№13, 2009

The article deals with a comparative analysis of philosophical and political projects of Belarusian and Polish national renascence. It reveals similarities and differences in interpretations of national culture, development stages and historical missions of both peoples.

The article analyses the study of Belarusian political elite since the late 1980s. It reviews major authors and texts, methods and strategies of analysis, and pays special attention to conclusions and genre diversity.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the political regimes of Hugo Chavez and Alexander Lukashenko through the prism of populism as a political strategy. It argues that despite different contexts both regimes display similar classical populist features.

The article examines how information technologies are used in interactions between citizens and government in Belarus, and what opportunities and limits follow from the Government Program “Electronic Belarus”. It concludes that real public participation in agenda-setting and decision-making remains very limited.

The article deals with major groupings of the Iranian political elites in 1997–2009 and their organizational structures. It analyzes the rise and decline of reformists and neoconservatives and proposes a scheme for structuring the Iranian political field.

The article considers the mechanism of Syrian political elite consolidation. Special attention is given to the role of Ba‘ath ideology and to the concepts through which Syrian elite unity was maintained.

The article analyzes how students in Ulan-Ude are integrated into the field of urban public policy and how a new youth political elite is constructed. It studies what resources are needed to enter politics and what positions students can realistically claim.

The article presents a critical review of Nina Antonovich’s textbook on political systems theory. It argues that despite ambitious claims, the book is eclectic, methodologically weak, and symptomatic of a broader crisis in official Belarusian political science.

The article reviews a study on Belarusian-Moldavian relations produced within a state research program. It concludes that the publication is weak as a scientific work, while still being useful as an introductory source on Moldova and bilateral relations.