INFORMATION OPENNESS OF PUBLIC ADVISORY COUNCILS IN ST. PETERSBURG: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONDITIONS

Information openness of public advisory councils is an important but underexplored indicator of their role in public policy. It reflects their activities, as well as the feedback mechanisms between citizens and councils. Scholars point out low information quality on federal and regional levels, but the reasons behind that rarely studied, especially from a comparative perspective. This paper attempts to fill in this gap by revealing the conditions leading to greater information openness. The authors choose St. Petersburg as a case and gather a dataset on 46 public councils. The key research method is the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The framework is built on two expectations: the impact of councils’ autonomy (in website management and general organization) and the role of councils (“intermediary” or “expert”) on information openness.Due to several limitations, the results have not revealed any conditions which can be considered a guarantee for better openness. However, the preliminary conclusion is that the differences in autonomy and roles are important conditions. The autonomy of councils seems to be the most crucial factor. A valuable contribution of this paper is the framework of analysis that can be used for other cases and research strategies.

FINNO-UGRIC "WORLD" AS A SYMBOLICALLY CONCTRUCTED PROJECT

The article studies the Finno-Ugric "world", understood as a transfrontier language community and its actors. The author marks tendencies of unification in the Finno-Ugric community of the 1990s and a stage of «disin-tegration» in the 2000s. The study goal is to explain the ongoing processes in the context of the foreign poli-cy of several western countries engaged and ethnic fragmentation among the Russian Finno-Ugric peoples. For this purpose, the work describes the creation of the Finno-Ugric community, the institutional setting and the results of the World Congresses; the role of the Finno-Ugric “world” in the foreign policies of Western countries. Attention is paid to practices aimed at constructing a common Finno-Ugric identity, among which the initiative "Cultural Capitals of the Finno-Ugric World" is noted.The author concludes that the Finno-Ugric “world” is a symbolically constructed project that connects the divergent positions of a diverse circle of participants, typologically defined as “the glottogenesis communi-ty”, where symbolic and discursive principles prevail over material ones. Moreover, bilateral and multilateral interactions between “western” and “eastern” Finno-Ugric peoples in the culture, science and education are more likely projections of the “soft power” of Finland, Hungary and Estonia than aspirations to create a common Finno-Ugric space.

REVISION OF NEO-MARXISM: THE CONCEPT OF CAPITALIST STABILITY AS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE "OCCUPY WALL STREET" MOVEMENT

The article substantiates the author's concept of "nonlinear politics of capitalism" as a political-procedural disclosure of the neo-Marxist concept of "unstable stability of global capitalism". The method of justification is the verification of the concept of "nonlinear politics of capitalism" by the empirical material of the anti-globalist protest movement "Occupy Wall Street". The essence of the concept of the "nonlinear politics of capitalism" is that the modern political order of Western states not only opposes alternative ideologies and political practices, but also uses them as a way of its own legitimization and stabilization. The study reveals that in the modern Western capitalist order there is a mystification of capitalism in the multidimensional spectrum of social conflict, where the class contradiction appears as an archaism. There is a reinforcement of anti-capitalist resistance within a model in which all anti-capitalist slogans and demands fit into the ideology of "improving the conditions of exploitation", and anti-capitalist practices legitimize capitalism as an "inclu-sive" political regime. There is a nonlinear political reaction when capitalism shows the greatest strength in those situations that threaten its reproduction the least and vice versa. Such political tactics "channel" anti-capitalist protest, making it manageable and functional for the stable reproduction of capitalism.

BIG DATA IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS IN PUBLIC POLICY: FROM ANALYSIS OF THEORIES TO EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRACTICES

This article analyzes the theoretical research base of the last decade on the use of big data in the decision-making process in public administration and describes the methodology proposed by Van der Voort for eval-uating the influence of the two elements on each other. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that there is an extensive study of the use of big data in public administration with an emphasis on potential benefits and threats that conditionally divides researchers into techno-optimists and techno-pessimists. Most studies are empirical in nature, however, they are fragmented and use different approaches to identify the relationships between big data and political decision making. The question arises as to how can we verify or evaluate the relationship between big data and the political decision-making process, taking into account both the dubious reliability of the data used in the process and the interests of decision-makers. The article describes the methodology proposed by Van der Voort for assessing these relationships taking into account the role of ac-tors in the political decision-making process using big data, as well as their interests and values.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH NATIONAL IDENTITY IN RELATION TO BREXIT: EVOLUTION OF THE DISCOURSE OF THE PRIME MINISTERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

The discursive reality of Brexit had its effects on the discourse of the British Conservative Party which is important as the latter plays a key role in the process of making political decisions. The article discusses the components of the British national identity linked with the UK's membership in the European Union and Brexit as a political process. The UK's case is unique as it allows us to trace the identity transformation during the process of withdrawal from this integration group. The author chooses the constructivist approach and post-positivist discourse analysis as the main method. The paper studies the speeches of conservative politicians and parliamentary debates to analyze the changes in the discourse of the Conservative Party during the terms of the UK’s last three prime ministers. The discursive layers are highlighted: basic concepts, basic political orientations and extratextual ideological constructions used by conservative politicians to construct reality. The author traces the transformation of ideological constructions of the conservative party's discourse and consecutive changes in the significance of individual elements of the British national identity in the discourse. The paper examines relations between British and European identities, between the images of Britain and the EU in the discourse of British conservatives.

MIXED INDEPENDENT ELECTORAL SYSTEM AND ELECTORAL AUTHORITARISM

Over the past decade, the mixed system became the fastest growing variety of electoral systems used in elections for national legislatures. Opinions about the reasons for the popularity of mixed systems in the research literature still vary. There are no cross-national studies in political science that would link the use of a mixed independent electoral system with the consolidation of an authoritarian order. Under authoritarianism, elections perform three functions: imitation, control and signaling. These functions set the structure of incentives for choosing an electoral formula. The purpose of my study is to determine the structure of incentives for the employment of mixed independent electoral systems under conditions of electoral authoritarianism. One of the main results of the study is that, in comparison with democracies, mixed independent electoral systems are more often used in authoritarian regimes. This is due to the fact that mixed independent electoral system provides an opportunity to effectively realize the imitation, control and signaling functions of elections under electoral authoritarianism.

POSTCAREER OF RUSSIAN GOVERNORS 1991‒2020: MAIN DIRECTIONS

The author collected and analyzed the biographies of all heads of the Russian regions who held their posts from 1991 to 2020. The main focus of this work was the careers of former heads of regions after their end of term. Information about the post-career of regional heads was found in 268 cases. The most popular directions of the post-governor career were federal government and business. Regional administration is much less popular, and local administration are almost not represented. In most cases, the governorship was a springboard in one's career. An analysis of changes in the main directions of post-career development over time showed a clear reflection of the consequences of the policy of “recentralization”: the marginalization of regional and local politics and the focus of former governors on the transition to central government are traced. In addition, the high popularity of business structures prompts the conclusion about plutocratization of the regional level of power.

THE STUDY OF COMBINED ELECTIONS: REGIONAL AND MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS IN 2020

The paper analyzes the results of voting at the regional and municipal elections held simultaneously on September 13, 2020 on party lists in the cities of Syktyvkar and Vorkuta of the Komi Republic, the city of Kaluga of the Kaluga Region and in 12 districts of the Novosibirsk Region. The correlation and regression analysis methods are used to study the relationship between the results of political parties that participated only in regional elections and the difference in the results of other parties in municipal and regional elections. The reasons for the choice difference in regional and municipal elections are discussed: varying set of parties in the two ballots, arrangement of parties in the ballots, and attitude of voters to the candidates included in the lists of the same party in regional and municipal elections. It is shown that in different regions and even in different districts of the same region, the losses of the main parties are associated with voting for various small parties. The place of new parties ("New People", "For Truth", "Green Alternative", "Party of Direct Democracy") in the political spectrum of Russia is also discussed. The conclusion is made about the importance of the study of combined elections for political science.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: PROSPECTS FOR THE INTEGRATION OF TWO THEORIES

The article is devoted to the study of the state's role in the development of technological innovations. In scientific literature, scientific and technological progress has long been recognized as the most important engine of economic development. However, there are economic and political forces that tend to oppose innovative development and create barriers. The study of the conditions that promote or hinder the development of technological innovation has become one of the mainstream trends in comparative political science. Nevertheless, the constant comprehension of the above-described problem has not yet been completed, and moreover, has led to some contradictions that still remain unresolved. The article analyzes two seemingly competing theoretical approaches to explaining the state's role in the development of technological innovations from the perspective of institutional theory and the theory of "agency relations". The author comes to the conclusion that the two theories do not contradict each other but describe “different” dimensions of the problem. While the institutional perspective emphasizes the resource advantage provided by state ownership, the theory of “agency relations” emphasizes the double agency problem with the allocation and use of resources. Both theoretical logics provide powerful arguments, and therefore, their traditional opposition reduces the explanatory power of each.

THE INFLUENCE OF ELECTION OBSERVATION ON INCUMBENT’S ELECTORAL RESULTS: THE CASE OF GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS IN ST. PETERSBURG

The article includes a literature review on election observation in contemporary Russia and empirical research of the election observation influence on the results of the gubernatorial election in St. Petersburg. In the literature review section, the two approaches towards election observation are distinguished: election observation as a tool of control and participation, and election observation as imitation and legitimation. In the empirical section, due to the lack of systematic data, election observation is operationalized as the share of election committee members nominated by different political forces. The empirical section concludes with the thesis about the limited effect of the electoral monitoring on the incumbent’s results (the results of the acting governor were to a higher extent influenced by the turnout level, the share of voters, who cast their ballots at home, and those who voted against all of the candidates). The results of the analysis support the argument about the existence of two models of election observation: participatory and imitation-legitimizing. In the concluding section the possible directions for further research are suggested: studying of the electoral fraud mechanisms at the level of individual election committees, legitimation of frauded results, and ways in which independent election committee members and election observers combat and prevent electoral fraud.