Browsing by Subject "Russia"

The 2010s have witnessed increasing political and public concern over child and family-related issues in Russia, with child welfare and family policy being elevated to the top of the state’s political agenda. The Russian conservative government has prioritised the protection of traditional family values and family as the mainstay of Russian society and thereupon introduced major policy and welfare reform programmes, one of which works towards deinstitutionalising the country’s entire child welfare system. Building upon the idea of every child’s right to a family, this child welfare reform aims at dismantling the existing system of institutional care for children, replacing placements in institutions with community and home-based, family-like forms of alternative care, including foster care. Service provider responsibilities are hence, being transferred from the state to private and third sector stakeholders operating in the field of child and family welfare. Among these agents providing alternative care are the so-called Children’s Villages. These Villages, as the name suggests, are largely NGO-run communities of foster families, caring for children left without parental care in a non-institutional setting. This thesis takes a range of Russian Children’s Villages as its case study in an attempt to investigate foster parents’ perceptions of parenting and thus shed light on the present-day development of the alternative care system in Russia. The aim is to bridge together bottom-up narratives and top-down political ideology via qualitative analysis of micro-level constructions of parenthood and government-promoted ideas on family. The ongoing process of deinstitutionalisation of child welfare in Russia provides the larger political context for our inquiry that fosters a social constructionist approach and, through thematic content analysis, seeks to answer the following research questions: How do foster parents perceive parenthood/parenting in the context of Russian Children’s Villages? How do their perceptions intersect with government-promoted ideas on family? The primary data consist of focus group and expert interviews with foster parents and child welfare professionals conducted on site in six Children’s Villages in Russia in 2017. The altogether nine interviews, with a total of 58 respondents have been conducted by two other researchers in the ‘A Child’s Right to a Family: Deinstitutionalisation of Child Welfare in Putin’s Russia’ research project that our thesis is also part of. Our findings suggest that parenting takes multiple, concurrent and reciprocal forms, whereby it is largely a cyclical process and a jointly constructed and negotiated experience in the social context of the Children’s Villages. The Villages and the individuals therein are not merely care deliverers assuming service provision responsibilities from the public sector, but they carry considerable innovate potential and valuable ideas on family and parenting vis-à-vis the desired development of systems of alternative care in today’s Russia. Yet, the political arena in Russia remains ambivalent, enabling and coercive at the same time, introducing policies that are often either contradictory or incompatible. Alongside ambitious liberal tendencies and reformist programmes we may observe illiberal and restrictive political and legislative processes that undermine the sustainable fruition of the more progressive reforms amid structures that hold onto authoritarian traditions. While the traditional value base of the conservative government fails to fully embrace the plurality of family systems in modern Russia, the family structures in the Children’s Villages demonstrate that family diversity is very much a contemporary reality in Russian society – and foster families one of its emerging forms.

This thesis analyses the development of Danish foreign and security policy towards the Arctic ever since the end of the Second World War up until today. It draws primarily on Denmark’s relation to the United States, having been Denmark’s main ally for the last 75 years on all security related matters - but especially since the end of the Cold War. Both Denmark and the US are considered Arctic coastal states, with Denmark accessing the Arctic ocean through its sovereign claim over Greenland, and the US through the state of Alaska. The thesis supports other scholarly studies that argue that a ‘new Cold War’ has been taking place in the years following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016 between the US, China and Russia, with potentially grave ramifications for Arctic regional security, given its growing importance as a region for resource extraction and commercial passage through the Northern Sea Route. For Denmark, this new Cold War threatens its sovereign claim over Greenland – a crucial geostrategic location for a potential Arctic militarization - being challenged as a small nation by the great power competitions accelerating in the Arctic. The thesis divides the last 75 years into three categorized eras: 1) The Cold War (1945-1991); 2) The post-Cold War era (1991-2017); 3) The ‘new Cold War’ as a developing era (2017 - ; denoted in the thesis), and analyses for each era the fundamentals of Denmark – US relations, first providing a more general overview of their political relations as security partners on non-Arctic related matters, in order to then draw parallels to the development of Denmark – US relations in the Arctic and their roles as state actors in shaping the geopolitical climate of the region. As I show, a lot can be learned from the Cold War to understand what is and may happen in the Arctic in the new Cold War. The thesis makes use of foreign policy analysis, as well as two variations of discourse analysis – poststructuralist discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis – as tools to engage with the empirical data available and answer the thesis’s main research questions: what is the perceived effect of the Trump administration's policy to the position of Denmark in the Arctic? The question is answered on the basis of two main theoretical frameworks: Securitization Theory and Region-Building Theory. These frameworks build the necessary foundation which along with the mentioned methodologies can provide a holistic overview and perspective on the matter with scientific validity. The thesis ends by discussing what can be expected in the near future, based on the knowledge acquired and the answers provided to the research question. A new administration led by president elect Joe Biden took over the White House on January 20st, and with it many new questions are yet to be answered, regarding the future of Denmark – US relations, the future of Arctic governance and the course of the new Cold War. I ponder on what options Denmark might have that could guarantee its security while also maintaining its sovereignty over Greenland – one option being a potential turn towards the EU as its new main security partner. Yet doing so would mean breaking a long-lasting relationship with the US while standing up to the world’s biggest economic and military superpower.

Five years after the passing of the 2012 Law on Foreign Agents in Russia this thesis contributes to new knowledge about the limitations the law has brought forward and the measures organisations have taken to work under this law. Furthermore, the limitations persisting in the Russian civil society will be discussed by reflecting the empirical findings to previous research and historical trajectories. This thesis focuses on the city of St. Petersburg from where nine experts were interviewed from nine different organisations. The research questions are; what are the expedients the organisations have taken to work under the Law on Foreign Agents and how do the organisations describe their work environment. This thesis also aims at identifying potentials for change using the empirical findings and the framework of a developmental model by Nonet & Selznick (2001). The interviews were conducted in St. Petersburg between June 2015 and January 2016. The methodological approach was qualitative case study and the method for analysing the empirical findings was inductive. Based on previous research, the thesis makes the following presumptions on which it aims to add new knowledge; the civil society in Russia in relatively weak, the legal institutions are not independent of politics and the state plays an active role in defining the boundaries civil society actors. Based on the findings the persistent limitations to the work of the NGOs include lack of public support, misunderstandings on the nature of their work due to foreign financing and/or cooperation with western organisations, lack of understanding for universal rights in general, organisations having problems working for their target groups and weak legal institutions. New limitations, which were brought forward by the Law on Foreign Agents include difficulties accessing foreign funding, self-censorship due to avoiding the work of the organisation to be categorised as political, limits for the organisations to collaborate with state officials, increased amount of bureaucracy, increased stress and fear and the division of the third sector into service-oriented and advocacy-oriented organisations. The emergent adaptations can be roughly divided into two main categories: means of legal proceedings or channeling the work of the organisation through new administrative bodies, such as charities, commercial entities or branches outside of Russia. These expedients also had a mixed character. One other adaptation was to close down the organisation and work in the form of a business or an initiative group, yet keeping the same objectives. The findings raise new questions about the forms organisations can take in repressive conditions and about civil society’s limits in general. The findings contribute to an updated overview of the organisations in St. Petersburg working under the Law on Foreign Agents and raise topical issues for further discussion and research.

This thesis examines the effects of the legal framework of the indigenous peoples defined in the study on different aspects of the lives of the Kola Sámi living in the Kola Peninsula. In Russia, both the Constitution and Federal laws guarantee the protection of indigenous peoples’ way of life through various rights. Despite this, several scholars and the media have increasingly written about the challenges related to the realization of the rights of indigenous peoples, especially during the last decade. In this thesis, the effects of Sámi rights are examined by using the theory of legal pluralism, which takes into account the colonial nature of laws and their outcome. The data of the study consists of f interviews, 21 news articles and one podcast. Due to the restricting political atmosphere in Russia in 2022 and the research pressure on the Sámi people, the data has been compiled using different, mutually supporting and reinforcing qualitative methods. The research topic is approached with content analysis, which emphasizes the three main themes identified from the background literature, in light of which the effects of Sámi rights are discussed. These three themes are bureaucracy, environment and economy. In addition to the three main themes, the analysis identifies three different fields of influence of Sámi rights: control of rights through self-governance and self-determination; obstacles related to the pursuit of traditional livelihoods; and contradictions in the existence of rights de jure. The results show that the realization of Sámi rights is secondary to the interests of the state and local actors. The colonialist attitude of the Russian Federation towards its Arctic regions manifests itself in the primacy of the capitalist benefit of the Kola Peninsula at the expense of the rights and traditions of the Kola Sámi. The results show that during V. V Putin’s current administration, the nature of the rights of the Kola Sámi has become repressive and further limiting. In order to fulfill Arctic interests, the Sámi are controlled and assimilated through their legal framework. Obstacles and difficulties in the exercise of rights as well as harassments against the Kola Sámi contribute to the alienation of the population from their environment and traditions. Thus, in this thesis, the effects of Sámi rights are seen as intentional, oppressive and suppressing the population instead of their protection.

This thesis studies the discussion over the Estonian citizenship issue in the United Nations (UN) and in Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 1993 to 1997. The citizenship question refers to a case, where Estonia, according to its state-continuum paradigm, restored its pre-Soviet citizenship legislation. As a consequence, all people residing in its territory, besides people eligible for citizenship according to the pre-Soviet law, became stateless. The case of Estonian citizenship is part of the bigger paradigm change in minority questions in post-Cold War world. The thesis’ primary sources are gathered from public online archives of the aforementioned organisations. The sources consist of correspondences and other relevant documents related to the topic. The sources are analysed by small-state realism and strategic culture theories, which help to analyse the internal factors, i.e., the long-term ambition of politically allying with the West and the trauma of Soviet occupation, that had an effect Estonia’s use of language in diplomatic arenas. This framework is then combined with speech-act theory and new rhetoric’s audience centricity, which reveal the external factors that determined the factors that had to be considered in manifesting the national-strategy. Comparing the speech-acts from two separate forums reveals how a big state affects the use of language of a small-state. In the UN, Estonia mainly defends its citizenship policy against Russia’s torrent of human rights accusations related to mainly Russian speaking non-citizens in Estonia – even though the UN found no signs of arbitrary deprivation of citizenship nor human rights infringements. In the OSCE the lack of contestation results in mutually cooperative relationship aiming to integrate non-citizens via the framework provided by Estonia. In the end, Estonia is able to defend its citizenship policy on both fronts.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and reveal the impact of epistemic communities on the formation of international space policy in the United States and Soviet Union following the end of the Apollo era in 1969. It argues that despite the dominant narrative of Cold War space history asserting that the space race and the developments that followed were based upon competitive/realist thinking, there were numerous actors in both countries operating transnationally to transform space policy to embrace cooperation. Furthermore, this cooperation had always been a part of space history, however, various turning points in the structure of the Cold War allowed cooperation to flourish in the 1970s and 1990s, but also attempted to prevent it in the 1980s. The thesis then analyzes the effects of the Soviet collapse on this process of shaping international manned spaceflight policy and its effects on the creation of the International Space Station and use of spaceflight as a means of accomplishing foreign policy goals of the United States in the post-Cold War era. This thesis primarily employs Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration to describe the process by which agents transformed international space policy from 1972-1992. This theory argues that agents, be they individuals or groups, can enact change to a system or structure by their ability to “act otherwise” meaning “being able to intervene in the world, or to refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific process or state of affairs.” This thesis identifies these actors as epistemic communities as described by Peter M. Haas, who defines them as are those which focus on collaboration between groups of scientists or technicians based on a scientific context and can result in the acquiescence of national decision-makers to epistemic communities in the cooperative policy process. Therefore, the primary body of research materials comes from personal correspondence, formal agreements and memoirs generated by the engineers, administrators and other agents involved in the space policy advisement process. The thesis concludes that the historical development of manned spaceflight during the Cold War was not exclusively characterized by competition, but rather cooperation had been an essential component from the beginning. However, while competition and gaining supremacy in space was the dominant approach taken by the United States and Soviet Union, scientists, engineers and actors constituting an epistemic community took it largely upon themselves to allow cooperative projects in manned spaceflight to take place. This process often ran counter to the expressed foreign policy goals of national leaders, but ultimately succeeded thanks to continuous persuasion from the bottom up. This incremental shift towards cooperation finally overcame competition once the Soviet Union collapsed and the physical manifestations of cooperation throughout, in the form of the Mir and Freedom space stations, became the basis on which post-Cold War manned spaceflight was built.

Nowadays any analysis of Russian economy is incomplete without taking into account the phenomenon of oligarchy. Russian oligarchs appeared after the fall of the Soviet Union and are represented by wealthy businessmen who control a huge part of natural resources enterprises and have a big political influence. Oligarchs’ shares in some natural resources industries reach even 70-80%. Their role in Russian economy is big without any doubts, however there has been very little economic analysis done. The aim of this work is to examine Russian oligarchy on micro and macro levels, its role in Russia’s transition and the possible positive and negative outcomes from this phenomenon. For this purpose the work presents two theoretical models. The first part of this thesis work examines the role of oligarchs on micro level, concentrating on the question whether the oligarchs can be more productive owners than other types of owners. To answer the question this part presents a model based on the article 'Are oligarchs productive? Theory and evidence' by Y. Gorodnichenko and Y. Grygorenko. It is followed by empirical test based on the works of S. Guriev and A. Rachinsky. The model predicts oligarchs to invest more in the productivity of their enterprises and have higher returns on capital, therefore be more productive owners. According to the empirical test, oligarchs were found to outperform other types of owners, however it is not defined whether the productivity gains offset losses in tax revenue. The second part of the work concentrates on the role of oligarchy on macro level. More precisely, it examines the assumption that the depression after 1998 crises in Russia was caused by the oligarchs’ behavior. This part presents a theoretical model based on the article 'A macroeconomic model of Russian transition: The role of oligarchic property rights' by S. Braguinsky and R. Myerson, where the special type of property rights is introduced. After the 1998 crises oligarchs started to invest all their resources abroad to protect themselves from political risks, which resulted in the long depression phase. The macroeconomic model shows, that better protection of property rights (smaller political risk) or/and higher outside investing could reduce the depression. Taking into account this result, the government policy can change the oligarchs’ behavior to be more beneficial for the Russian economy and make the transition faster.