Assessing the Effectiveness of the EU’s and Russia’s Cultural Diplomacy towards Central Asia. EL-CSID Working Paper Issue 2018/9 • February 2018

This paper attempts to analyse the European Union’s (EU) cultural diplomacy (CD) efforts in five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, hereinafter ‘Central Asia’). Beginning in the early 2000s, EU Member States looked at the region with increased interest. Aside from major engagements on trade, energy and security, education and intercultural dialogue were stressed as priority areas in the 2007 EU Strategy for Central Asia. To measure EU effectiveness as a CD actor in Central Asia, a comparative dimension is proposed by analysing the role Russia has pursued. At law and policy level, since Putin’s return to the Presidency in 2012, Russia has reaffirmed its ambitions to strengthen both hard and soft presence in Central Asia, viewing the region within its sphere of influence. This engagement was reiterated in the 2015 Strategy of National Security and in the 2016 Foreign Policy Concept. To draw a comparison, actors’ CD effectiveness is measured in terms of willingness, capacity, and acceptance, based on the theoretical framework proposed by Kingah, Amaya and Van Langenhove1. This paper finds that European CD efforts had mixed results due to an inconsistent policy towards the region. Although EU cultural heritage and educational influence are widely acknowledged, Russia remains today the major foreign actor in Central Asia, displaying strong levels of attractiveness among citizenry and elites. Historical and cultural ties, but also institutional and economic efforts allowed Moscow to keep its leading position. However, Russia’s future regional leadership should not be taken for granted, as all Central Asian states have been looking at Moscow’s cultural engagement with increased scepticism

Developing Diplomats: Comparing Form and Culture Across Diplomatic Services, PRP 194

This study is a detailed and focused effort to broaden how we understand and conceptualize the recruitment, training, and development of professional diplomats in the twenty-first century. The goal is not to criticize processes in different countries, but to create a common foundation for comparing, learning, and even integrating training and career development models across nations.Public Affair

Comparing and Inter-Relating the European Union and the Russian Federation : Viewpoints from an international and interdisciplinary students' project

Over the years Russia has become one of the most important partners of the European Union. Due to this fact a more democratic and modern Russia would have great benefits for the EU and might contribute to the stabilization of the European continent. But existing problems like terrorism, organized crime and environmental pollution are central challenges for the relationship and their solution demands for intensive cross-border cooperation. Therefore a clear strategy is needed in order to establish a successful cooperation. What strategy have the European politicians pursued and which influence have their plans exerted on the actual policy of the European Union? The European Union clearly accentuated the meaning of common values for the relationship towards the Russian Federation in the early and fundamental documents. However, it becomes more and more evident that in day-to-day policy there is a tendency to tolerate even substantial violations of the norms which originate from the concept of common values. One of the main causes for this behaviour is the strong economic interest of the EU towards Russia. For example, the Russian Federation supplies the EU with most of its energy resources, such as gas and oil. On the other hand the EU is the major trading partner of the Russian Federation. The notion of the common shared values is based – as stated in the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) and in the subsequent documents – on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris. Because such principles are easily stated in a document their impact on the real policy has to be called into question and must be examined further in this essay. --

Economics of labor migration from Armenia: a conceptual study

Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan; Karina Mashuryan; Arkady Gevorkya

Russian Migration Policy and Its Impact on Human Development

For Russia, migration policy – in terms of internal or/and international migration flows management – was an ever-important element of the State activities. Concentrated on State interests, the policy also resulted in human development. The paper presents a historical overview of the Soviet and Russian migration policies with special emphases on the impact on human development and the driving forces behind the changing policies. The Soviet period can be characterized as contradiction between strict limitations on the freedom of movement provided by the propiska system, and large-scale population movements, both voluntary and involuntary, that were inspired by economic and administrative policy measures to meet labor demand of an industrializing economy. In the post-Soviet period, international migration is the major focus of the Russian migration policy. The Russian Federation is the major receiving country in the vast former USSR territory. The evolution of Russian migration policy in the post- Soviet period is a good example for getting a better understanding of how the everlasting conflict between the need for additional human resources and anti-immigrant public moods (typical of all receiving countries), combined with the opportunistic considerations of political elites, that hampers the elaboration of a reasonable long-term migration strategy. Russian migration policy has been drifting from a relatively open immigration regulation based on a laissez faire approach in the early 1990s to restrictive immigration laws in the early 2000s and to an ‘open door’ migration policy in respect to CIS citizens in 2007.Human development, internal migration, international migration, migration policy, Russia

From Drug War to Culture War: Russia’s Growing Role in the Global Drug Debate

No abstract available