The article deals with the evolution of constructivist paradigm of international relations. The issue is of utmost importance in terms of the search for theoretical alternatives in the IR thinking. First, we are giving basic introduction of constructivism on the basis of historical and hermeneutical approaches. There is no doubt that the paradigm has faced different theoretical challenges and a lot of critics which has to be addressed. The authors reconsider some constructivist theories and notions in Alexander Wendt's works and the way Wendt tried to reinforce and reassure the constructivist paradigm. This allows us to claim that quantum turn in recent Wendt's work was almost inevitable. Second, the article attempts to answer a question whether the fundamentals of quantum physics are relevant when speaking about social and political processes. At first glance, quantum physics approach has nothing in common with the theory of politics and the theory of international relations. However, there are some grounds to believe that certain problem issues of the political science and IR theory are not deadlocks. In the second part of the article we use the unleashed and underestimated potential of analytical philosophy. To conclude, we believe that today there are more questions than answers but the quantum paradigm is expected to be the important part of the political studies and IR theory as well.

The article analyzes the interconnection of social aspects of the Internet and security issues in Russia. It shows that contemporary realities acquire global network character that has ambivalent impact on the development of civilizational and social interactions. On the one hand, social networks offer new opportunities for interaction between people living in different countries, on the other hand - they can be used for exclusion at the global level which objectively produces new risks and vulnerabilities. Special consideration is given to fabrication of global risk in social networks, which may provoke military-political conflicts and even wars. In the context of growing pragmatism and globalization of activities of agents of Western civilization the networks take on the quality of the new and highly effective weapon intended to destroy and destroy high-priority policy objectives. The authors analyze the nature of contemporary politics and the war from the perspective of social networks as policy and war tools. Overcoming new security risks and vulnerabilities authors see in the ways of changing the vector of development of scientific knowledge from a pragmatic to a humanist mode.

The article discusses some implications of the Brexit referendum for institutional and political development of the European Union and for relations between the EU and the UK. The most obvious consequence of the referendum is the collapse of ideology of continuous and progressing development of integration. Instead of endless, irreversible, a priori beneficial for everyone integration process, the European Union has become an organization that does not have a Messianic goal and obliged to prove its usefulness in everyday life. EU systemic crisis will inevitably lead to a profound transformation of its institutional and political structure. After the British referendum, only two options are possible. First of all, partial deconstruction of the European Union. The idea that European integration has gone too far lies in the basis of this strategy. According to this logic, the single market is the main EU achievement. Return to the basics - this is a pragmatic approach to integration, which should replace attempts to fix rotten projects (like Euro) or to achieve the unattainable (political Union). This option is hardly probable. Second option is transformation of the EU into the "core and periphery" system having the basis flexible integration. Over the past 20 years, flexibility transformed from temporary phenomenon into a permanent and formalized mechanism; its elements exist in many EU politics. Brexit would be able to accelerate significantly the formation of a cohesive core within the Eu. The core will not be homogeneous; it will include as governing structures: the German-French axis and a group of EU founding countries.

The article analyses the influence of Eurosceptic sentiments on the level of solidarity among European Union member states. At the outset of the integration project construction the advantage of the Old Continent unification after being destroyed by the Second World War was apparent. However, with the European Union transformation and the emergence of new challenges, Eurosceptic voices are becoming louder and an increasing number of states start to question the efficiency of supranational institutions and choose to take measures on their own. The main trigger of the rise of Euroscepticism in the new millennium was the financial crisis with austerity measures and citizens' frustration with their low standard of living following. Without taking into consideration the results of the European Parliament Elections 2014, which proved the reinforcement of Eurosceptics, Brussels continued to further develop the integration process. However, with the lapse of time it became clear that Eurosceptics despite being deprived of the right to vote at the supranational level, can implement its potential to influence the EU through their activity within their countries. As a result of their actions the EU is faced up with two serious challenges: Brexit and inability to cope with the migration crisis by common effort. By giving certain examples of the reaction of member states' governments on the migration crisis and illustrating how these actions depend on the extent of Euroscepticism popularity in the countries the author shows that currently the level of European solidarity has become so low that it allows to speak about the transformation of the EU economic crisis into a truly political one.

The article is devoted to one of the measures of administrative influence on the publishers of periodicals in the form of a ban on the retail sale of newspapers and magazines in the imperial Russia and France. The author argues that this policy was introduced in Russia due to adoption of foreign experience of direct and indirect censorship, especially the French experience. So, the article seeks to access the difference between the original approach of the French empire and the Russian version of the policy. Also the article bridges the gap between the current Russian historiography and the existing archive materials with help of discourse analysis and comparative method. First, the author reviews the literature on Russian and French censorship in the second half of XIX century. This allows us to describe the original policy motives of leadership in France in area of media coverage and censorship. Second, the author presents some comparative parallels in the particular area of study of censorship and its institutional basis. Using official documents, data on discussions of the alleged measures and the reasons for their introduction, author shows features of approaches of the Russian Ministry of internal Affairs and a member of his censorship Departmen t to highligh t the key issues of social development, to enhance the effectiveness of state censorship policy. The article gives the significant boost towards new approaches in research of indirect censorship in Russia and France as well as the role models for such a policy. Also the article allows us to reconsider the diffusionist paradigm with regard to state's policy experience circulation between European empires and their reaction to the emergence of modern media.

The present article studies the issue of the interrelation between the senior UN official - the Secretary-General and the main UN body - the Security Council. The nature of the Secretary-General role is ambiguous since the very creation of the UN. On one hand, the Secretary-General leads the Secretariat - the body that carries out technical and subsidiary functions in relation to other UN Main Bodies. This is the way the Secretary-General position was initially viewed by the UN authors. On the other hand, the UN Charter contains certain provisions that, with a certain representation, give the Secretary-General vigorous powers, including political ones. Since the very beginning of the UN operation the Secretary-Generals have tried to define the nature of these auxiliary powers, formalize the practice of their use. Special place among these powers have the provisions given in the Charter article 99. This article give to the Secretary-General the right to directly appeal to the Security Council and draw its attention to the situation that, in his (Secretary-General's) opinion may threaten the international peace and security. This right was used by some Secretary-Generals during different crises occurred after the creation of the UN. This article covers consecutively the crisis in Congo, Iran hostage crisis and the situation in Lebanon. These are three situations that forced Secretary-Generals Hammarskjold, Waldheim and de Cuellar to explicitly use their right to appeal to the Security Council. Other cases in UN history involving the Secretary-General appealing to the Security Council while mentioning article 99 cannot be considered as the use of the nature of this article in full sense of its spirit. Such cases were preceded by other appeals to the Council on the same situations by other subjects (notably, the UN member states) or other actions that made Secretary-General to merely perform its technical function. The main research problem here is the search for the UN instrument that could grant the Secretary-General with political powers I addition to existing administrative ones. The outcomes of the analysis show that the main instrument of such kind is the UN Charter Article 99. However, the degree of its usage activity is decreasing over time.

The article is devoted to the neo-institutional approach as a methodological basis in the study of electronic government. In this article substantiates the choice of neo-institutional approach to the study of the processes of implementation of information and communication technologies in the activity of state institutions, analyzes the differences of neoinstitutionalism from traditional institutional approach, considers the features of the different directions of neo-institutionalism, namely sociological, historical and rational choice theory. Attention is paid to the reasons for the renewed interest in political institutions in political science. The article emphasizes the importance of considering the electronic government as an institution, and the conditions for its implementation in the Russian political system as the institutional environment. The authors pay special attention to the variety of sociological neo-institutionalism, used, in addition to political science in sociology of organizations. The article substantiates the value of using sociological institutionalism to explore the electronic government based on a comparative analysis of e-government projects in Russia and abroad and explores its heuristic capabilities. It examines the impact of the system of norms and values of the institutional environment on the processes of formation and development of electronic government in Russia. The research capacity of this theory is due to the fact that it allows us to trace the reasons for copying and replication of inefficient practices and organizational and management schemes, to identify the factors impeding innovation use by the state of electronic interaction technologies. It is emphasized that the use of the theory of institutional isomorphism is useful in the sphere of implementation of electronic technologies, in which a key role play pluralism, horizontal managerial communication, inter-agency coordination.

The article deals with the problem of the emergence of concept of "information sovereignty" in Russia, the prospects for its practical and theoretical introduction to the scientific revolution. The problem of "information sovereignty" in the normative documents of Russia, China and other Countries is examined. The focus of the article, first time in the domestic and foreign historiography, the technical aspects of independence in the field of digital technologies is analyzed. In this connection, the most important components of digital sovereignty is analyzed, technically ensuring national security. The author concludes that the main feature of the Russian technical resources to ensure the sovereignty of the information is fragmentary and uneven in the development of its components. The greatest progress has been made in the development of components such as the Russian search engines, social networks, national segment of "Internet"and the navigation system. Russian software and hardware require to ensure the accelerated development of information sovereignty, Russia's national security. The greatest attention should be Russian payment system, because this issue is directly dependent on the direction of development of the national economy. The problem of information sovereignty is largely related to issues of public decision-making, in bringing regulatory and legislative framework in line with the national security concept of the country.

The article discusses the history of the creation and development of the overall concept of information security, the current state of the information security, as well as the appropriate legal and regulatory framework in the countries of Central Asia on the example of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Introductory part of the article analyzes and provides a brief overview of the development of information and communication technologies. Particular attention is given to information security concepts in the framework of international valuation standards. The author investigates and lists the main sources of global information security threats, as well as explaining the history of the creation of a geopolitical term - Central Asia. In the main part of the article on the example of Kazakhstan one of the leading Central Asian countries, highlights issues of formation and development of the concept of information security, provides a brief overview of the history of development of information and communication technologies in the country. In this part the author conducts a detailed analysis of the legislation and the concept of the state with respect to the issue of information security, in the investigation highlights the major key issues of information security in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It also analyzes the development strategy of the Republic of Kazakhstan till 2030 (the "Kazakhstan-2030" Strategy), provides a brief overview of the state of laws and programs in the field of information security in the Republic of Kazakhstan. In conclusion, the author comes to the conclusion that today Kazakhstan is just beginning to form their own information security protection mechanisms and leads appropriate recommendations to achieve the objectives of the state.

The conflict in the South-East of Ukraine has acquired a protracted nature, what is significantly affected by three main factors. 1) The main actors of the conflict (Ukraine, DPR/LPR, Russia, USA, OSCE) have in principle different opinions about its resolution/escalation. Secondly, despite the recognition of the DPR/LPR territory belonging de jure to Ukraine by majority of actors, the basic document "Minsk-2" uses by the discursive, but not a real support of the actors. Third, Ukraine does not have a consolidated position in the national community and elites concerning the Donbass. Fourth, contrary to the technical, economic, and military support for the region by Russia the official Kiev is the main promoter of secession in Donbas by means of ATO, in spite of the public discourse about the need to reintegrate these territories. Research question: what strategy for the Donbass are shared by Ukrainian elites? Methodological basis: analysis of the Ukrainian Facebook network segment with a combination of quantitative (Big Data) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) methodology. Results: the topic of Donbass in general very poorly presented on the pages of top Ukrainian bloggers in Facebook. The test content is mainly Russian-speaking, Russia is mentioned more often than Donbas. The US and Europe occupy roughly equal positions in the public discourse on the number of references. In the array of almost 90 000 posts in the first 10 months of 2016 only 6% relate to the region of Donbass. Number of posts that contain not the strategic vision of the Donbass future, but only mention of it, is less than half-percent. As a result of manual processing of data, the author comes to the key findings - Ukrainian elites have no the consensus strategy for the Donbass, but strategies to froze the conflict and to conquer of Donbass compete one to each other. The region is not perceived like an object for which Ukraine should fight not only for the territory, but also the people. In conclusion author presented the later iterations which are necessary to improve the degree of verification of the findings in the new study.

The article analyzes the development of J.M. Keynes's theory in the second half of the twentieth century due to the works within the new direction of economical science - Post-Keynesianism. It is shown that in free-market economy Keynesian school based of the original Keynesian methodology requires additional studies of state regulation principles and take into account the qualitative changes in the market mechanisms. It is shown that post-Keynesianism has had a significant impact on the subject of research and has taken into account the principles of free enterprise, market pricing, level of price dynamics. All this principles allow realizing the principle of self-regulation of the market mechanism. New approaches to the post-Keynesians role of the state and state regulation combined with the freedom of entrepreneurship are analyzed. Taking into account real changes and economic crises it is necessary to analyze the main directions of development of the Keynesian model of economic regulation with a view to their effective use in shaping economic policy. There are considered the basic directions of development of post-Keynesianism such as Neo-Ricardian theory of value and prices of goods based on direct costs of production in the framework of macroeconomic model by P. Sraffa, information theory of "fundamental" uncertainty of the future by R. Klauder and the theory of financial instability hypothesis by H. Minsky. Their differences within the framework of post-Keynesianism under the subject specialization are considered. It is noted that the development of PostKeynesianism allows to present the latest research in modern Keynesian school within an interdisciplinary approach to economical problems.

The article provides an analysis of change of the world oil market in the face of new "oil" reality. Factors of formation of new "oil" reality in the global world defined. Scientific background and current state of research of the problem are described. It is shownthat in the Russian and foreign literature the considerable attention is paid to the analysis of dynamics of the quantitative variables characterizing fluctuations and shocks in the oil market. At the same time the search for balance in the new "oil" reality are not considerably investigated yet. The proposed approach allows toreveal the substance of the transformation of the world oil market, to assess the changes in the oil market with the development of rhenium in terms of efficiency and functioning of the mechanism, the prospects of price volatility in the oil market. The main directions of transformation of the oil market are follows. Development of a subject basis of the oil market due to changes of a role of the main market players whose structure includes the USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia now. The impact of regulatory factors complex in the oil market towards equilibrium, which include activity of OPEC, supply of shale oil, future market,activity of the uniform regulator and national regulators. Transformation of the oil market in the direction of perfection of the competitive relations, achievement of optimum market balance as a result of coordination and interaction of interests of participants of the global oil market.

This article analyzes the value chain of high-tech products in Asia and the role of this phenomenon in the further consolidation of trade blocs and alliances in the region. The presence of these chains and their gradual transition from a vertically integrated model to a system of horizontal linkages and interdependence leads to the formation of mechanisms of economic de-facto integration (so-called regionalization process). The East Asian region has demonstrated unprecedented high rates of economic growth in recent decades. The countries are actively developing mechanisms of multilateral cooperation, involving partners from across the Asia-Pacific region. Particular features of a new regional architecture of economic relations are becoming more tangible, and the essential element of this architecture is the intra-regional integration. The author presents an assessment of further developments of the Regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) using the structural-functional approach and analytical instruments of the international political economy, The creation of this trade block will help less advanced countries of ASEAN to accelerate economic growth and improve the conditions for integration into global value chains. For advanced economies, participation in the RCEP seems controversial, because production chains have well-established formats within the framework of ASEAN +. The political standoff between Washington and Beijing has an impact on dynamics of regional integration. The split among the East Asian countries was galvanized by the Trans-Pacific Partnership Project (TTP), because TPP has objectives that are very similar to those of RCEP (trade liberalization and economic integration). The author concludes that the extension of this partnership in the ASEAN countries can seriously complicate the operation RVEP and enhance the impact of political factors on economic cooperation. In this case, the value of production and supply chains of high-tech products will decline, which may affect the economic cooperation in the region as a whole.

The article discusses the role of international trade in promoting economic growth and socio-economic development of the poorest countries. The analysis of foreign trade statistics shows that the modality of the relationship between trade and economic development has changed, depending on a large number of factors, including tariff and non-tariff such measures. In the first part of the article the author examines the theoretical concepts that describe the impact of international trade on the socio-economic development of the poorest countries. Having analyzed a wide range of literature, the author identifies two approaches to the understanding the issue, "old" one establishing a direct link between trade, economic growth and long-term development, and the "new" one problematizing this link. The second part of the paper examines the place of protective measures for trade in developing countries. It shows that the removal of the protective measures as a result of trade liberalization does not always go for the benefit of developing countries. The last part of the article evaluates the impact of protective measures on trade and economic development in the poorest countries on the basis of total trade restrictions index. The author comes to the conclusion that international trade and the strengthening of export potential should be a tool, but not the key objective of national economic policy of the poorest countries.

This article analyzes the influence of the economic sanctions imposed from the USA and the EU and oil prices reduction on the oil and gas companies and the directions of diversification of their activity as a method of management of price risks are considered. In the modern dynamic and quickly developing world, in the conditions of globalization and market economy, the oil and gas companies are affected by various risks which can exert negative impact on production and financial results. Risks can arise in absolutely various spheres, beginning from natural and technological hazards, and finishing with price risks. Sharp reduction of oil prices and decrease in demand for energy resources in the world markets, first of all in the European countries, input of financial or technological sanctions from the USA and Europe against Russia in 2014 has caused necessity of search a new more effective methods of price risks management of the oil and gas company. The methods of price risk management include the creation of commodity reserves, the establishment of a reserve fund, long-term contracts, subsidies from the state and the diversification of activities. The most effective it is possible to offer diversification of oil and gas companies' activity. It is expedient to carry out diversification of oil and gas companies' activity in such directions as geographical diversification of the oil, oil products and gas realization directions, geographical diversification of oil and gas companies' purchasing activity, diversification of oil, oil products and gas transportation ways, diversification of oil and gas companies' business. This approach allows to expand the activities of the oil and gas companies and create additional ways to generate revenue and enhance efficiency of oil and gas companies.

The article is devoted to the new aspects in the study of the history of post-war Germany, revealed in the book written by Sabine Bode «Post-war children - born in the 1950s, and their fathers-soldiers». It discusses the contribution made by Bode in the study of mental and psycho-emotional consequences of the Second World War and the «exclusion of the past», which is reflected in the fate of the post-war children and continues to have an impact on the socio-political life of the Federal Republic of Germany up to the present day. Nevertheless the article criticizes an excessive preoccupation of the monograph with the descriptions of the individual biographies to the detriment of analysis.