Abstract: Based on the review of elaborations within the theory of integration and new regionalism, the author considers the importance of formation of a complex system approach to studying the processes of regional integration and trans-regionalism. The author judges from the essential likelihood of processes of regional and trans-regional integration and the potential of forming a synthetic approach to studying their structure, internal and external environment under the conditions they operate in, and the effects and potential of their development in the context of further transformation of the modern political system. The article describes the attempt to critically analyze the key elaborations within the theory of integration and new regionalism aimed for the purpose of developing a complex approach. The key author’s contribution in the study of the topic is the comparison of the main theoretical elaborations and the formulation of the author’s definition of regional integration and trans-regionalism and the complex system approach to studying integrational processes - the author’s research programme of this topic which could be used for further studies of integration.  

Keywords: network approach, interregionalism, regionalism, transregionaliam, international region, integration theory, regional integration, new regionalism, regionalization, globalization

Abstract: The research object is modern international relations; the research subject is the condition, the main characteristics and directions of Russia-China strategic partnership development and improvement in the 21st century. Special attention is given to the prospects of strategic partnership between Russia and China which fundamentally changes the geopolitical agenda of international relations in the third millennium. As the most topical direction of state-to-state co-development of Russia and China, the author identifies and analyzes cooperation in the sphere of ensuring sovereignty and national interests on the global stage; political and military cooperation and interaction in the field of combating terrorism, protecting national and regional and regional security, combating global instability, civilizational threats and risks. The research methodology is based on the provisions and researches of Russian, Chinese and West European scholars considering the evolution of geopolitical situation and international legal norms in the 21st century, the specificity and dynamics of Russia-China relations. To analyze the directions and prospects of development of Russia-China strategic partnership, the author uses the methods of political modeling and semantic analysis of the current political and ideological discourses. The author introduces a range of authentic Chinese sources devoted to the problems of Russia-China strategic partnership into scientific discourse, and translates most of the published studies on this topic from the Chinese language. The author proves that in the third millennium, Russia and China, as key actors, can form a foreign policy platform and practices of international relations which will be aimed at ensuring a more fair and pluralistic global order, improving the forms of political cooperation and international legal ways of adjusting differently vectored national interests and needs. The article proves the necessity to create and adjust new effective regional centers for solving international and state-to-state problems. The author concludes that successful implementation of the detected and analyzed prospects and directions of Russia-China interaction in the third millennium should be based on elaboration and ratification of a range of international documents able to ensure clarity and stability of bilateral relations in the future and defining the key directions and priorities of cooperation, political and legal forms and ways of solving the emerging tensions and conflicts, models of mutual protection and ensuring national and regional safety.  

Keywords: National interests, National security, global order, Interstate cooperation, International relations, Geopolitics, Foreign policy cooperation, Pacific Rim, Russia-China relations, Sovereignty

Abstract: The study of the attitude of the representatives of the US expert community to Russia’s integration initiatives on the Post-Soviet political space is considered to be extremely topical in the context of changes in the global order and the modern condition of Russia - US relations. Traditionally, America’s attitude towards Russia and Eurasian processes has been developing in the context of the struggle between the advocates of different views, particularly, between the conservative and the liberal directions in the foreign-policy discourse of the US. The article focuses on studying the position of the representatives of the liberal “pole” of the American discourse on Russia and Eurasian processes. The research object is the US foreign policy discourse; the subject is the coverage of Eurasian integration in the intellectual products of scientific and academical institutions. The study is based on the constructivist paradigm; it fills the lacunae in the understanding of the nature and the specificity of integration processes coverage by the liberal expert community of the US. the problematic character of the topic is conditioned by the ambiguity of the situation when the importance of the Eurasian microregion for the global foreign policy strategy of the US is declared, while the absence of any special attention and serious study of Russia’s integration initiatives is obvious in the context of Washington’s support for integration processes of other formats. Integration projects, as viewed by the American specialists, are only one type of instruments used by Russia for realization of its own regional and global agenda. Previously, the aims of Russia’s foreign policy to a large extent reduced to the territories of former Soviet republics. After the events in Ukraine, the horizons of Russia’s foreign policy have significantly changed; the scale of its activities has extended in geographical and operative sense, while the set of instruments is still the same.

Keywords: Eurasianism, Russian strategy, Russian policy, integration projects, Post-Soviet region, Eurasian integration, Customs union, Eurasian Economic Union, American , Eurasia

Abstract: Over recent years, in the face of migration crisis, growing popularity of Islam and the failure of multiculturalism policy, public demand for the rightward turn in the politics, from centrism to conservatism, has been growing in France. The article analyzes the main stages of “awakening” of conservative, specifically Catholic, electorate: from the 1968 defeat to emerging from coma during the legalisation of same-sex marriage by the French Parliament in 2012. The author uses the historic, chronological and system methods to both analyze the evolution of political life in France of the last half a century, and consider the role of rightist political parties and movements in the political system. The research is based on the analysis if the latest French historiography and materials of the most influential mass media. The topicality of the issue consists in the fact that the rightist turn in politics is typical for many European countries. As for France, the victory of conservative François Fillon in the rightist primaries in 2016, or the election of  Laurent Wauquiez as a leader of the republicans in 2017, as well as Marion Maréchal-Le Pen’s high ratings, prove that French conservatives have fairly meaningful political future.  

Keywords: Laurent Wauquiez, François Fillon, Marion Maréchal, The Republicans, French Fifth Republic, Islam, Macron, Identity, Conservatsm, France

Abstract: The research subject is the domestic political image of the EU. the author considers such aspects of the topic as the problems of forming a political actor’s image in the context of a system crisis destabilizing the reputation capital of the EU and worsening the organization’s political image. Special attention is given to analyzing the key functional values of the EU, formulating specific image messages for each of the established domestic targeted audience, and defining the mission of the EU’s domestic political image aimed at improving the compatibility of the EU suffering one of the hardest periods since the creation of a unified Europe project. The author uses the system analysis which considers the image of a political actor as a system with its components, links between the components and the outside influencing the forming image. The author analyzes empirical materials (official data of the Eurobarometer census study), which help to form objective understanding of the current state of the EU’s domestic political image. The scientific novelty of the study consists in detecting the key problems of the current domestic political image of the EU and in defining the particular direction of transformation of the EU’s domestic political image in the context of existential crisis. The author formulates a particular domestic political mission of the EU based on the factor of “care” which  becomes an umbrella image message of the actor: “The EU cares about its citizens”.  

Keywords: domestic political image, the image message, the mission of the EU, image policy, image, crisis, the EU, political image, political values, soft power