The article covers the specific features an main ideas of the constructivist attitude to international relations studies. The article consists of two parts. In the first part the ontology, epistemology and main principles of constructivism is explained. In the second part, the author’s attention is directed towards the key concepts of the international relations theory (anarchical structure of the international system, power, national interest, identity, war and peace, etc.). The author’s conclusion is the following: principally constructivism managed «to build a “bridge” between neorealism and liberal instututionalism. The latest versions of constructivism have a propensity either for neorealism (realist constructivism), or for liberalism ( liberal constructivism).

The article analyzes the disintegration of Yugoslav statehood focusing on institutional problems of ethnic federation. The author describes the main factors of the collapse of the Yugoslav Federation and the emergence of independent Bosnia and Croatia: economic inequality between republics, economic nationalism, the weakening of the center and the communist party fragmentation.

The authors of this article offer a different view on the conditions and principles of successful state development. In this article the concept of national identity is regarded as the key criterion of the analysis of the state development. The authors elaborate a new definition of the concept of national identity and present the main provisions of the theory of state sustainability.

In the recent years, BRICS emerged as one of the most influential international fora. It includes five leading emerging powers of the current world and has the potential to become the principal venue for elaboration of future global order. BRICS has the capacities to formulate a reasonable alternative to the current neoliberal model, which becomes increasingly irrelevant. The future world system should be built on the principles of sustainable development, which will address the growing environmental challenges. Russia remains one of the drivers of the club and views it as an essential element of the emerging multipolar world. It actively pursues further expansion of BRICS agenda and it greater institutionalization.

Unlike other dialogue format — G7 — BRICS countries represent not only different social and economic systems, but also different civilizations. Civilizations are the basic actors of history because they exist longer than other social subjects, and have a greater influence on world history than any other historical entity. Until today the basis of the international relations was formed by principles of inter-European relations. But the model of relations within one civilization inevitably has the limited value. Moreover, it is not the only model possible. Growing threat to Euro-Atlantic’s main advantage — economic superiority, has opened prospects to other trends. BRICS will inevitably develop from economic group into international political and intercivilizational consortium.

Russia and China have obvious differences in their approach to the role of the US in the emerging world order. This differences stem from the unique geoeconomic characteristics of the two countries, their motivations for growth, composition and level of their industries, scale of presence in the global trade and financial markets. Some of these differences put Russia apart from the other members of BRICS.

Currently the phenomenon of BRICS group became a highly disputed issue in the expert society. One general approach tends to see BRICS as just a group of states united superficially in the analysis of the international relations on the basis of their economic indicators. Consequently, according to this view, there is no real reason for the coordinated actions of these states on the global arena. Another view, on the contrary, stresses the potential of BRICS to become a new mechanism of global governance. Despite the divergence in the development models each state in this group has a rising economic profile and influential positions in the respective regions. The proposed paper aims to review critically various approaches to the role of BRICS in the transformation of global governance system, analyze prospects of and challenges to the expansion of such a role and assess the possible implications for the international relations at global and regional levels.

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The concept of development of relations in the format of RIC, BRIC and BRICS, the scale and the scope of cooperation, the direction of activity are still relatively vague. However, there are significant prerequisites for a substantial rapprochement of states, and the main of them is the rejection of the establishment of a unipolar world. The BRICS could become for its participants a key factor both for strengthening positions in the world economic system, and for realization of concrete projects. The economic relations in the triangle Russia — China — India should be mentioned especially as the implementation of such projects is facilitated by the neighborhood of the countries in Eurasia. It is also very important to develop comprehensively cultural subsystem, first of all, the cooperation in the educational sphere (the strong increase in Chinese and Indian student enrollments to Russian universities, and medicine and natural science should be priority directions; the strengthening of the ties in the sphere of higher education and science). Cultural activities should also be dramatically expanded. The BRICS countries are not interested in a radical breaking of international political and economic relations, but are obliged to contribute to sharp strengthening of their positions in the world system.

The North Korean nuclear crisis in recent years has seen several waves of escalation. The current article studies the reaction of global community on the actions and statements of north Korean leadership through the analysis of the UN Security Council resolutions. The conducted research relies on the detailed examination of the content of the documents as well as the context of their adoption, through such tools as content-analysis and event-analysis. It proves that the level of concern on behalf of the international community regarding the North Korean nuclear programme decreases.

The article claims that despite growing cooperation between Russian and China on the one hand and increasing interdependence between China and the U.S. on the other, Russian-American dialogue on China is absent not only in official discussions, but also in expert debates. Although Russian partnership with China is not free of disagreements on certain issues, Moscow believes that it is crucial for its international strategy and retains deep trust in Beijing benevolent behavior. The U.S., however, are much less confident in their strategy towards China.

The purpose of this paper is to map the structure of preferences concerning the European Union held by parliamentarians of the member states. The opinions of national politicians are relevant as they influence the governments which participate in the institutions and the decision making processes of the Union. Do they evaluate the European integration process according to a single independence-integration dimension? Or do they acknowledge the existence of multiple lines of conflict? Is the structure of preferences stable? Finally, how are national parliamentarians grouped according to their preferences and what this can tell about the future of European Integration? This paper, based on a two waves survey of national parliamentarians belonging to 16 member states, analyses their views about the “governance system” and the “policy goals” of the EU. The findings of this paper shed some new light on several old questions. Firstly, while several studies assume that the preferences about European Integration can be ordered in a one-dimensional continuum that has the “status quo” and “complete integration” as the two opposite poles, this paper shows that the preferences of national parliamentarians have a multi-dimensional structure. Secondly it moves to analyse the four main clusters of national parliamentarians which these preferences generate. And thirdly it discusses how these clusters react to different problems and challenges the EU faces today.

I the context of socio-cultural specificity of the region, China presents a special case of gradual political modernization. Political stability is guaranteed as a result of the evolution of all spheres of political life while maintaining the basic political mechanisms. The article studies the mechanism of Chinese elite recruitment and rotation and the evolution of local-level electoral mechanisms, oriented at competitiveness raising at election time. The article concludes that gradual economic and political transformations during reform years led to the development of a specific Chinese civil society whose demands at the new phase of social development can only be met by further modernization of the political and economic systems.

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Today the number of countries, which attempt to develop active youth policy rapidly increases. Ever more states include special provisions guarantying rights of the youth in their constitutional legisla ture. In the Russian Federation the federal regulation in this sphere is insufficient. Under these circumstances some regions of the Federation adopt their own normative acts in the field of youth policy. The article provides additional recommendations to improve regulation in this sphere.

The article is devoted to the issue of national and ethnic minorities in Georgia. The author analyzes the Azeri and Armenian minorities, the territorial development of the regions of their compact residence (Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo-Kartli) and their secessionist potential. The author focuses on the sub-ethnic groups within the Georgian people: Megrelians, Swann, Laz, Kistinians and Yezidis. This paper presents statistics of ethno-national and linguistic issues. The author examines the development of post-Soviet Georgia and large-scale reforms implemented after the «Rose Revolution» including the sphere of interethnic relations. The conclusion concerns the future of Russian-Georgian relations in the light of Russia’s support for the single national minorities. The population of Abkhazia and South Ossetia isn’t the subject of this article.