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The chapter contains a methodology for formalized evaluation of the public fiscal policy from the view point of its impact on the financial stability of a national economy using the example of the Russian Federation and taking into account the fiscal multipliers’ effects. The significance of this problem is predetermined by recent trends in Russia’s development, when the national economy legs twice behind the world indicators. Taking into account the importance of the Russian budget system as a mechanism for the redistribution of gross domestic product (GDP), the financial stability safeguarding has been connected with the public finance sustainability and with the federal budget revenues and expenditures equilibrium. There are used the methodology of analysis of economic systems’ dynamic factors of financial stability as well as fiscal multipliers’ effects, aiming at managing national economy’s long-term development with the ultimate purpose to maintain the GDP growth rates. Taking into account the fiscal multipliers’ values, the model comparisons of the macroeconomics and budget parameters’ dynamics prove the necessity of the budget consolidation policy in 2018–2020 provided that the budget expenditures efficiency increases. The latter has been proved by modeling dependences represented by the fiscal multipliers’ effects in terms of national financial stability.

This chapter is intended to elaborate on the existing academic literature addressing the migration of constitutional ideas. Through an examination of ongoing efforts to enshrine “defamation of religion” as a violation of international human rights, the author confirms that the phenomenon of migration is not restricted to positive constitutional norms, but rather also encompasses negative ideas that ultimately may serve to undermine international and domestic constitutionalism. More specifically, the case study demonstrates that the movement of anti-constitutional ideas is not restricted to the domain of “international security” law, and further, that the vertical axis linking international and domestic law is in fact a two-way channel that permits the transmission of domestic anti-constitutional ideas up to the international level.

In reaching the findings presented herein, the chapter also adds to the universalism–relativism debate by demonstrating that allowances for “plurality consciousness” on the international level may in certain instances undermine fundamental norms previously negotiated and accepted as authoritative by the international community. From this perspective, the movement in favor of prohibiting “defamation of religion” is not merely a case study that helps to expand our understanding of how anti-constitutional ideas migrate, but also indicative of a reenergized campaign to challenge the status, content, and stability of universal human rights norms.

In every country, those in charge of governance are expected to play a major role in shaping business and economic activities. They are expected to come up with a framework that will underpin the principles, policies, laws and regulations they put in place to guide these economic and business activities and the compliance thereof. Such frameworks always depend on the political-economic philosophy of the country or those in charge of governance. As a result of the enormous power and influence political institutions wield on business organisations, these institutions constitute one of the cardinal ‘environments’ that ought to be considered when businesses are formulating their strategies as they constitute the pivot upon which the wheel of other environmental factors rotate.

Based on a synthesis of findings from psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning, we propose a unified theory of curiosity as a form of motivated cognition. Curiosity, we propose, is comprised of a family of mechanisms that range in complexity from simple heuristics based on novelty, salience, or surprise, to drives based on reward and uncertainty reduction and finally, to self-directed metacognitive processes. These mechanisms, we propose, have evolved to allow agents to discover useful regularities in the world – steering them toward niches of maximal learning progress and away from both random and highly familiar tasks. We emphasize that curiosity arises organically in conjunction with cognition and motivation, being generated by cognitive processes and in turn, motivating them. We hope that this view will spur the systematic study of curiosity as an integral aspect of cognition and decision making during development and adulthood.