The article focuses on imperial institutional legacy in new independent states. The author picks out problems of change of power structure. He analyses factors determining similarities and differences between patterns of state and nation building in post-imperial countries.

The article looks at various types of classification of the modern empires, the role of empires in building nations in imperial metropolis and the impact of inter-imperial competition in the disintegration of empires.

A major methodological challenge in study of empires and civilizations is the application of both terms to conceptualize highly divergent phenomena from specific facts and practices to general mental constructions like a mission of a civilization of imperial form of government. Conceptual research tools should be ranged according to the levels of generalization. Thus, the most abstract instrument of morphological analysis is imperial form. Imperial formulae are its configurations that apply to various geopolitical and historical conjunctures. Finally, specific orders help to conceptualize the factual tissue of civilizations and empires. Morphology of open and closed systems is also considered as a relevant conceptual tool. Notions of open and limited access orders is critically reappraised.

The article discusses the Turkey's modern foreign policy, often referred to as «Neo-Ottomanism». In this context it gives the analysis of the historical Ottomanism, as well as the development of «Neo-Ottomanism» concept by T. Ozal and its present interpretation and implementation. The authors believe that Neo-Ottomanism is not a restoration of imperial practice, but a form of historical continuity and a civilizational dimension of the national identity.

The author analyses the political development of Austria after the First World War. He emphasizes influence of geopolitical peculiarities, political tradition and configuration of political forces on the evolution of the political regime. The application of Rokkan’s conceptual map of Europe is discussed.

The critical appraisal of the so-called widespread J-curve theory, which says that state institutes’ quality in authoritarian regimes is higher than in transitional and hybrid ones, is given in this article. Using World Governance Indicators the author shows that this rule doesn’t work at least in post-Soviet autocracies, as the institutes’ quality there is really low. The dependence between institutes’ quality and regime’s character is linear. An informal «tsar of the mountain» model, which explains why the post-Soviet autocrats as the monopolists in gaining political and economic rent are not motivated to create high-quality institutions, is given in the article.

This paper discusses the Georgian reforms after the «Rose Revolution». The focus is on territorial development and public administration reforms. Some socio-economic indices are represented.

The article analyzes the disintegration of Yugoslav statehood focusing on institutional problems of ethnic federation. The author describes 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 are examined.

The publication reflects the problem of the construction of National and European identity in the Baltic States. The historical approach while the process of searching its own identity was crucial for understanding the place of these three states in the post-Soviet Europe. Today the Baltic States are constructing distinctive national identity, focusing on different European centers. The role of the lack of confidence in the state institutions and integration problems are analyzed in the article.

The author analyses nature of empires, their role in political life, causes and consequences of their disintegration. Different approaches to these questions are marked out. Some conceptual perspectives of future researches are outlined.

The article is devoted to the problem of correlation between the notions «empire» and «imperialism» and the complicated phenomena existing beyond the language, which they describe. The author tries to answer the question whether an empire is a state or a transnational political space; and should we consider imperialism as a form of national or transnational politics. The contradictions caused by every attempt to describe a universal model of empire and the politics of imperialism are shown.

The article examines the reasons why an empire as a model of state-building is weaker than a nation-state. The analysis is devoted to the empire structure on the examples of the Holy Roman and the Ottoman Empires. The article ultimately suggests the key to understanding the reasons for the collapse of empires.

The article analyses the political regime evolution in the interwar Estonia. The attention is paid on the set of factors, which influenced on this process, including the problems of state and nation formation.

The heuristic opportunities of the «empire» concept are discussed in this article on the example of North Korean’s organization of power. The analysis of a way of transfer of the political management in the contemporary history of the country allowed to figure out specifics of the North Korean empire type.