http://iorj.hse.ru en-us Copyright 2025 Sat, 04 Oct 2025 16:09:41 +0300 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1088864607.html As globalization advances, driven by shared goals of development and crisis management, regions have evolved to create new institutions that address the demands of economic governance within the Bretton Woods institutions. This paper focuses on the asymmetry between the regional and global institutions and the governance boundaries of each, exploring the intricate interconnections between regional and global institutions such as competitive cooperation, complementary cooperation, decoupled competition, and hierarchical institutions. The heterogeneity of power configurations within global governance bodies, coupled with variations in multi-level needs among global governance, collectively contribute to the intricate vertical complexity of institutional dynamics. The article specifically examines the hierarchical, competitive-cooperative, and cooperative relationships among institutions like the Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank. Additionally, the study identifies the wobble nature of European-global institutional cooperation and the decoupling trend in Asian institutions within the International Monetary Fund framework. In practice, the United States, motivated by its pursuit of hegemony, engaged in geopolitical competition, while emerging market nations sought to establish a new global political-economic order. These interactions inherently shaped the development of global governance and its equilibrium interaction with regionalism. This article contributes to understanding the aforementioned complex reality and inspires solutions for global-regional governance.Acknowledgments: The author wish to express her thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments in the earlier version of this paper. The author declares that she have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.This article was submitted 26.09.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1089705419.html The article is devoted to forecasting the ways of possible evolution of the International Monetary Fund due to the change in the position of the United States. The purpose of the article is a comparative analysis of the approaches used by the most influential American political and ideological groups involved in decision-making on the nature of the IMF's activities. This question has not been considered by modern historiography. The research of such Western economic theorists as M. Friedman, P. Volker, P. Krugman, etc. is chosen as the scientific and theoretical basis of the article. In the context of the American «industrial policy», the differences in the views of the leading political and ideological groups in the United States on the place of the fund in modern and future global processes are shown. Special attention is paid to the study of assessments and perceptions of American experts and politicians regarding the effectiveness of the IMF in the previous stages of globalization, the potential of using the fund to implement anti-Chinese policies, attract countries of the global South to their side, mitigate financial crises, stabilize the economic situation, and transition to a post-global economy. While agreeing with the inevitability of fragmentation, most groups of the American elite (except Trumpists) agree that the IMF should be preserved as the most important tool for global financial and economic stabilization of the transition period. On the issue of the IMF's mandate, all groups of Democrats have more or less supported the policy of its «expansion», including climate, health and social issues, while Republicans demand to focus on traditional functions. As for using the potential of the IMF in the anti-Chinese policy of the West, some of the participants in the discussion (neoliberals, conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans) believe that this can be done through a revision of quotas and a more equitable distribution of SDRs in favor of the countries of the South. Other groups (conservatives and neoconservatives) believe that such concessions could lead to the loss of U.S. control over the fund's decisions and resources. It is concluded that, given the relative balance of power in the framework of the discussion on the fate of the fund, one can hardly expect sharp movements towards reforming the IMF, even after D. Trump came to power.This article was submitted 04.09.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1089707182.html Based on the publicly available biographies of senior-level staff of the UN system organizations, the article analyzes information on their educational background and countries of education. The official policy of the United Nations, as well as of a number of UN programs, funds, and specialized agencies postulates the aspiration to achieve the widest possible geographical representation of staff, i.e. to hire staff from different countries and regions of the world. At the same time, not only nationality but also the country of education can also be considered as an additional indicator of the representation of a particular country or region. The increasing internationalization of education provides advantages to states with a significant share of the international education market and high positions in world university rankings. Using a data collection tool the authors collected from official UN system websites and then manually processed about two thousand biographies of senior-level staff. Collected data demonstrates a significant imbalance in terms of geographical destinations of education. The results, on the one hand, reflect the objective situation and the role of individual countries and regions in the international education market over the last three decades. On the other hand, the results can be used as a basis for a broader consideration of geographical representation issue in the UN system and other international organizations. The results also provide additional information for analyzing national strategies aimed at attracting the most talented foreign students, forming a global ideological and intellectual space, training supranational elites, as well as increasing the number of international students.Acknowledgments: The article was prepared with the Support of a Grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation for major scientific projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development no. 075-15-2024-551 “Global and regional centers of power in the emerging world order”.The authors also would like to thank Elena Kastornova, an intern at the IMEMO and a 4th year student of the ‘Political Governance’ program at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) for her assistance in data processing.This article was submitted06.09.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1089708338.html The relevance of examining how BRICS member states pursue national digital sovereignty stems from the growing role of digital technologies in safeguarding national security, promoting economic growth, and preserving state independence amid global digital transformation. As geopolitical competition intensifies and external pressure mounts, BRICS countries aim to develop shared approaches to protecting their digital infrastructure and fostering national technological ecosystems. Deeper cooperation in this area serves Russia’s strategic interests by reinforcing its global political standing, diversifying economic ties, and ensuring technological autonomy from unfriendly states. The study’s objective is to identify the distinctive features of BRICS digital-sovereignty policies. It reviews different interpretations of “digital sovereignty” and singles out five key implementation areas: control over production chains, management of communications and Internet infrastructure, regulation of digital platform services, control over disseminated content, and governance of data flows. The author conducts a comparative analysis of BRICS policies across these five dimensions, pinpointing the main similarities and differences in national approaches. The conclusion presents the author’s assessment of the risks and prospects for BRICS cooperation in bolstering digital sovereigntyAcknowledgements: the article was written on the basis of the RANEPA state assignment research programThis article was submitted 12.05.2025 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1089709418.html Since 2024, two new African states, Ethiopia and Egypt, have become full BRICS members, marking the advent of a new phase in the evolution of the association's African dimension. The expansion of the African continent within the club demonstrates BRICS' dedication to the South-South dialogue and the growing importance of Africa and also reflects broader shifts in the global power dynamics.However, it also underscores a transition towards a polycentric world order in which the African continent is assuming an autonomous role in global affairs. At the same time, there is a disproportionate representation of the continent in BRICS, as none of the states of Western and Central Africa has so far been a full member of the association.This article examines the process of transformation of the BRICS African track, from its initial BRICS Plus and BRICS Outreach formats to the partial representation of the continent at the sub-regional level by the recently-appointed permanent and partner members of the association. It has been suggested, however, that the informalized nature of the association, which has long been attractive due to the special dialogue format of the BRICS, will not be able to meet the growing demand for the inclusion of new actors. The more states that join the grouping, the greater the procedural and organizational clutter that awaits it. The African continent is home to 54 UN member states, the accession of each of which is unthinkable. The latest wave of expansion in 2025 with the introduction of a new category of “partner country”, despite the inclusion of Nigeria and Uganda, still does not make Africa equally represented in BRICS. In this regard, it remains relevant to study the prospects for the development of the African vector of BRICS and the search for new non-state formats of cooperation.The article discusses the problem of the continent's further integration into BRICS, in particular the extent to which potential expansion could challenge the established dialogical format and lack of institutional overload that have been responsible for BRICS' success. The authors analyze the prospect of inviting the African Union (AU) as a continent-wide representative to address the above issue. Based on the analysis of the key documents of the AU and BRICS, the authors examine the proximity of the two organizations both politically and ideologically (compliance with the so-called “spirit of BRICS”) and practically (coincidence of agendas and projects). The paper analyzes the internal architecture of the AU and the BRICS to identify possible obstacles and difficulties on the way to the integration of the two organizationsThis article was submitted 29.11.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1089966873.html The article scrutinises the evolution of the AUKUS trilateral format announced by the leaders of Australia, United Kingdom and United States on September 15th, 2021, within the framework of a conceptual dichotomic model “continuity vs. discontinuity”. A review of Russian and international literature makes it possible to single out the major approaches to defining the gist of the agreement and interpreting its content, including from the standpoints of various international relations theories.The methodology of the study is represented by comparative analysis utilised diachronically while adhering to historicism as a principle. Apart from that, the application of discourse analysis allows us to unveil the particularities of the relevant terminology (e.g. the transition of the “pillar” metaphor as applied to AUKUS from the scholarly discourse into the official one), as well as the factors both favouring and impeding the implementation of the format.Addressing the intricacies of the Cold War period makes it possible to mark out several levels of continuity. In the long-term run, of note is the continued cooperation within the blocs, in the first place, the 1951 ANZUS pact, but also the 1947 UKUSA Agreement. In the short-term perspective, of interest is the AUKUS’ succession and complementarity with other minilateral initiatives in the Asia-Pacific (most of all, Quad). In the spatial dimension, the continuity manifests itself in the involvement of  Canberra’s traditional allies in Europe and America (UK and US), similar to ANZUC.At the same time, the paper features the parameters determining the relative novelty of the agreement as juxtaposed to the previous minilaterals in the Asia-Pacific. Among such traits are, most importantly, the focus of the nuclear component, given the attempt to create a precedent of transferring nuclear propulsion technology involving highly enriched uranium (HEU) to a non-nuclear-weapon state (NNWS).This article was submitted 08.09.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1090119535.html The impact of international sanctions on interest rates as a measure to avoid the international sanctions has received less attention. Defensive interest rate is defined as fluctuations in interest rates due to speculation. These behaviors are more prevalent under international sanction conditions, especially in foreign exchange transactions. Thus, it is possible to pose the question of how the optimal interest rate should evolve in sanctioned economies when sanctions are being applied.In this research, first, a dynamic programming model is used to define the intensity of international sanctions as a function of trading time conditions. From the solution of this research model, a new concept of defensive interest rate is introduced in terms of defensive interest elasticity, which is estimated with the help of the sanctions intensity parameter. Next, following the methodology developed by the authors, the sanctions intensity stochastic variable is calculated by summing the numbers of different sanctions according to version 4 of the Global Sanctions Database. To estimate the sanctions intensity parameter for the period 1979 to 2023 for Iran and 1993 to 2023 for Russia, the AR (1) model was selected among the Box-Jenkins models, in Eviews software. According to the research findings, if the intensity of sanctions increases by one percent in Iran and Russia, the interest rate should decline by 0.89 and 0.97 percent, respectively. The findings indicate that in Russia, there have been more periods of decreasing interest rates, compared to Iran, when sanctions were intensified.This article was submitted 17.08.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1090165407.html This paper examines the long-term and short-term relationships between economic growth, trade, industrialization, renewable energy consumption, and environmental degradation (CO2 emissions) in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan from 1990 to 2022 using a panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The study employs correlation analysis, panel cointegration tests, and pooled ARDL to capture the dynamic interactions among variables. The results indicate a positive long-term relationship between GDP growth and CO2 emissions, supporting the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Trade and industrial growth also have a significant positive impact on emissions in the long run. Conversely, renewable energy consumption consistently shows a negative relationship with CO2 emissions in both the short and long term, highlighting its importance in reducing environmental degradation. The agriculture sector displays a mixed impact, contributing to emissions primarily through land-use changes. The error correction term from the panel ARDL model is statistically significant, confirming long-run equilibrium relationships. The study finds robust evidence of cointegration among the variables, suggesting that the countries are on a convergent path in terms of balancing economic growth and environmental sustainability. Policy recommendations include the enforcement of stricter environmental regulations, promotion of renewable energy, and sustainable trade practices to mitigate environmental harm while fostering economic growthThis article was submitted 03.10.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1090177580.html A distinctive feature of modern international relations is the constant movement not only of capital, goods, and services but also of human resources, highlighting the new transnational nature of global politics. This article analyzes the processes of relocation of a significant number of Russians to other countries following the escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The study aims to comprehend the phenomenon of Russian relocation, the reasons and dynamics of this "new wave" of migration, the challenges of integration and adaptation in host countries, and to clarify the statistical data. The methodological framework is based on Everett Lee’s push/pull theory, which helps identify the factors, causes, and conditions determining migration. The research relies on open statistical data, survey results, analytical reports, and media sources. The article examines the spatial patterns of relocation, which are largely shaped by the financial resources of migrants, value-driven and emotional motivations, and the receptiveness of host countries. A comparative analysis of data from various sources reveals discrepancies between actual quantitative indicators, intermediate and final relocation destinations, and prevailing perceptions about them. Particular attention goes to the sociological profile of Russian migrants. The study concludes that the relocation of Russians in 2022–2023 has become a significant phenomenon in the socio-economic and public life both within Russia and abroad. Although each decision to leave was made individually, the 2022 wave was largely influenced by a push/pull dynamic, where "push" and "pull" factors were so strong that relocation costs were often disregarded. In 2023–2024, some migrants continued their movement, changing their trajectory and primary destination, while many returned to Russia. Over time, the likelihood of those remaining abroad reintegrating into the Russian economic and political-legal framework decreases. However, their successful integration into recipient countries may provide new momentum for developing political and socio-economic relations between nations and states.The article was submitted 09.08.2024 https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2025-20-3/1090290711.html The review is the author’s reflections on the monograph “Competition between the USA and China: Opportunities for Russia” edited by D.A. Degtyarev, published by Aspect Press in 2024. Acknowledgments: The article was prepared as part of the research work of the state assignment of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation «Ensuring stability and security of the Russian Federation in the Eurasian space under conditions of multipolar world order formation», # FSWR-2025-0003This review was submitted 13.12.2024