The article explores morphological qualities of different kinds of states. Some of those qualities depend on their internal blueprints and constitute inner forms of political order. Other properties developed due to diffusion of alternative modes of political organization through networks of state communities. They account to external forms of states. Respectively inner forms entail reproduction, variation and eventually divergence, while outer forms require diffusion and convergence. Actual transformation of states shapes into a sequence of generation of specific types of states and their networks or systems of states. Methodological prospects of research rest on our ability both to differentiate convergence and divergence as well as to establish their balance and mutual interface.

This article discusses the phenomenon of state capacity, the different approaches to its conceptualization used by political scientists over the last decades, various ways of measuring this concept, as well as the whole spectrum of the existing theories about the relationship between state capacity and dynamics of regime transformation. In the empirical part of the article, the authors cluster trajectory changes in the characteristics of state capacity and the political regime in the majority of countries in the world for 1992-2011, then match trajectories between themselves and formulate conclusions about the acceptance or rejection of hypotheses about the relationship of the political regime and state capacity. In particular, there are quite a lot of refutations of the hypothesis about the primacy of the state capacity before the democratization and the impossibility of successful development of state capacity under autocratic regimes. However, the hypothesis about the possibility of parallel development of democracy and state capacity, rather, is confirmed.

The article deals with contemporary approaches to state effectiveness research. The author compares the advantages and drawbacks of two key approaches prevailing in the field: the organizational approach, dealing with micro-level research; and the institutional approach, aimed at state-level comparative research. There is a way to combine the advantages of these approaches when using Data Envelopment Analysis. The author conducts an empirical research into Russian and Canadian public health care systems to illustrate the advantages of using DEA when analyzing state effectiveness.

Contemporary circumstances of international relations and domestic policy of a large number of states seriously actualize problems of scientific studies of the crisis. In current article, author pays particular attention to the accumulated experience of Western political thought and reflection study of the crisis, offering to consider the last few of the most important measurements. Additionally allocated «problem field», which may be due to the actual political crisis, and the parameters of the dynamics of crisis, which sometimes fall out of the research attention both in foreign and in domestic work.

A survey of works on network models for international studies is provided. The methodology of the network analysis and selection criteria of empirical data for the analysis of the interstate conflicts are discussed. The model of a network of the interstate conflicts and its visualization are offered. By means of two classical centrality indices (Eigenvector and Page Rank) and a new index of centrality (Short-Range Interaction Cent- rality), the most influential states during certain periods are revealed.

The study employs the network approach to the problem of international migration. The international migration is represented as a network (or weighted-directed graph) where the nodes correspond to countries and the edges correspond to migration flows. The study reveals a set of critical or central elements in the network. Various existing centrality measures were calculated and several long-range interaction centrality (LRIC) were designed. The results are based on the United Nations International Migration Flows Database (version 2008, 2015) that provides the annual dyadic estimates of migration flows between countries.

The article discusses the possibility of quantitative analysis in the study of political destabilization of states in the modern world, in general, and the impact of oil price changes on the sociopolitical destabilization of the oil exporting states, in particular. The analysis shows that a prolonged drop in oil prices leads to increased social and political instability in oil-exporting countries, and their systematic increase serves as a powerful factor in the social and political stabilization.

The article discusses theoretical aspects of investigation of institutional transplantation effectiveness in the post-communist countries. It is focused on possibilities of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for study of post-communist transformation on the basis of some results of research project about institutional transplantation effectiveness in those countries.

We discuss the problem of measurement of voting power distribution by means of classical power indices and power indices that take into account preferences in coalition formation. Examples of application to power distribution in the Council of the European Union and in the European Parliament are preceded by formal definition of the both types of indices, history of invention and discussion about limits to applicability.

Political accountability and responsiveness constitute the core of most studies in the realms of quality of governance, political business cycles, electoral and party politics. This article addresses the mechanisms how voters attribute political responsibility given the variety of mediating variables. Authors seek to provide the readership with an overview of contemporary discussions and methods of assessing various mechanisms of how precisely voters blame their governments. The article proceeds as follows: general overview of basic theoretical models and their evolution, potential for generalizations and limits, and applicability to the Russian case.

Performatives are helpful in analyzing and interpreting political actions and events. Speech act and logical studies often reduce performatives to performative utterances. HSE scholars differentiate performative event, performative act and performative utterance. Their mutual interface coupled with reactive speech acts produce nested performative.Structural patterns of nested performatives are established with the help of funnel of performativity fashioned after the funnel of causality.

The article is devoted to the study of the contested secessions of three post-socialist states (Abkhazia, Kosovo and South Ossetia). The methods of multimodal performative analysis are used to define contested secession as one of the typical performative political scripts that can be described as an invariant set of 6 performative acts (stability; accumulation of contradictions, illocutionary breakthrough, partial stabilization, the new accumulation of contradictions, the new illocutionary breakthrough).

This paper discusses the First World War's outbreak using the concept of nested performative as basis. Escalation of worldwide crisis is considered as three forms of war sequentially becoming more complex - a person challenging the state, war between two states and war of all against all.

Political and semiotic aspects of the defeat of Germany in World War IIconjoin into a nested performative or performative event made by chains performative actions and performative utterances.Pace of consolidation and breakdown of the Third Reich as well as Hitle’s suiside and capitulation of Germany are interpreted through the prism of discourse analysis and speech acts theory.