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The purpose of this paper is to explore relatively neglected side of corruption – citizen-initiated bribe offers – to identify the degree to which citizens on the grassroots level are ready to support top-down government anti-corruption policies.

Drawing on Avessalom Podvodny’s framework of modalities, this research analyzes the results of the nationally representative survey of 1,002 respondents, and ten in-depth interviews – both held in Azerbaijan. The author uses both logistic regression and qualitative description to highlight research inferences.

Modalities provide a new way of making sense of the factors affecting corruption, and informality. Bribe offers are associated with imbalance within Local-Global, Symbol-Content, Active-Passive pairs of modalities. All of the relevant independent variables (except for one), drawn from relevant theories and organized around modalities, are statistically significant in predicting bribe offers.

The paper is able to pose and answer fundamental policy questions: why villagers in Azerbaijan prefer to invest in building mosques and cemeteries rather than schools and kindergartens? Why insurance is not perceived as a sphere of business by the Azerbaijani population? On a practical level, the paper shows that governments’ selective focus on bureaucratic graft neglects formidable argument that the problem of corruption is tightly woven into political culture of a post-Soviet society. Simple administrative measures cannot overcome fundamental value orientations within a society.

The paper adds to corruption researchers’ toolkit, by expanding research to factors affecting citizen voluntary choices to bribe. The research shows what specific variables should be considered and which of them are statistically significant in explaining citizen choices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore urban mobilisation patterns in two post-Soviet cities: Vilnius and Moscow. Both cities were subject to similar housing and urban policy during Soviet times, and they have implemented urban development using neoliberal market principles, provoking grassroots opposition from citizens to privatisation and marketisation of their housing environment and local public space. However, the differing conditions of democratic Lithuanian and authoritarian Russian public governance offer different opportunities and set different constraints for neighbourhood mobilisation. The purpose is to contrast local community mobilisations under the two regimes and highlight the differences between and similarities in the activists’ repertoires of actions in two distinct political and economic urban settings.

The paper employs qualitative methodology using data from semi-structured interviews conducted with community activists and state officials, presented using a comparative case study design.

Although, citizens’ mobilisations in the two cities are reactions to the neoliberalisation of housing and local public space, they take different forms. In Vilnius they are institutionalised and receive formal support from national and local authorities. Moreover, support from the EU encourages organisational development and provides material and cognitive resources for grassroots urban mobilisations. In contrast, residents’ mobilisations in Moscow are informal and face fierce opposition from local authorities. However, even in an authoritarian setting, grassroots mobilisations evolve using creative strategies to circumvent institutional constraints.

Little attention has been paid to grassroots urban mobilisations in post-Soviet cities. There is also a lack of comparative attempts to show variation in post-Soviet urban activism related to housing and local public space.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perspectives of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Belt and Road strategy. The challenge in terms of studying the New Silk Road concept comes from the fact of dramatic difference between the declared ambitions of the Chinese state and the elusive character of concrete Chinese involvement, in particular as far as the digital dimension of the strategy is concerned.

The goal will be achieved by comparing the Chinese expansion in the Post-Soviet Central Asia with nowadays declarations concerning the digital version of the New Silk Road. For China, the Post-Soviet Central Asia was the first frontier approached on the basis of genuinely own integration strategy: the New Silk Road Diplomacy, which later evolved into the New Silk Road concept. An overview of Chinese activity in the region tells a lot about its grand strategy of today.

To paraphrase T.S. Kuhn, what one sees depends on not only what one is looking at but also what one has learned to notice. The Post-Soviet Central Asia shows the way Beijing thinks about integration. PRC achieved the most by basing on the free rider effect: concentrating on economic expansion, while other Powers provided relative regional security and stability.

The comparison of the beginnings of the New Silk Diplomacy in the 1990s with the plans of the New Digital Road gives a unique angle to grasp the specific features of the Chinese approach to international integration.

The negotiations leading to the UN Special Session (UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs (UNGASS)) on drugs have highlighted the lack of consensus among the global players, with some strengthening the prohibitionist approach and others seeking policy reforms. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Russian Federation’s national policies and diplomatic activism to influence the outcome of the negotiations at the multilateral level.

A systematic review of the federal legislation on drug control and the legislation on HIV/AIDS has been undertaking in October 2016. Peer-reviewed, grey literature, policy documents, UN reports and news reports were used to gather information on the country’s response to drugs internally and externally.

Despite its limited regional influence on harm reduction and declining financial power, the Russian Federation has been successful in preserving its international priorities by opposing harm reduction and maintaining the prohibition paradigm in the UNGASS outcome.

Every effort was made to identify valid sources of information on the levers of influence of the Russian Federation. Little data were available on the real outcome of the efforts deployed in influencing the BRICS and other regional and international assemblies.

This paper presents an overview of the national policies of the Russian Federation, a global player, and provides a better understanding of how the national approach to illicit drugs and their perception influences its international position. It analyses the geographic, economic and diplomatic sphere of influence of the country in drug policies, and provides explanations on the successes and shortcomings of the Russian influence at the multilateral discussions on drugs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political effects of microcredit. The author provides the theoretical connections between microfinance and political empowerment and tests them in the context of Central Asia and the Caucasus, a region that is significantly lagging in political development and yet has a growing microfinance potential.

The author conducted a total of 100 in-depth interviews with microcredit clients in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in June 2010 and January 2011, respectively. The author chose my client samples randomly from two of the largest non-governmental microfinance institutions in these countries.

The findings of the survey reveal that microloans have only led to modest improvements in the socioeconomic status of the clients and had almost no effect on their political empowerment. Disaggregating the data further in terms of gender, type of loan and location of credit does not change the overall trends but reveals that to the extent that any political empowerment took place, group clients (mostly women) in urban settings were more aware and involved in political issues than individual clients in the villages.

Even with a carefully thought-out design, it is not clear how much the responses reflect the true and complicated impact of microfinance on the clients’ lives, a challenge that may be overcome in future research with focus group analysis or an ethnographic analysis of microcredit clients over a long period of time.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, these observations can help inform microfinance institutions, donor organizations and governments about the true potential of microfinance. A realization of the limits of this unique development tool may prove useful in reorienting the goals of foreign aid and designing a more effective approach to development.

Despite the extensive literature on the economic and social effects of microcredit, very little attention has been given to how economic empowerment generated by microcredit can translate into political empowerment at the individual level. This paper lays out the theoretical reasons for why such a relationship might exist and tests these hypotheses systematically in two countries, taking into account gender, type of loan instrument and location of the loan.

This study aims to report on the findings of a pilot study of the prevalence and treatment of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

This study reports on study results based on two data collection methods: quantitative surveys and complimentary qualitative interviews.

The findings show that the role of social work in the region is crucial for establishing trust between non-governmental and civil society organizations and the state as exemplified by so-called “trust points” and “friendly cabinets.”

Firstly, this study provides an overview of injecting drug use and the prevalence statistics on infectious diseases. Following this, this study focuses on the treatment and prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS and HCV. Both areas are under-researched and address the gap in the literature on drug policy in Central Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how consensus decision making serves as a foundation for organizing an alternative economy while the agency of the economic project itself organizes participants because it serves to distribute resources as people need them and foment a community of sharing based on the concept that as individuals we are lacking but as a community we have enough. The paper asserts that as activists looking to foment change, alternative economic projects in themselves are actors in organizing community building and resistance to capitalism.

El Cambalache (The Swap in English), located in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, is an exchange-based money-less economy that trades unwanted items as well as knowledge, abilities and skills that one wants to share. The project receives anything; specifically used, broken and/or unwanted electronics as well as just about anything else that one might possess. In exchange people provide laptop maintenance classes, language exchange, land to be worked, rooms, gardening services, objects, stories, etc. The rules in this money-less non-capitalist economy organize participation through one exchange or many.

Consensus decision making is an effective method for engaging in non-hierarchical research projects.

This project contributes to research in heterodox economies by presenting an original project with a new suggestion for exchange value as an inclusive process of exchange among participants in the economy. It also provides evidence that consensus decision making can be a useful and productive method for research.

This article aims to explore the dominant normative patterns that establish the timing and order of life events, determining the desirable life strategies for working-class youth in modern Russia.

Exploring the interrelationship between new working-class studies and life-course studies, this research combines the consideration of life course as a structurally organised integrity with a phenomenological perspective on the study of life strategies. The empirical basis of research consists of a survey of 1532 young working-class representatives living in the Ural Federal District of Russia and biographical in-depth interviews with 31 of them.

The study resulted in persisting significance and values of traditional life-course structures while showing that the current social conditions do not allow for this life strategy to be fulfilled. Young workers choose adaptation and survival life strategies that restrict the realisation of their professional and cultural potential. The obtained data have confirmed the presence of some worldwide tendencies, such as the dispersion of events during transition to adulthood, a combination of schooling and full-time work and an earlier career start of working-class representatives.

The sequencing and timing of life-course events of Russian working-class youth is an original research topic. The present study proposes and substantiates the notion of the new working class and criteria for its definition.

The growing trend towards closing the political space for civil society in authoritarian regimes has primarily targeted NGOs focused on rights-based advocacy. Drawing on a study of disability NGOs in Russia, this paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the advocacy options that nonprofit organizations have even in repressive political contexts. The authors first review the extant literature to identify common actors, types and tactics and then trace what types of advocacy Russian NGOs are engaged in and what tactics they are able to utilize.

The empirical part of this paper is based on 20 interviews conducted among active participants in disability NGOs in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm and Nizhniy Novgorod. Despite not being a representative sample of organizations, the selection of cities and organizations was intended to reflect spatial and structural factors of the field.

The authors find that NGOs are able to pursue a broad range of advocacy activities despite a generally restrictive legal environment for civil society.

Research on advocacy in authoritarian countries is often focused on NGOs that are primarily engaged in these activities. This has overshadowed the considerable leeway that nonprofit service providers have to engage in advocacy.

Service-providing NGOs should not forsake advocacy activities, even in authoritarian contexts, but can find access points in the political system and should seek to utilize their voice on behalf of their clients.

Despite general restrictions, NGOs can still find ways to successfully secure social rights, justice and solidarity, provided they accept the supremacy of the state in social policy and appeal to the state's responsibility for the welfare of its citizens without directly questioning the overall status quo too heavily.

We develop a broad framework for various advocacy forms and activities and apply it to nonprofit service providers.

This paper aims to summarize the major theoretical elements in the definition of a global ruling class. It then examines how neoconservatives in the USA took power and used regime change to install US-friendly governments in other regions. A strategy of tension is used to press the American population into conformity. But the real revolution is to what extent factual politics escape any attempt to democratic control.

The research relies on case studies of material already published and provides a synthesis.

Three case studies show how far the Deep State already goes. Democracy is on the brink of survival.

This paper is an original hypothesis of the potential end of democracy as we know it, supported by empirical data.