Stephen Krasner took part in the 8^th Congress of Russian Political Science Association in Moscow (December 8-9, 2018) devoted to issues of development policy, state and world order. On the margins of the Congress he was so kind to give an interview to the managing editor of our Journal, Maxim Kharkevich.

The aim of this article is to put Tsar Peter's traveling incognito in Holland and England into a wider context, to demonstrate that it was not an idiosyncratic choice on the Tsar's part but a mode of behavior taken from a new diplomatic protocol. One of the most vivid examples of the new mid-17th century conception of the term incognito is to be found in Peter's English experience. Using that experience as a focal point this article explains the evolution of the term itself in both literary usage and more broadly in diplomatic practice as it evolved at various congresses and assemblies of the period, beginning with the meetings preliminary to the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. The article is based on various contemporary records and accounts, government documents and archives, as well as contemporary memoires. It concludes by showing that the practice of an ambassador or a monarch traveling incognito saved a governments' treasury the cost of elaborate ceremonials and a large entourage but more importantly for a monarch, it provided freedom of movement and escape from the constriction of the formalities of court rituals. Thus the actions of Peter I and also William III marked an important point in the transition from the formal ceremonial relations of personal monarchy at the beginning of the century to the later idea of the representation of the sovereign state by a regular corps of ambassadors and plenipotentiary ministers.

The article presents an analysis of certain peculiarities of the Russian translation of chapters about the British Iles from the Mercator-Hondius Atlas (published in 1613). These sections were based on the historical and topographical treatise «Britannia» written by the English antiquarian William Camden (1551–1623). The translation was accomplished in Moscow, in the Ambassadorial Office, by Bogdan Lykov and Ivan Dorn, in 1637, and became known as «Mercator’s Cosmography». The comparison of the Latin text and the Russian translation reveals numerous distinctions between them, which shows difficulties the translators faced with. The variety of their problems turned to be rather broad. Also the insufficient knowledge of the Latin language, particularly of its complicated syntactic constructions, compounded their work. Lykov and Dorn had to rethink many things to bring new terms and onyms into another national context that differed from one in what they were created. Proper names, topographic objects, historical facts, terms, the structure of society, government institutions caused perplexities. As an example of this uneasy work, the evolution of the interpretation of the proper name – the name of the text's author William Camden – is examined here. A detailed analysis reveals the mechanisms of adaptation of the new onym and its incorporation to the Russian language. The situation with the interpretation of extracts about social hierarchy, political, administrative and juridical institutes of England looks more complicated. One of such examples is the problem of the interpretation of the most important term for the English history – term «parliament». The difference of the perception of the parliament's functions by the English antiquarian Camden and by the Ambassadorial Office translators is clearly revealed. Lykov and Dorn found themselves in a difficult position: they had to construe this term relying on their own knowledge about English realias which in fact were very limited.

The article highlights and summarizes the main aspects of the work of the Czechoslovak Red Cross in Soviet Russia and Ukraine during the famine of 1921-1923s. Its sources are documents from the Russian archives, the National Archives of Sweden, first introduced into scientific circulation in Russia, as well as the memories of the participants in the events. The substantial assistance to the starving population was provided by the Nansen International Relief Committee. One of the organizations that belonged to this Committee was the Czechoslovakian Red Cross. The Czechoslovakian Red Cross united several charitable organizations under its authority and worked in the regions most affected by the famine: in Samara province and in Berdyansk and Melitopol districts on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and the Autonomous Crimean SSR. The aid was provided not only in the form of sending humanitarian supplies to the starving areas, but also by sending their own expedition of the Czechoslovak Red Cross to work in disaster-affected areas. The article reveals the scope of the assistance and provides some details on the activities of the Czechoslovak Red Cross in Soviet Russia and Ukraine during this period. Special attention is paid to a part of the wellknown history of the evacuation of children from the starving provinces to Czechoslovakia, namely the little-studied aspect of their re-evacuation after the end of the famine disaster. The article contains references to the receipt of Czechoslovak humanitarian aid to the starving people from the other organizations and sources, such as Workers International Relief, donations from private and official persons, works of art in favor of the starving.

After Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, Washington displays in many respects a new foreign policy philosophy, as well as non-conventional political practices. The 45th President has virtually resigned the liberal globalist paradigm, he is highly sсeptical about key transnational institutions of the world order, he would not hesitate to withdraw from key agreements signed by the United States if these agreements do not suit the current team in the White House. Trump’s national capitalism, his trade protectionist practices have caused a major crisis between the United States and its partners and allies, enhanced tensions with rival states.

The authors of this article compare basic philosophic and doctrinal elements of Trump’s ‘grand strategy’ and major practical steps by his administration in the foreign and trade policies. The main conclusion from this analysis is that, despite Trump’s obvious abdication of the U.S. leadership in the liberal world order and its institutions, he is in no way isolationist within the world system. This applies to everyone who takes office as U.S. President, irrespectively of his/her political views. Donald Trump’s policies in 2017 and the first half of 2018 show that his America First rhetoric, his assurances of not seeking to impose the American way of life on anyone, do not contravene the use of force in conflicts in the U.S. interests, or widening the U.S. military presence abroad if Washington sees a threat to its vital strategic interests. This includes regions adjacent to the Russian frontiers. Power projection, as well as maintaining the U.S. - led security alliances – no matter how deeply they may be divided – is the key element of continuity in Washington’s strategy. Increased tensions in the U.S. – Russia and U.S. – China relations are inevitable in these circumstances, since the Trump administration declared them ‘revisionist powers’. Getting out of the deep crisis in the U.S. –Russian relationship becomes still more difficult and requires creativity and non-standard approaches.

The United States is indisputable global leader in utilizing tools of economic statecraft to secure national interests both through rewarding foreign countries for policies conforming the Washington interests and through punishing them for a deviant behavior. Foreign assistance is one of such mechanisms of global influence. This paper examines the issue of aid prohibition. The first section contains a catalog and an original typology of effective universal (not country-specific) restrictions on foreign aid provision based on the type of the recipient government’s actions or inactions through its domestic policy or international behavior that trigger harming the U.S. economic interests. The paper demonstrates that such a typology is equally applicable to the U.S. bilateral and multilateral aid and invites to differentiate between the restrictions within one category depending on whether they are imposed in response to the recipient’s actions against the United States or to its international policy as a whole. The second section assess the extent to which the U.S. government is consistent in imposing the aid restrictions. The conclusion is drawn that the U.S. has established a parallel (to the international law) legal regime of aid prohibitions that helps them control the developing countries’ behavior. Most of the active restrictions and prohibitions were imposed during the Cold War but not as byproducts of the bipolarity, which is another illustration of continuity in the U.S. global policies in the 20th and 21st centuries. The imposition of these restrictions reflects not only a diversification of external threats to the U.S. vital interests, but also the logic of the U.S. domestic political process and the legislators’ wish to restrain the executive branch. The President, however, is entitled by law to waive most of the norms out of political or strategic considerations. This helps the U.S. government impose restrictions selectively but does not eliminate a hypothetical risk of aid suspension that can refrain a recipient government from certain domestic or external actions. Nonetheless, the impact of the U.S. aid prohibition as a tool of coercion has been declining because of strengthening of non-Western donors – especially, China, Arab countries, Turkey and Russian Federation.

Thе article analyzes the concept of strategic stability and its contemporary development in domestic military-political thought. The authors note that the expansion of the meaningful content of the concept of strategic stability in the Russian Federation occurred as a result of the development of strategic non-nuclear deterrence forces and the US policy to reduce the dependence of American foreign and defense policy on the factor of nuclear deterrence. These changes in the military-political situation in the world have led to a reduction in the stability of the relations of key states, despite some proliferation of nuclear weapon technologies in Asian countries.

The article attempts to prove that the Russian Federation is able to withstand the new challenges associated with qualitative changes in the relations of mutual deterrence with the United States. As to this, the authors consistently analyze the historical context and conceptual foundations of deterrence policy, including recent documents adopted at the highest level in Russia. In addition, the authors analyze the recently adopted cruise missile systems in Russia and the United States, as well as anti-missile defense systems that alter the balance of power for a guaranteed response to strategic nuclear forces. Taking into account the current technological developments and the timeline for their implementation, the authors conclude that Russia has been able to achieve significant results in the field of aerospace defense, while naval defense and the introduction of new means of nuclear weapon delivery need additional attention from authorities. Finally, the authors believe that the development of the domestic military-industrial complex directly depends on the country's economic development, which means that the degree of effectiveness of Russian strategic weapons system must remain significantly higher than that of foreign counterparts.

The article is devoted to the analysis of research tools that are dominant in international relations forecasting. The study is based on quantitative description of 160 prognostic articles from leading journals on international relations for the period from 2006 to 2015. An innovative typology of prognostic studies is proposed and tested. The typology introduces a distinction between «weak prognoses» (probabilistic predictive statements that appear as extrapolations of deductive nomothetical theories) and «strong prognoses» («ideographic» predictions that are formulated as scenarios of possible future developments in specific situations and with specific sets of actors). The study shows that it is the weak prognoses that are the dominant type of forecasts in contemporary international studies. The dominance of the weak approach to forecasting remains total, despite the fact that it is almost two decades ago that its fundamental limitations were demonstrated and a “forward reasoning” approach suggested as an alternative. The methodology of Teaching, Research, and International Policy project was applied for a more detailed epistemological profiling of the field. It showed that academic forecasting in international relations is dominated by quantitative methods and positivist non-paradigmatic approaches. As to the traditional paradigms, it is liberalism that is the most common with Marxism being completely neglected. The described profile of the field follows the trends that are inherent in the discipline of international relations in general. The findings of the study can be interpreted from the perspective of possible tracks for the development of forecasting methods in the Russian school of international relations.

The conflict in the South-East Ukraine has acquired a protracted character, primarily due to the lack of consensus among key players. Ukrainian elites and society have not formed a consolidated position in relation to the Donbas. The study attempts to answer the question: what are the specifics and dynamics of the Ukrainian elites' discourse in relation to the Donbas over the past 10 years? The aim of the study is to analyze the semantics, frequency and emotionality of the two major discourses – in relation to the population and the territory of Donbas – using the analysis of the national Facebook segment. This work proceeded in several stages: from November 2016, when my colleagues and I began brainstorming, until May 2018, when the final schedules were obtained: the allocation of opinion leaders in the social network, downloading their posts from January 1, 2009 to February 15, 2018, the isolation from the discourse of posts devoted to the Donbas, the creation of a vocabulary that allows differentiating discourses according to the degree of their emotionality, an assessment of their frequency degree, an explanation of the discourses dynamics through event analysis. The database consists of 653 662 739 characters in 7 languages from 1,069,687 posts of 376 Ukrainian Facebook top-bloggers, downloaded and analyzed using the information-analytical system «Semantic Archive». The results of the analysis show that, firstly, the «birth» of discourses about both the territory and the population is the 2013-2014 boundary. Before that, the frequency of mentioning the Donbas is zero. Secondly, unlike the territory in relation to the population there is a significant negative discourse, and it has slightly increased in relative degree after 2014, but has always existed. Regarding the territory, on the contrary, the hatred discourse is absent. The neutral discourse dominates this agenda. At the very beginning of the period under review, it displaces positive discourse, showing how great is the uncertainty with regard to the territory, maintaining its relative share, beginning in January 2011. The number of positive and negative discourses in relation to the territory is a multiple of that for the population, which allows to draw conclusions about the high degree of uncertainty of elites in relation to the territory and the low probability of the transition of this neutral discourse into positive ones.

This research article investigates the Russian equivalents of the key terms of the English language interest group politics research vocabulary in relation to the issues that their application is causing in research publications. The study is based on the terminological and statistical analyses of the following terms of the interest group politics: lobbying, advocacy, and interest groups and the Russian equivalents that derive from them. The article offers a detailed analysis and comparison of the essential properties of these Russian equivalents to identify the most suiting of them with an ultimate goal of harmonization of the Russian research vocabulary of the interest group politics.

Terminological analysis of the study has revealed 22 closest Russian equivalents of the three English terms, including 5 Russian equivalents of the term lobbying, 9 Russian equivalents of the term advocacy, and 8 Russian equivalents of the term interest groups. Statistical analysis of the application of these 22 selected Russian equivalents studied in timeframe between 1992 and 2016 is based on the investigation of the research publication databases of the www.cyberleninka.ru website. The purpose of this analysis was to identify the most frequently used Russian equivalents of the English terms under study selected from a pool of options revealed during terminological analysis.

Based on the terminological and statistical analyses of the pool of the Russian equivalents of the three key terms of the English language interest group politics research vocabulary, the author identifies the most highly recommended ones of them for application in the Russian language research publications.

The development of science and technology, in particular information and communication technologies, has a significant impact on world political processes. It strengthens globalization and interdependence, expands the number of actors in world politics by strengthening the capabilities of non-state actors, it transforms national sovereignty, and also leads to the emergence of new, high-tech challenges and threats to international and national security. Due to their transnational nature overcoming these challenges and threats implies cooperation between different types of actors in world politics. Multiplicity of actors, as well as the complexity, variability and pervasive nature of the subject of cooperation (technology), make traditional rationalist schools of thought not quite suitable for studying this sphere of world politics. On the basis of a critical review of the prevailing approaches to the study of science and technology in international relations, the author argues that the most promising theoretical school of thought in this field is social constructivism. It shows that technology is embedded in social relations, there is a constitutive relationship between technology and social structures. Therefore, the characteristics and implementation of technology can become the subject of political competition, including the international level. The spread of technology leads to the globalization of social structures and relations that are tied to them, which initially had a local origin. Naturally, this process is accompanied by political rivalry, generating resistance from agents of alternative social structures.

As a case study to evaluate the analytical potential of this approach, the article deals with the issues of Internet governance and international information security. It is shown that since the creation of the Internet, its characteristics and governance were largely determined by the national interests of the United States, resulting in a public-private governance model in the form of ICANN. Due to the proliferation of the Internet, its technological features and characteristics of the established governance model influence policies and practices of international relations in the field of information and communication technologies. Multi-level cooperation formats have spread within the UN, bringing together representatives of states, business, civil society and the research community. First of all, it is the Internet Governance Forum created in 2006. However, such models of international cooperation do not fully correspond to the remaining statist characteristics of the modern international system, as a result they undergo adjustment. Thus, in the field of information security, non-state actors have only consulting powers, while the key format of interaction remains intergovernmental cooperation. It seems that the global regime of Internet governance is developing in this direction.

The article discusses transformations of science, technology and innovation policy as a result of emphasis on the emerging technologies. Crisis and recession were the immediate causes for their actualization, but real reasons appear to be long-term socio-economic problems, which, in turn, form requirements for emerging technologies policies. Another group of policy factors are defined by the evolution of innovation processes, including rise of innovation ecosystems and growing importance of technology diffusion. New tasks required policy transformations, with important experiments realized within technological programs like Industrie 4.0. Among key policy trends was creation of new institutions that provide, in addition to research and development, communication of actors, formation of ecosystems and clusters in the area of emerging technologies. Another focus was technology diffusion through standards, specialized platforms and related institutions. These novelties face serious challenges. Traditional policy instruments do not correlate with the needs of new actors and processes, resulting in inefficiency of efforts. Another challenge is globalization, also growing interdependencies of innovation systems. Given the scale of expected changes, there is a need for both increased coordination of government efforts, as well as increased coherence and convergence of science, technology and innovation policy with related areas, including social policy. The latter is especially important due to the human capital and social dimensions of emerging technologies development and diffusion. In turn, these changes will require new approaches to the political process in science and technology area, including improvements in anticipatory governance practices and search for new, innovative solutions.

The globalization of science leads to an increase in the transaction costs of scientific work due to the specifics of the institutional, linguistic, cultural, infrastructural and other conditions of this activity in individual countries, institutions, scientific fields, etc. In addition, the increase in transaction costs is also influenced by the increasing interdependence between scientists around the world. Science is, in principle, collective creativity, but today it is truly global, and global collective work is more difficult to organize and provide than local or regional. The article discusses the role of international government organizations in the governance of global science in the field of basic research. International governmental organizations are viewed primarily as bureaucratic structures, and basic science as club goods or a specific asset that is more effective to manage with the help of hierarchical bureaucratic structures. As a case study, the activities of the international government organization of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research are investigated. The globalization of science leads to the need for its governance, as well as to the definition of criteria for the effectiveness of such governance. The article discusses two dimensions of effectiveness: endogenous (bureaucratic) and exogenous (real). Endogenous effectiveness suggests that the organization effectively implements its decisions. In case of international governmental organizations in the field of science, it means conducting planned scientific events, organizing conferences, workshops, field trips, signing cooperation agreements, and publish articles in authoritative journals. Exogenous effectiveness implies that the implementation of the measures taken leads to the solution of the general problem for which the organization was created – scientific discoveries, innovations, etc. In other words, the organization can extremely effectively ensure the implementation of extremely inefficient measures. Moreover, if the measures developed are effective, and the organization implements them inefficiently, the result will also be low. Therefore, it is important to consider both aspects when analyzing the effectiveness of an organization. The purpose of the article is to consider the contradictions associated with the diversity of governance forms using the example of international governmental organizations in the field of science. Science as a social practice develops in a network form of self-organization, while international governmental organizations are instruments of bureaucratic (hierarchical) governance. The main thesis of this article is that under the conditions of globalization, the governance of basic science is carried out more effectively with the help of international intergovernmental organizations. To prove this thesis, the article uses the case study method, namely, the case of an international intergovernmental organization in the field of nuclear physics, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in the Russian city of Dubna.

Based on the results of a comparative study of the parameters of the theoretical justification of corporate governance formed the author's position on the problem field of corporate entities management in modern economy, which includes four groups of contradictions: 1) the contradictions for existing theoretical approaches; 2) the contradictions arising from the use in methodological tools practice; 3) the contradictions arising from the use of business practices and methods, and not solved by replacement within the known tools; 4) predictive contradictions. The article focuses on the historically existing in corporate entities a certain lag of theoretical structures from management practice. In modern conditions of development of information and communication technologies, acting simultaneously on both external and internal environment requires adaptation, this requires modification and adjustment of corporate governance’s theories and methodology. The corporate governance’s objectives in the interpretations of the World Bank, the Organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD), the Bank of Russia, the basic principles of public companies are analyzed. The author proposes the corporate governance’s theories systematization, including: a) basic theories that explain the elements of corporate as a firm; b) conceptual theories that explain the nature and subject of relations of corporate governance’s subjects; c) corrective theories that make additions to the disclosure of corporate governance’s elements, formed in the basic and conceptual theories. It is concluded that in conditions of constant variability of the external environment, the need to reduce risks and analyze large amounts of information data, corporate governance should provide opportunities for the development and adoption of adequate decisions taking into account the time factor. The necessity of updating the corporate governance’s principles due to current trends in the digital transformation of the economy, the development of the information society and the all-encompassing penetration of networks in the processes of interaction between the company and its shareholders and disclosure. The article presents the author's interpretation of corporate governance’s main problems in the digital economy development, systematized by categories: theoretical, methodological, practical and predictive, allowing to take into account the significant parameters of the internal and external environment of modern corporations (changes in the structure of the corporation's assets, the asymmetric information impact, universal penetration of the Internet, the use of distributed databases, big data processing, etc.).

Review of the book “Geography of Australia and Oceania” by Vladimir A. Gorbanyov / Ed. N.V. Galishcheva, B.I. Kochurov, I.B. Mitrofanova, S.V. Zhdanov. Monograph. Moscow: Publ. “MGIMO-University”, 2018. 339 p.

The book by professor Vladimir A. Gorbanyov is a solid piece of research work, filling the gap in the regional studies literature in Russia. The main advantage of the book is its complexity: it considers both the physical, and the economic features of Australian and Oceanian geography. The region is very remote from other regions, continents and countries, it is far from the main transport communications, but it has unique natural resources. Despite its uneasy geographic location and the export-resource orientation of the economy, the region is successfully integrated into the world economy. Australia and New Zealand managed to achieve great success in their socio-economic development, and in a short time to reach the leading countries of the world, and in some cases, go ahead of them. For Russia, which is also an export-resource economy, direct borrowing from the Australian experience is hardly possible, except in some special cases. But this does not make it less interesting for us, it simply needs to be used not as a book of recipes, but as a food for thought, motivating bold creative search. The book is written in a good language and, of course, will be of great interest for both geographers and economists.

Book Review: I. Zvyaglskaya Middle East and Central Asia: Global trends in regional execution. Moscow: “Aspect Press”, 2018. 224 p. (In Russian)

“Middle East and Central Asia: Global trends in regional execution” is an analysis of the main trends in the development of international relations, political regimes, societies, identities in two significant regions of Russia for the world. The author managed not only to list the main trends, but also to show their interrelation, and also to give a forecast regarding their further influence. The publication addresses such important issues as the fate of statehood, the difficulties of protecting sovereignty, the role of traditionalism in the modern East, the origins of terrorism and extremism.