Vol 25, No 2 (2023): Political Science in Search of New Approaches

The editorial board introduces the issue devoted to the problem which occurred as a result of the exhausting traditional heuristic potential of political knowledge, including concepts, theoretical and methodological approaches, and ideological emphasis. The changing traditional theoretical framework questions the legitimacy of traditional political practices, the legitimacy of institutions, goals and subjects of the political process. Based on the ideas of I. Wallerstein, we are making attempts to “feel the elephant” of political reflection on the dramatically changing political reality.

The transition of the basically local military-political crisis in the Western Eurasia into the real focus of global geopolitical transformations and civilizational confrontation. That has brought to the agenda the issue of degradation of the principles of universalities that were the basis for globalization in both: socio-political and socio-economic spheres thus demonstrating deepening interaction between them. The world is facing the perspective of competition of different models of development and their political and social localization that reflect the specifics of social-economic environment. The fact that global transformations became the result of interaction of the objective and subjective, contextual factors as well as sometimes were brought to reality through the interaction of political leaders brings us to the conclusion that the world is nowadays within the transitional era that contains several points of bifurcation of political nature that in turn drive for different models of socioeconomic development. The sharp nature of ongoing transformations reflects the situation when most of the paradigms and instrumental models that were regarded as axiomatically universal like institutional governance and representative democracy started to lose their relevance as political and socio-political management tools. The same is true about a bulk of global economic tools such as the universal protected nature of economic interdependence and international trade. But all that was the basis for the globalization. The system of global political and economic relations that has resided quite recently in the environment of nearly total universality started to lose synergy and integrity while forming complex localized formats in which political and socio-cultural factors play the leading role ahead of economic basis and socio-economic relationships. The research drives to the conclusion on the possibility of emergence of the two competing models claiming a global status the specifics of interaction between them and the key differences between them.

Referring to the classical tenets of the “just war” theory, the author also analyses its modern versions. While the research the author arrives at the conclusion that some political scientists have modernized the theory of “a just war” according to the modern times. For instance, due to the existence of new actors on the international arena, there were created a new version, which allows to include non-state actors for the analysis (which consequently led to abolition of such principles as legitimacy of authorities, “last resort” criteria and also led to the implementation of the preventive actions) as well as the principles just post bellum. It is interesting to note that some political scientists associate the theory of “a just war” with the issue of global leadership of the USA. Throughout the history the participants and the aims of the wars have undergone serious changes, so that nowadays they do not sound “just” (for example, theory of punitive war). Analyzing in detail the postulates of the theory of “just war”, the author turns to historical events - the “Arab Spring”, the confrontation between the USA and the USSR, modern information wars. The author arrives at the conclusion that the use of the theory of “just war” for the analysis of modern events remains relevant, however, requires the introduction of new postulates in the norms of the theory, in particular, the addition of the principles of jus ad bellum and jus post bellum.

The topic under consideration is still in the orbit of the domestic discussion of political scientists and specialists in Government Relations (GR). And there is no agreement among them yet regarding the subject field of the discipline being studied. Opinions differ, referring GR to applied political science, sociology of communications, or corporate management. This article analyzes the problems of defining the subject of GR-management as an applied political science discipline, as well as its categorical apparatus. The peculiarity of GR as a type of political management is that the goal-setting unit of the activities of GR managers and corporate lobbyists is located in an “internal” and “non-political” environment (economic, social, etc.), which may be associated with maintaining the competitiveness of the firm and obtaining economic profit by it. But the means to achieve these goals are already located in the “external” socio-political environment, in which the field of political behavior of interested actors is formed. And here we are faced with the phenomenon of “inversion” of the particular interests represented in public policy, when in order to promote them it is necessary to convert the goals of the economic strategy into adequate private issues when building a common public agenda, and into specific tasks of the strategy and tactics of an already special GR campaign.

The article rethinks the integration of migrants through the lens of constructivist studies of ethnicity. It is done on the basis of the theoretical language developed by the author, which builds upon other constructivist languages. It is pointed out that ethnicity is the organization of differences around categories, membership in which is predominantly inherited. Categories, according to language, are organized in the form of categorizations, classifications, and taxonomies; categories are associated with attributes, which include stereotypes, indicators, norms, characteristics of relationships with other categories, as well as discourses. Together, categories and attributes form the construction of ethnicity, which is a typical object of analysis and description. Individuals constantly evaluate the surrounding phenomena in terms of conformity with the construction of ethnicity, which is why the construction of ethnicity changes. Integration is a change in the construction of ethnicity or re-categorization of individuals in the space of the dichotomy «migrant» - «local» without changing the construction of ethnicity. In the course of integration, «migrant» categories may be re-categorized as «local»; «local» categories may change the attributes associated with them to include attributes previously associated with «migrant» categories; categories and attributes may not change, while re-categorization occurs at the individual level. How exactly integration will take place depends on a variety of factors that characterize the construction of ethnicity and go beyond it. The construction of ethnicity in Russia is a vernacular taxonomy, which implies the existence of a general category (‘Rossijane’, ‘Russkie’), which includes other categories - defined as the «local» ones. Most of the «migrant» categories correspond to identical in name «local» categories. The integration of migrants in Russia thus takes the form of an individual transition from the category of «Tajik migrants» to «local Tajiks». The language created and studied for applicability to the integration of migrants is analyzed for pros and cons and directions for further work are identified.

By the beginning of the 2010s, Russia has developed a party system and an electoral culture for which the ideological spectrum is not critically important. However, the high-profile political processes, the events of recent years and the leap in the development of social media have contributed to the reactualization of the ideological spectrum in the field of unconventional politics. At the same time, new social movements were formed. In this regard, questions about the left-right divide and about the semantic content of the concepts of left and right wings themselves acquire new relevance. The author of the article tries to determine which Russian ideological and social movements, political parties and associations of a different type today can be attributed to each wing of the left-right continuum, and what are the essential divisions between the different sides of it today. For this purpose, a discourse analysis of the publications of certain public opinion leaders who directly relate themselves to one or another camp in social media was carried out. Various interviews and speeches of these individuals, as well as program documents of some parties and movements were also used for this analysis. In order to clearly identify various personalities and groups on the basis of their position in the ideological spectrum, the author relied on the methodology of social constructivism. The author concludes that the conceptualization of the right-wing established in Russian political science, referring this concept mainly to liberals, is largely outdated by now. There are splits within the left and right movements themselves along the line of attitude to the state and etatism, no less acute and fundamental than the very division between these movements.

Cancel Culture originated in Western society and was initially interpreted as a social phenomenon, but over time it began to acquire an increasing political dimension. Its main distribution platform are social networks, where, due to the almost instantaneous reaction on the part of society to information stuffing, the “cancellation culture” has become truly global. Since 2022 cancel culture is a tool for managing socio-political phenomena that can be used for foreign policy purposes. The authors make an attempt to conceptualize and operationalize this term, formerly used in publicjournalistic discourse. They also set themselves the task of identifying the subjects of dissemination of cancel culture and suggesting mechanisms to combat its negative manifestations.

The study of the historical and axiological foundations of Russian statehood is directly related to problems of national and civic identity and addresses the task of ensuring and protecting political sovereignty and national independence. Based on the analysis of a large corpus of works by Russian thinkers, writers, poets, religious and state figures of the 19th century, the content of such basic values as “freedom”, “truth” and “justice” was reconstructed, which maintained their significance throughout the history of Russia, but were substantively transformed in the public ideological-political discourse. The research was conducted based on the database of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (NCRL). In total, work was done with more than 7500 documents created during the period from 1801 to 1900. The main research methods, in addition to the general scientific methodology, were content analysis and politico-textological analysis. The concept of “freedom” was significant throughout almost the entire history of Russia, and in the 19th century, various aspects of it were addressed not only by thinkers and public figures of different ideological orientations, but also by publicists, poets, and writers. Interestingly, the legal and rational understanding of freedom was almost always combined with a moral and even religious content in the works of the authors of this period. The concept of “truth”, despite being used in its substantive sense much less frequently in the 19th century than in previous centuries, still retains its important axiological value in the Russian intellectual tradition and represents a complex moral-social ideological complex. “Truth” as a socialpolitical concept combines both the values and meanings of the Orthodox righteous way of life of each individual and the principles and goals of a truly just social and state system. The concept of “justice” is a cornerstone of the Russian vision of an ideal social and state structure, along with truth and freedom. The specificity of the domestic ideological-political discourse of the 19th century is that the concept of justice is inseparably linked with both the individual and society and the state, receiving moral justification for the necessity of following this principle first and foremost in the name of the common good, and then, as a consequence, in the name of one’s own well-being.

The politicization of the mass consciousness of young people is revealed in this study by such parameters as the level of interest in politics, readiness for certain actions to protect interests, priority sources of political information, assessment of the correctness of the direction of development of the situation in the country, as well as the relations of some of these characteristics with the level political trust. The empirical basis of the study is the results of a massive online survey of Russian youth conducted in November 2022. The method of conducting the survey was an online survey. The data were processed using traditional methods of statistical analysis: simple and combined grouping of data, analysis of standardized residuals, correlation analysis, calculation of new variables, multiple regression analysis, multivariate scaling. By modeling a new variable, it was possible to identify high rates of youth interest in politics. It has been established that the level of youth interest in politics is associated with the availability and size of material and social resources of representatives of this group. Positive and negative factors influencing the level of youth interest in politics have been identified. Since, according to the results of the analysis, the levels of political trust and interest in youth politics turned out to be unrelated, it can be argued that the rational component in the formation of political trust among young people is rather weak. The relationship between the level of political trust of young people and the willingness to take certain potential actions to protect their interests has been revealed. Two sets of related potential action strategies have been identified that young people can use to protect their interests.