modern Ukraine. This was the stage of initiating the normative consolidation and practice of implementing the forms of activity of the deputy corps of domestic representative bodies of local self-government.

Israel’s Innovative Young Adults Lists

Scholars have pointed to the alarming decline in the participation of young people in the institutional political activities underlying representative democracy, such as voting, joining political parties, or running for office. Solutions previously proposed have dealt with participatory democracy rather than representative democracy. Based on in-depth interviews, this article shows that, since 1998, the involvement of Young Adults Lists (YALs) in Israel’s local elections have successfully and consistently engaged young adults as a descriptive constituency in local representative democracy. The YALs’ extraordinary electoral success derives from their ability to construct and carry out an innovative campaign strategy tailored to the preferences of young adults. This strategy has compensated for the YALs’ minimal financial resources and their lack of political experience and significant ties to national parties or similar organizations.

“Competitive” head of municipality: analysis and prospects of implementation

The subject of this research is the organizational model of local self-governance implemented by the Federal Law No.8-FZ of February 3, 2015, which establishes election of the head of municipality by the local representative body from among the list of candidates presented by the selection board based on the results of the competition. The goal of this work consists in comprehensive assessment of the organizational model of the “competitive” head of municipality, as well as in determination of future prospects of its implementation, taking into account the key traits of organizational model of the “competitive” head of local self-governance, as well as its strong and weak characteristics. The acquired results reveal a number of flaws, which indicate inexpediency of widespread implementation of the model, as well as the need for selective approach depending on the type of one or another municipality. The scientific novelty of the conducted research is defined by the objective factors of current reality and consists in substantiation of practical problems by insufficient theoretical development of such organizational model of local self-governance. In conclusion, the author suggest legislative solutions aimed at improvement of legal regulation in the area of organizational framework local self-governance through more extensive usage of the Institution of rotation.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the composition of maslikhats (On the example of the Karaganda region)

Maslikhats occupy a special place as a local self-government body. Currently, an urgent issue is to activate the work of maslikhats and increase their status. The main reason for the research was to find an answer to the question, what is the composition of the regional, city and district maslikhats, elected in 2016, whether it covered all layers of the local population. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the Deputy composition of local representative bodies, including maslikhats of the Karaganda region. To achieve this goal, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the composition of the regional, some city and district maslikhats was conducted. As a result of the study, we observe that the participation of all groups of the local population in the work of local maslikhats is uneven in terms of quantitative and qualitative composition. These conclusions were made when analyzing the composition of maslikhats at various levels of the Karaganda region. The composition of other maslikhats may differ. In the future, the results of this work can be used for developing programs for the development of local self-government, preparing for lectures in the disciplines of political science, public administration, political management, etc.