The article is devoted to a problem of political analysis in the fi eld of international relations. The author discusses the key rules, standards and requirements of correct political research as well as basic criteria of analytical correctness. The author formulates typology of analytical papers, assesses the state of environment and working conditions for today’s experts, analysis key problems and diffi culties at the stage of empirical data selection (including verifi cation of information sources), while choosing analytical methods and formulating conclusions. The article gives advice for experts, how to organize research, deal with diffi culties and fi nd non-standard solutions.

The starting point of the conclusions of politicians and experts was the recognition of the changed nature of threats to the New World Order. In post-Westfalia system of international relations the main actors are not sovereigns, but transnational actors of world politics, including transnational terrorist and criminal networks. In this situation, the support of global security threat serves the underground world – terrorists, shady business structures, failed states. The unconventional nature of the threat to peace and stability of the New World Order requires an equally innovative response which transcends the formal constraints of international law and the traditional doctrine of deterrence. An analysis of the U.S. foreign policy concepts suggests that today’s academic and political community has promoted consensus of neoliberals and neoconservatives, supporters of the institutional functionalism and representatives of the school of Realpolitik. This consensus was based on the recognition of the admissibility of pre-emptive strikes on the territory of failed states, sponsoring international terrorism, or the implementation of open interference in the internal affairs of “rogue states” for human rights and democratic freedoms guarantee.

The starting point of the conclusions of politicians and experts was the recognition of the changed nature of threats to the New World Order. In post-Westfalia system of international relations the main actors are not sovereigns, but transnational actors of world politics, including transnational terrorist and criminal networks. In this situation, the support of global security threat serves the underground world – terrorists, shady business structures, failed states. The unconventional nature of the threat to peace and stability of the New World Order requires an equally innovative response which transcends the formal constraints of international law and the traditional doctrine of deterrence. An analysis of the U.S. foreign policy concepts suggests that today’s academic and political community has promoted consensus of neoliberals and neoconservatives, supporters of the institutional functionalism and representatives of the school of Realpolitik. This consensus was based on the recognition of the admissibility of pre-emptive strikes on the territory of failed states, sponsoring international terrorism, or the implementation of open interference in the internal affairs of “rogue states” for human rights and democratic freedoms guarantee.

The purpose of the article is to give defi nition of legislative (representative) state authority of a subject of the Russian Federation and to analyze various forms of public control over the activity of the legislative (representative) state authority of a subject of the Russian Federation. Methodology: dialectics, analysis, synthesis, deduction, formal legal method, method of inter-sectoral legal researches. The key author’s conclusions are: Firstly, at the federal level, there has not been adopted so far a regulatory legal act fi xing the legal status of public councils under legislative (representative) state authorities of subjects of the Russian Federation, their main rights and obligations, procedure for their formation, and it, in its turn, shows major defi ciencies on the legislator’s part. However, a number of regional legislators have made an attempt to independently settle the issue of formation of public councils under legislative (representative) state authorities of subjects of the Russian Federation by fi xing the relevant provisions in special regional laws on public control bases in a subject of the Russian Federation. Secondly, many regulatory legal acts adopted at regional level, fi xing the procedure for recall of deputies of representative authorities of a subject of the Russian Federation, are recognized, as of today, by judicial authorities as partly invalid or void. Thirdly, the forms of public control mentioned in the article are not of exhaustive nature and can be expanded by relevant lawful subjects of the Russian Federation, but these forms of public control, at their effi cient and combined application, can be an effi cient instrument for control over power on the part of civil society. Scientific and Practical Importance. The conducted research develops and specifi es forms of public control. As exemplifi ed by various forms of public control over activity of legislative (representative) state authority of a subject of the Russian Federation, revealed were defi ciencies on the legislator’s part, preventing efficiency of legal regulation.

The European football is in need of proper governance. This fact has been acknowledged in a number of EU documents, as well as by some of its member-states, Britain and France in particular. Weak governance undermines the fi nancial stability of football clubs and the ability of sport to fullfi l its key social functions. Besides other things, it open channels of external interference in the functioning of FIFA and UEFA as selfregulating bodies of football governance. The present article is devoted to the exploration of governance modes transformation in European and international football, infl uences by the European integration process. Global governance is employed here as an analytical approach. It allows to specify the role of the EU in development and maintenance of rules and norms, which limit the freedom of state and nonstate actors, involved in the sphere of football. The 2007 Lisbon Treaty endowed the EU with direct competence in the field of sport. But today it will still be a mistake to conclude that the European institutions are directly responsible for the formation of new structures of football governance. Nevertheless, their activity does have an impact on the lives of those who are involved in it. Unsatisfi ed stakeholders (football clubs, players and fans) turn to the EU for support when seeking alternative ways for settlement of disputes, when they do not find resolution in the internal structures of football governance. Vertical pathways, established in the traditional pyramid of the European football governance are subsequently undermined. Thus, the EU influence makes it easier to turn to structures of network governance.

In the globalizing world of fi nancial and economic interdependence, a polycentric, multi-level, and hierarchical system of global financial regulation is emerging. The article highlights two vectors of recent development in international fi nancial regulation: the rise of cooperation through the mechanisms of the Group of Twenty (G-20) on the one hand, and the efforts to maintain the US leading role in global fi nance, on the other hand. In the circumstances of the global fi nancial crisis of 2008, the G-20 countries initiated an international reform of fi nancial regulation. According to G-20 decisions, international standardsetting organizations developed transnational regulatory regimes in the fi elds of banking, derivatives and bankruptcy resolution, and the states now implement these regimes in their jurisdictions. The so-called “soft law system”, which is not legally binding, allows the states to sustain national sovereignty in their fi nancial policy. The United States play a leading role in the international fi nancial reform, as well as in the shaping of the global fi nancial regulation system. The American regulators push for extraterritorial application of the US norms and take other unilateral actions on the international arena. The article also touches upon legitimacy problems of the emerging system of global fi nancial regulation. The most important constrains are the excessive infl uence of the fi nancial industry (“regulatory capture”), the weakness of civil society participation, and also the fact that for the rest of the world the American norms lack legitimacy, as they are adopted by regulators assigned by offi cials elected by population of a foreign territory.

This article contributes to the discussion surrounding involvement of interest groups in the political process on the European and global level. My purpose here is to examine how groups of interest can affect EU’s role as a global actor and find out which mode of lobbying regulation could strengthen Europe’s position in global governance. In this article, I am trying to bind concepts which at first glance might seem quite remote: groups of interests and global governance. By analyzing Europe’s position on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP), I argue that European ambitions on international arena are undermined by innertensions. These tensions are mainly caused by discrepancy in positions of different groups of interest who try to infl uence the outcome of the political process and, thus, make it less stable and predictable. At the same time, adequate lobbying regulation could increase accountability and transparency and, therefore, help to overcome inconsistencies in EU’s position in global governance system. The results suggest that without proper backing from inside actors like business groups and civil society associations the EU will constantly wobble and will not be able to fully achieve its global goals.

Since the 1990s, the European Union is aspiring global leadership in the area of climate change, which is refl ected in its active participation in the negotiations on the international climate change regime. However, those ambitions have not always turned out to be appropriate or justifi ed. Despite the fact that the European Union was able to achieve certain results during the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and even more signifi cant results in the process of its ratifi cation, for the most part EU negotiation strategy based on normative considerations, had not been successful, it was especially evident during the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Partly the disappointing results of EU performance during the Copenhagen negotiations are to be blamed on some of the key features of EU functioning logic, for example, the overall tendency to rely on scientifi c evidence in policy-making, which did not allow the EU to assess other parties’ interests adequately. As the results of the negotiations of parties to the UNFCCC in December 2015 in Paris have shown, the European Union did manage to work out its previous mistakes and build a broad informal international coalition. Contrary to the pessimistic expectations, the agreement was adopted and it took into account quite a few of the EU proposals. However, the Paris Treaty has a number of fl aws and inaccuracies, so the ability to eliminate them in a timely manner by the international community and the EU in particular, will determine the future of the new international climate change regime.

The article is devoted to civilizational factors of the largest Asian states, which attract much academic attention around the world, India and China, and the infl uence of these factors and their peculiarities on social, political and economic development. The article is prepared as a discussion of two books prepared by the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “Indian Civilization in the Globalizing World” and “Chinese Civilization in the Globalizing World”. The authors rely on comparative method to analyze civilizational codes of India and China, to define key peculiarities of cultural and political development of the both states, to speculate on their historical paths, political systems, religious and ideological factors in the context of civilizational codes. Moreover, the article discusses international environment and the level and trends of economic development. The authors draw a number of conclusion about similarities and differences in two ancient civilizations, as well as their modernization patterns.

For the past few years many IR scholars focused mainly on the question in what way the rise of Asia could infl uence the post-bipolar world order and world economic system. However with all due attention to the international economic and political transformations, which followed Asia’s rise, IR studies paid little attention to the gap between rising economic and to some extent political role of Asia in the world system and still Western-dominated production of new technological and humanitarian knowledge. This article analyses in the comparative way three efforts to bridge this gap. The fi rst one is an effort to build up an indigenous discourse about Asia. The second refers to the discussion about the possibilities to develop a non-Western IR theory. The third one is connected with the rise of Asian think tanks and universities.

2000’s and 2010’s witnessed diminishing margin of the United States in science and technology. Meanwhile, the U.S. remains a clear leader in this fi eld. Major driving force of the country’s success in the second half of the ХХ century remained assertive federal science policy. The article seeks to identify major trends in evolution of the U.S. science policy and the reasons behind relative decline of the level of budget support of the scientifi c research. The author studies evolution of the policies of George Bush and Barack Obama, as well as the views of Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The article also examines the input into the federal policy of the governmental bodies, which are directly responsible for its implementation, as well as non-governmental organizations, which seek to advocate interests of scientists; it studies rising competition between the executive authorities and legislators for the recognition as a major champion of the academic community as well as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The article discusses the importance of higher education institutions in the forming and development of scientific knowledge in the big emerging powers of Asia. It is noted that recently, thepositions of the leading Asian universities have become very much stronger (it is confi rmed by the world rating) due to the radical education reforms (trajectories were very close to each other) that were carried out by the countries of Greater East Asia during the last 25 years. The special programs on the comprehensive development of education were accepted, and its funding was perceived not just as a necessary public expenditure, but as investments to provide the economy with a highly skilled workforce and well-educated professionals. The drastic changes in models of education management are of particular signifi cance. The autonomy of educational institutions can be very high on local level. It is necessary to point out the private sector, which has a crucial signifi cance for Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China. Exactly universities began playing a major role in scientifi c research in these states. International cooperation in the fi eld of education is also of great importance as it particularly promotes the formation of a cluster of people interested in the development of their own country in an international context.

In less than a century of its existence Saudi Arabia has developed from mass illiteracy and lack of education of its population into the current state of complex structure of educational and research institutions and organizations equipped with most modern and advanced technologies and top world specialists in accordance with the highest international standards. It is especially important that the Kingdom has managed to achieve such success in no time. Until lately scientifi c development in Saudi Arabia was mostly concentrated on applied research, especially in the Kingdom’s key economic sphere – energy. Despite the country’s abundant financial resources, science was considerably underfunded and lacked any development strategy. Meanwhile, in the last 15 years the Saudi Kingdom has made a huge leap in scientifi c development with a clear action plan worked out, a solid structure of scientifi c institutes formed and the world experience effi ciently used. The success came with the Saudi authorities’ realization of the importance of scientifi c and technical progress both for the national economy and political positions of the state in the region and in the world. The article aims to analyze the scientifi c policy of Saudi Arabia on the stage of its birth and in the current state by means of studying offi cial documents, statistics and the existing institutes in the scientifi c system of the Kingdom. The author concludes that the key features of the Saudi scientifi c policy are prevailing role of the state, priority of applied over fundamental research and internalization with serious dependency on foreign support in the absence of a national scientifi c tradition.