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Regional Stability CSS Blog

Russia’s Great-Power Moment in Africa

Image courtesy of REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ethiopian counterpart Demeke Mekonnen arrive at Russian Embassy for tree planting ceremony during Lavrov’s visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 27, 2022.

Not even a decade ago, Africa was the last foreign policy priority of Russia. Now, in the face of growing isolation, Russia is once again bidding for the continent’s support. The West looks at such efforts with concern, which could lead to a growing great-power competition and securitization on the continent.

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Internet and Political Freedom in 2020

This week’s featured graphic compares the results of two Freedom House reports on political freedom and Internet freedom, which suggest there’s a link between the two.

For more on how Internet freedom is in retreat, read Julian Kamasa’s CSS Analysis in Security Policy here.

The Politics and Science of the Future

Assembling Future Knowledge and Integrating It into Public Policy and Governance

This article is the concluding chapter of The Politics and Science of Prevision: Governing and Probing the Future, published by Taylor & Francis Group. To read this open access book, click here.

In a world of complexity, interconnectedness, uncertainty, and rapid social, economic and political transformations, policy-makers increasingly demand scientifically robust policy-advice as a form of guidance for policy-decisions. As a result, scientists in academia and beyond are expected to focus on policy-relevant research questions and contribute to the solution of complicated, oftentimes transnational, if not global policy problems. Being policy-relevant means to supply future-related, forward-looking knowledge – a task that does not come easy to a profession that traditionally focuses on the empirical study of the past and present, values the academic freedom of inquiry, and often sees its role in society as confronting and challenging power and hierarchy.

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Electoral Turnout in Russian Presidential and Parliamentary Elections, 1991 – 2016

Data sources: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, at <https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voterturnout>, Central Electoral Commission of Russia, at <http://www.izbirkom.ru/region/izbirkom>, and the CD-rom Rossiiskievybory v tsifrakh i kartakh (Mercator and IGRAN 2007).

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This graphic tracks overall voter turnout in Russian presidential and parliamentary elections from 1991 to 2016. To find out more about voter turnout trends and electoral mobilization in Russian federal elections, see Inga Saikkonen’s contribution to the latest edition of the Russian Analytical Digest here. To check out the CSS’ full collection of graphs and charts, click here.

In China, a New Political Era Begins

Image courtesy of Kurious/Pixabay.

This article was originally published by Geopolitical Futures on 19 October 2017.

Blending the policies of his predecessors, the Chinese president is trying to liberalize with an iron fist.

The world has changed since modern China was founded, and it seems that China, not for the first time, is changing with it. When Mao Zedong established the republic in 1949, having fought a civil war to claim it, China was poor and unstable. To reinstate stability he ruled absolutely, his government asserting itself into most other state institutions. Private property was outlawed, and industrialization was mandated, from the top down, in an otherwise agrarian society. The goal was to disrupt China’s feudal economic system that enriched landlords but left most of the rest of the country in poverty. Mao’s techniques ensured compliance with government policies, but they did little to improve the country’s underdeveloped economy. This is what we consider the first era of communist rule.