No 4 (2011)

The author discusses the problem of development of sociology of social sciences. He focuses his attention on such problems as power, stratification and intellectual property in social sciences. The problems of gender and ethnicity are of great significance for sociology of social sciences. A strong social science (in the country or region) is a science whose representatives occupy leading positions in the process of producing scientific knowledge of social processes as a whole. A weak social science is a science whose representatives are outsiders not participating in the production of scientific knowledge in social sciences. It is of great importance for Russia to make its weak social science strong.

Argumentation in favor of overcoming the long-ago-established dichotomy of qualitative and quantitative scientific research is presented in the article. Proceeding from the view of materialistic dialecticians that every scientific research must deal with a subject, the author assumes that it is impossible to conduct a quantitative research without first establishing the quality to be studied. This also concerns measuring, which is referred only to quantitative procedures in literature. By way of illustration, the author designs two instruments for measuring the successfulness of political parties - the scale and the quotient of party successfulness. On the other hand, even the qualitative analysis usually involves certain quantifications. The author concludes that to achieve methodological correctness the existing dichotomy of qualitative and quantitative research should be considered as overcome and a typology of scientific research including predominantly qualitative and predominantly quantitative studies, depending on the methodological components prevailing in them, should be used.

This article highlights some social aspects and managerial dynamics in modern staff education for Public and Business Administration (PA&BA). The competencies-based approach is considered as a basic factor contributing to socially innovative management systems. The author analyzes the prospects of development, as well as the opportunities of ensuring the social efficiency of higher managerial education.

Having joined the system of international division of labor, Russia faced all the problems caused by the influx of foreign labor into the country. The article examines the specific nature of the Russian migratory processes, analyzes the data available on the numbers of labor migrants entering Russia and studies the structure of the labor market of foreign workers. Emphasizing the historically predefined features of labor migration in this country, the author gives special attention to the formation history of the Russian market of the foreign labor force.

The article presents a model to study the Siberian regional identity in the context of historical consciousness, as well as the results of its practical application in the content analysis of the publications by the Tomsk regional media. On the basis of the content analysis procedures the author demonstrates how, through historical memory, the regional identity is formed and manifested in the regional media in various spheres of society.

The article presents a review of the existing models and identifies grounds and results of a trial sociological measurement of stable stereotypes existing in the mass perception of the young as regards neighboring countries. Understanding and accepting the conditional and sketchy character of the obtained results, the authors, however, believe that the proposed model (the information sources, own life experience, well-known public figures, the image of a typical resident, a classification in terms of geo-political friendship/hostility) may serve as a basis for conducting further image-country comparisons in other socio-cultural contexts.

The article examines the procedure of Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which is widely used in developed countries for elaborating and making state-level decisions and is new to Russia. The paper analyzes the origins and essential features of the RIA model applied abroad, reviews major methodological approaches to the preparation of statements on regulatory impact assessment. The study focuses on the Russian RIA model, describing its differences from the foreign analogues; the paper also analyzes the shortcomings of this model. A forecast for the development of RIA in Russia is made by the author.