The article concerns on the correlations between the changes in political institutions and the dynamics of economic growth. This controversial issue is a stumbling block in extensive research due to the clash of two large theories of social development in political science: democratization and modernization. The theory of democratization is based on the primacy of civic values, while the theory of modernization gives priority to the efficiency of economic development. The author defines the conceptual positions of the researchers: “democracy promotes growth”, “democracy does not promote growth”, “growth promotes democracy”, and “growth does not promote democracy”. The dominant position “democracy promotes economic growth” is driven by the values of liberal ideology and the notion of a free market. The opposing position “democracy does not contribute to economic growth” proceeds from the weak possibilities of the established liberal order to mobilize resources for solving the state development problems. The modernization position “economic growth contributes to democracy” is dictated by the change in the value attitudes of citizens as they achieve prosperity. The alternative position “economic growth is not conducive to democracy” is supported by countries with authoritarian regimes with weak potential of development. The author comes to the conclusion about the possibilities of multivariate construction of political institutions to ensure economic growth, based on the endogenous and exogenous development factors in any countries.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed fundamental problems in the functioning of national societies, which require intensive scientific research. COVID-19 predetermined the growing importance of political and economic approaches to the interpretation of basic principles of the functioning of future post-coronavirus reality. The societal crisis, which has been a consequence of the ineffectiveness of the state in preventing extreme threats to the life and health of citizens such as COVID-19, has actualized the “new normal” problem, which is being actively discussed by experts from international research and practical organizations. The post-coronavirus reality will begin to form after the COVID-19 pandemic and will be based on different principles. The author interprets it in the context of restoring the societal integrity of national communities under the following conditions: (1) reorientation of formal institutions at the state's disposal towards the priority of human-centred principles in order to restore public consensus, trust in the government and its policies; (2) aggregation of public choice, taking into account, first of all, the preferences and values of households (ordinary citizens), which will minimize its distortion in the future; (3) raising the state's expert functions on the example of adequate institutionalization of conditions for eliminating the negative consequences of the societal crisis. The author stresses the importance of rethinking the phenomenon of partnership between the state and private business as a means of improving the quality of the state's aggregation of public choice, assessing the effectiveness of alternative options for the institutional structure of the new reality, adjusting the functions of the state in relation to a society with universal values at its core, taking into account the realities of the post-coronavirus world. To test the obtained results, the author offers a model of an “institutional matrix” that can be used to institutionalize a mutually-beneficial partnership between the state and private business in order to minimize the uncertainty of post-coronavirus reality (“new normal”).

Any country in order to stay afloat sooner or later is forced to undertake large-scale internal reforms in various policy areas. However, structural reforms often bear adverse consequences for the population. As the studies of the US and European states show, one of the most crucial negative consequences is the decrease in mass support for the government that has initiated the reform. The latter manifests itself in a drop of approval ratings, trust in government, propensity to vote for the incumbent at the forthcoming elections. Such a decrease may lead to decreased legitimacy of the political power, thereby destabilizing the current political system. Is it possible to strike the balance between the necessity of reform and upholding trust on the society’s behalf? Can a government carry out painful reforms without provoking hatred? What conditions facilitate such balance? Although the factors of mass support play the central role in nowadays’ political science, the answers to the questions mentioned above remain unanswered. This article examines different options available to governments in order to preserve their mass support and legitimacy when conducting unpopular reforms, with a special emphasis on media framing. Using various theoretical sources and the recent literature on political support in Russia, it identifies various factors that may facilitate the use of the latter option in the Russian context.

The study offers empirical evidence that the fiscal policy of the regional and local elite can influence the electoral results of the current government. It demonstrates that in determining the budgetary policy the political leaders rely on electoral business cycles. As a rule, there is a tendency towards a decrease in expenditures on socially significant items, that the population may be most sensitive to, between the elections while there is an increase in expenses before the upcoming elections. The implementation of regression analysis on data from 2010 to 2019 showed that each level of the Russian budgetary system can be assigned certain fiscal functions, the combination of which can lead to the growth of electoral support by the population both for the president and the governors, and for the ruling party at federal and regional elections. The authors have established a model of the fiscal functions’ distribution between the authorities from regional and sub-regional levels that can strengthen the loyalty of the electorate. This allows to claim the municipal reforms, the implementation of which started in the 2000 s along with the policy of recentralization, has its positive results for existing political regime.

The article focuses on the nature of sectarian conflicts in the Middle East as well as ways to resolve this and possible transformations. We assume that the rising level of ethnic confrontation stems from the disruption of governance regimes established during the Ottoman Empire. Hence, the research question states as follows: are there any ways to use the imperial practices of ethnocultural diversity management as the institutional framework for the resolution of current sectarian conflicts? By applying a structural functional approach, we identify the political space of the late Ottoman Empire, its main elements and constellation. We show that the process of state-building in the Middle East resulted in the decay of social ties between local communities and the increase of ethnic violence. These claims are confirmed by comparative analysis of a number of conflicts. It is found that the institutional framework for conflict resolution in Arab states should be based on political devolution and power-dividing agreements. This allows to reset inactive imperial practices in order to mitigate violence and enhance legitimacy. We point out that among the various reforms designed to achieve harmonization of formal and informal political institutions are fede- ralization, non-territorial autonomy, consociationalism and local governance.

How can institutional reforms ensure the transit of power in non-democratic regimes? Having studied five cases in and around the Post-Soviet space, the authors offer three models of such transit: establishment of new institutions (Kazakhstan), parallel evolution of formal institutions and informal norms (China, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), legalization of transit effected through informal norms (Iran). In the first model, the leader of the nation had his role perpetuated, received lifelong privileges and retained control over the security council with enhanced powers, some of the powers of the president being transferred to parliament. The second model observes the transit of power in three stages: the achievement of intra-elite consensus on new leadership, the occupation of key positions by the accepted individuals, and legitimation of the outcome through formal procedures. The third model is the result of an institutional reform that was not completed by the time of transit: the transfer of power looked legitimate to those who made an informal decision by imitating the formal procedure, but was illegal - legal provisions for such transit were adopted two months later. All the studied cases share three features: 1) the government conducts institutional reforms to ensure the transit of power, 2) elections are held, but instead of shaping new government they legitimize the agreements of the elites, 3) informal agreements are no less important than the institutional structure, the latter often being amended to match the former.

In the XXI^th century armed forces of world countries` face the need to counter the sharply increased range of security threats. The growing number of them are untraditional (have non-military character) and projected from distant regions. An effective answer can be found only by the structural reform of armed forces. During the XX<sup>th</sup> century the key direction of armed forces` structural reforms was the creation the new (technical) kinds of troops. In the XXI^th century structural reform has another key direction, that is the creation of interspecific groupings of troops. Each of them should have its own geographical (near or far from the national borders) and functional (the types of security threats) zone of responsibility. The goal of the article is to explore the realization of the scheme of armed forces` structural reforms on the example of the Bundeswehr. The reason of the choice of Germany is its unique position as the only emerging power among Euro-Atlantic member states. The article explores the features and «narrow places» of the creation by Germany of scheme of perspective armed forces` creation and its realization from 1990-s until mid 2010-s. The author covers the results of the creation of general forces and forces of crisis management in the key kinds of troops (land, naval, air). The article shows the change of trajectory of the Bundeswehr`s development since the second half of 2010-s in the context of long-term plans aimed at the ending of the structural reform. In the conclusion the author shows the importance of the armed forces` institutional reforms for the stats as the whole and Germany and the features of the dynamics of this process for the Bundeswehr.

One of the main democratic institutions in Russia is local self-government (LSG). This institution is characterized by instability of legal regulation, which is reflected in regular changes and amendments to existing laws. The most significant transformation of the Institute of LSG was in 2003-2009, when the «big» municipal reform was carried out. In 2014, a «small» reform of the LSG was launched, which made it possible to introduce a two-level system of city administration. The new model of local government organization operates only in three cities - Chelyabinsk, Makhachkala and Samara. The purpose of the article is to understand the reasons for the transition of some cities to a new system of organization of local government. The conceptual foundations of the article are the structure-oriented approach of D. North, the «distributional» theory of institutional changes of G. Libecap, and the political and economic approach of D. Acemoglu and G. Robinson's. The research is based on the theory of reforms by J. Roland. The author concluded that limited political autonomy at the bodies and local self-government officials, the lack of mayors during the period of reforms Governor-cartridge a result of the change of the head of the region, the timing of the reform with the end of the term of powers of authorities and local self-government officials, as well as the inclusion of regional authorities compensatory strategies for the urban ruling elite, are factors, which contributed to the implementation of institutional reform. It is shown that the obstacles that prevented the «small» reform of the local government act of political autonomy from consolidated municipal ruling elite, interested in preserving the status quo; the existence of an urban political machine; the lack of compensation of the urban ruling elite for losses which are due to the implementation of the reform; the discrepancy between the time of the reform by the end of the term of authorities and local self-government officials.

The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of pilot implementation of a two-level local self-government system in city districts. Amendments to the Federal Law “On the General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation” were presented in 2014, where new types of municipalities - “city district with intra-city division” and “inside-city district” - were introduced. This legislative change was based on the idea of spreading a two-level model in order to bring the deputies closer to voters in large city districts. More than 70 cities had the potential for this reform, but only 3 of them - Chelyabinsk, Samara, and Makhachkala - took advantage of the opportunity. The authors reconstruct the design of local electoral systems in Chelyabinsk, Samara and Makhachkala before and after the reform, and analyze the change in the rate of representation in the reformed city districts in comparison with city districts (which are not municipalities) that are divided into precincts, but have not switched to the two-level local self-government model. Also the basic trends of forming deputies' bodies as a sub-elite group among political class of the cities are examined. The reform resulted in the expansion of the municipal deputies body. A database of candidates for deputies and deputies from 2009 to 2020 created by the authors gives an opportunity to analyze the ways the collective portrait of the municipal political sub-elite transformed during the reform. The focus of the study is the dilemma of maintaining or abandoning the two-level system that the regional authorities faced in 2019-2020. The authors answer the question about the reasons for the lack of attempts to scale the results of the reform to other regions or large cities in those regions where the pilot reform options were implemented.

Local self-government in Russia throughout its history has remained a place for constant reforming. Amendments to the federal law from 2015 introduced a new procedure of selecting local heads or mayors - through competition commissions with a subsequent vote in local assemblies. By now, this selection model has become the most widespread among Russian municipalities. There is no surprise that regional authorities encourage the introduction of this selection model as it endows them with more power over local elites. In our study, we question whether the new model of selecting municipal heads via competition leave the room for municipal autonomy? In which cases we can detect instances of administrative autonomy? To answer these questions, we rely on the new data on the voting results within municipal assemblies in 158 cases of selecting local mayors in Russian cities with population of more than 100 thousand people. The key findings stem from the regression analysis and they are as follows. Firstly, the competition procedure in big cities leaves little room for local autonomy, even in competitive cities the winning candidates receive an overwhelming majority of votes in local assemblies. Secondly, uniform voting is more widespread in mono-towns, while the development of small and medium-size business does not prevent the elite consolidation and even strengthens the loyalty of local assemblies. There is some evidence of ‘the disciplining effect’ of the so-called ‘varangian’ governors. Lastly, a more competitive electoral profile as well as the presence of local intra-elite clashes reinforces the voting diversity and autonomy of local assemblies.

The article is devoted to the role of political risk in the modern world and the necessity to correlate methods and models of assessment and forecasting to the new challenges of the time. In the article are examined the conditions of transit from the conceptual understanding of the risk to the risk of financial operations and property/money losses and from the risk of nationalization to a new multiple risk which is closely correlated to political decisions and individuals. There is conducted a comparative analysis of the main existing risk assessment models. The author also makes an attempt to assess the compliance of these models to the present challenges in the context of increasingly complex and interdependent relations of actors, including business, states, international institutions, transnational companies and society. The article explores the exclusive and independent role of political risk that exists in correlation with the economic, operational and reputational risks produced by individuals in the context of the rapid spread information. The article proves the independent role of political risk that has no subordinate position to the economic component. The author provides examples of the leading role of political risks in determination of business strategy and management decisions. There are also examined several approaches to the analysis of political risks at the stage of concept genesis and in the context of both globalization and regionalization of international relations. The author considers rating agencies as an important instrument of stability in the relationship between business and the state and to makes an attempt to identify the shortcomings that are found in their activities and do not meet modern realities. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to revise not only the methodology for assessing and predicting political risks, but also the conceptual understanding of the institutional environment in which the roles of the state, business and society have changed.