The article presents the results of the analysis of the main works of Russian political scientists devoted to the transformation of post-Soviet states’ political regimes from the point of view of their contribution to political theory and methodology. The main debatable problems that are in the focus of attention of Russian researchers of political processes in the post-Soviet space are considered, the evolution of the theoretical foundations and of research on the transformation of political regimes of post-Soviet states methodology is analyzed.

The author analyzes the «structural» and «procedural» approaches to the study of post-Soviet transformations, the problem of trajectories and outcomes of post-Soviet transformations, research concepts of color revolutions and succession.

The author concludes that the results of post-Soviet research not only led to an increase in knowledge about politics, but also enriched political theory as a whole. The non-linearity (or cyclicity) of political processes in the post-Soviet space is fixed.

There has been a transition to a deeper study and classification of nondemocratic regimes in the post-Soviet space and the study of these regimes not as transitional, but as quite stable. Institutional transformations as factors of the political process are being rethought.

A promising direction is to continue the comparative analysis of political processes in post-Soviet states based on the correlation between the level of statehood in dynamics and the level of institutionalization of political institutions and the institutional foundations of democracy, as well as embedding the study of post-Soviet cases in the general context of post-socialist transformations.

The article deals with the issue of relevance of the political research topics in specialized scientific journals. The discourse of scientific articles is limited by time lags for conducting research and preparing, reviewing, and editing publications, manuscript portfolio queues and the release of thematic issues. However, the editorial offices of political science journals are also under pressure of the time relevance, research relevance, grant, and reader conjuncture. The subject of the analysis was the topics of articles of the first ten political science journals leading in the Science Index rating of Russian scientific publications. The study analyzed a total array of 787 articles published from January 2022 to May 2023. The markers of the research conjuncture were the extraordinary events of 2022 related to Russia's conduct of its Special military operation in Ukraine, the introduction of unprecedented sanctions by the countries of the «collective West» and the restructuring of the world order. The results of the study revealed a small proportion of articles on the designated topics in the aspect  of international relations, geopolitics, domestic politics and sanctions pressure.  The current topics of Special military operation and sanctions were touched upon to one degree or another in 53 articles (6.7%). The authors of the absolute majority of publications were representatives of the MGIMO Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, IMEMO RAS, the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, HSE and INION RAS, which confirm the status of leading research centers on political topics.  At the same time, a significant share of articles on the relevant topic was published with grant support. The substantial content of the issues of leading scientific journals is explained both by the long technological cycles of selecting articles and forming issues, and by the established editorial policy.

The article shows that within the framework of political science research both abroad and in Russia, methodological issues have traditionally been given great attention. At the same time, the analysis of the problems of access to high-quality information is in the background. For example, working with statistics is usually perceived by political scientists only as a characteristic feature of a small segment of research related to quantitative modeling, although most political science publications should, in the author’s opinion, rely on the use of statistics, taking into account its inaccuracy and inconsistency. In particular, data on Russian commodity trade with the BRICS member countries of the global South (including the «newcomers» joining in 2024), as well as states producing large GDP, but still remaining outside the association, are given. The second important problem of access to information for political scientists is connected with researchers’ neglect of the scientific conclusions from monographs of the second half of the 20 th century. The article emphasizes that the lack of easy access to the texts of relevant books determines the absence of interest to such monographs. Therefore, as in the case of statistics, measures are proposed to overcome existing problems, including through the activation of the work of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION). Finally, the examples of the research topics of elections and elites show the ignoring of urgent tasks only on the grounds that they require the painstaking work of a scientist, that is, they belong to a «slow» science that does not allow to publish a large number of articles quickly and report on a grant.

The article demonstrates how the use of mathematical methods deepens and expands the possibilities of studying electoral cleavages and political (sub)dimensions. It is noted that factor analysis makes it possible to reveal not only the main cleavage, but also less noticeable, lying in its shadow, as well as to reduce the set of inter-party confrontations on individual issues into political (issue) dimensions and sub-dimensions in issue domains.

Further, correlation and regression analyses provide an opportunity to check to what extent the space of electoral divisions is congruent with the space of political (sub)dimensions and socio-demographic factors. The resulting indicators – factor loadings of electoral cleavages, political (sub)dimensions and socio-demographic factors, determination coefficients – form the basis for creation of new tools for measuring cleavages: coefficients of maximum and effective range, as well as politicization and socialization coefficients of electoral cleavages.

In the article, the processes of the impact of technological changes on political science are investigated on the example of new generation neural network technology (GPT chat, etc.), which caused a great resonance in the media at the turn of 2022–2023. The authors preface the analysis of the influence with a brief historical and scientific review of the emergence and development of neural network technologies and their features and capabilities that have been embodied in new generation systems. The very appearance of these systems and demonstration of their capabilities in various fields and spheres of activity is considered not only as an important stage in the development of computer technology, paving the way to the creation of «strong» artificial intelligence (AI), but also as an event in global technological development, capable of influencing various areas of life and activities of mankind, which is shown by the unprecedented reaction to it in world politics (up to the world summit and the UN Security Council). The article also highlights the philosophical context in which it is preferable to think about these new technologies and their capabilities. This may be the area of philosophy of information and its interpretation in the works of the philosopher Luciano Floridi, which has a number of advantages over other approaches. Analyzing the impact of these new technologies on the socio-political sciences, the authors proceed from the concept of hybrid interdisciplinary scientific fields that arise at the intersection of sciences and have features that distinguish them from the traditional fields of these sciences. The article discusses hybrid fields of computational social sciences developing at the intersection of computer and social sciences. Using the example of political science, the authors propose two scenarios («adaptive» and «revisionist») of the influence of emerging technologies of new generation neural networks on it, each of which is already manifested in a number of the latest publications of political scientists.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the development of Russian think tanks, most associated with the government: The Institute of Public Design (INOP), the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society (FoRGO), the Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies (ISEPS) and the Expert Institute of Social Research (EISR). It demonstrates that all the four think tanks are characterized by a high expression of research/analytical and communicative functions, as well as by the absence of the implementation function, which is probably typical for all clients think tanks. The educational function is less expressed, but still is present. The creative function associated with the search for solutions to the identified problems is present in the public field of the earliest of the structures considered in this paper – INOP.

Three think tanks reviewed (excluding FoRGO), have a resource function expressed in the distribution of grant money from the federal budget. Finally, in the activities of FoRGO and EISR, it is possible to identify such a new function for independent thought factories as an instructional and advisory one.

This article discusses mechanisms for optimizing the process of forming social values in student youth by analyzing the correlation between personality-oriented and socially significant in the axiological sphere of modern students. The study focuses on the «axiological maturity» of bachelors from a range of top universities in Moscow (n=324) majoring in ‘political science’, ‘state and municipal administration’, ‘management’, and ‘economics and finance’. This social group is targeted as it includes the students of the most sought-after metropolitan universities, hence they hypothetically represent the basis of the Russian establishment in the short term. The empirical study was drawn on a personality, axiology-related four-section questionnaire. The emphasis was placed on four values that are the focus of the ongoing scientific research – patriotism, citizenship, trust in government, and family traditions. The conclusions drawn and the comments received from the respondents are of practical importance for the agencies for youth policy.

The author offers an understanding of justice as equality, which can be used as the basis for our judgments about justice, and thus overcome the existing skepticism about justice. First, with the help of the neo-Kantian philosophy of law, the position of moral cognitivism is substantiated. Further, the importance of consistency in the normative analysis of existing social relations is substantiated. Hence, not only the possibility, but also the necessity for the development of a general principle of justice is derived. This principle is expected to underlie more specific normative research. As result, an understanding of justice as equality is proposed. While equality can be understood differently, it is clarified that the principle of equality means the equal care and respect (the same is the equal value of persons, the equal importance of everyone's  interests). This understanding of equality is justified as a commonplace of modern justice research. For this purpose, the author briefly analyzes the main political and legal theories of the twentieth century. The priority of the ideal of equality over the ideal of maximizing freedom is justified. It is demonstrated that freedom can be limited considering the peculiarities of the legal and political consciousness of society, moral requirements, as well as in cases where there is no doubt that these restrictions on freedom serve the interests of persons whose freedom is limited. It is clarified that both the general principle of equality and the more specific principles of justice may be revised over time.

The review article is devoted to the analysis of successes and challenges of Big Data application in political science. The first part discusses the ontological and epistemological foundations of Big Data and machine learning application in political science. In the second part, the author reviews representative results of political science research using Big Data. The third part deals with criticism and limitations of Big Data in political research. The author shows besides purely technical problems, such as incompleteness of available data, distortions due to the presence of bots, there are sufficient limitations to the application of big data for analyzing dispositional political actions.

Amid the backdrop of geopolitical tensions between Russia and the United States, the role of public diplomacy in maintaining foreign policy contacts between the countries are increasing. This type of diplomatic practice allows a state to convey its position straight to foreign society, as well as to form a positive image and build a long-term communication, often bypassing the obstacles of the local government. The article analyses the main approaches of modern researchers to defining the concept of public diplomacy and classifying the systems of its specific dimensions. Even though in the second half of the twentieth century public diplomacy was considered by American experts to be a tool of information confrontation in the Cold War, the concept has undergone significant changes since the collapse of the bipolar system and continues to transform in response to new threats and challenges. Specific examples show the difference in approaches to the definitions of the actors of this process and the main directions of their activities. In search of an answer to the question «In what way is American public diplomacy more effective than Russian public diplomacy in post-Soviet countries?» the author makes an attempt to develop criteria for comparative analysis of this foreign policy instrument. Basing on existing theories, as well as information from the annual reports of the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Rossotrudnichestvo and media group «Rossiya Segodnya» reports for 2014–2022, the author proposes a quantification of evaluation indicators and empirical operationalization of the phenomenon. The article is methodological in nature and represents a design for future comparative study of public diplomacy of Russia and the United States in the post-Soviet space.