Digitalising City Governance in Russia : The Case of the 'Active Citizen' Platform

This essay examines the role of civic tech in contemporary Russian governance through a data-driven analysis of the 'Active Citizen' platform deployed in Moscow. It shows that the way in which polls are conducted on the platform has various consequences, from serving the city administration's PR needs to shuffling the power balance in various policy areas and effectively disempowering certain stakeholder groups, as well as helping the administration to increase control over a policy domain. At the same time, some platform uses actually empower citizens by engaging them in decision-making and offering grounds for further mobilisation.Peer reviewe

Russia’s technological policy and knowhow in a competitive global context

The global science and technology (S&T) landscape is increasingly embedded in the intensifying great power competition. Significant global attention has been paid to the dynamics between China and the United States while Russia's notable S&T knowhow has been largely absent from the conversation. The ongoing war in Ukraine emphasizes the importance of S&T capabilities for Russia's power projection ability and its great power aspirations. This report examines Russia’s current S&T knowhow and the trajectory of its technological edge. In addition, the report examines and evaluates the effectiveness of Russia’s science, technology and innovation policies and strategies. Furthermore, the report analyses Russia’s technological development in the context of its geopolitical implications, particularly with regards to the future of great power competition. The analysis of the future trajectories is based on Delphi -based foresight. Finally, the report highlights key implications for Europe and, in particular, Finland.This publication is part of the implementation of the Government Plan for Analysis, Assessment and Research. (tietokayttoon.fi) The content is the responsibility of the producers of the information and does not necessarily represent the view of the Government

Studying ideational change in Russian politics with topic models and word embeddings

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Siberian Software Developers

Peer reviewe

L’entrepreneuriat scientifique en Russie : l’incitation à innover conduit-elle à abandonner la recherche ?

Pour certains théoriciens, la création d’entreprises dans le domaine scientifique atteste l’émergence d’une « technoscience » qui briserait les frontières séparant la recherche de la sphère économique. Pour d’autres, Lamy et Shinn, notamment, elle équivaut à une remise en cause de l’autonomie scientifique. Cependant, dans le cas français, l’analyse récente de spin-offs académiques ne correspond pas au schéma linéaire d’une innovation résultant de l’ap..

Re-valuing research in modern Russia (2000-2018). From innovation policy to scientific entrepreneurship?

La thèse porte sur les Institutions de développement (ID), les nouveaux instruments de la politique de l'innovation Russe créés à la fin des années 2000, imprégnés de la logique financière, et leur effet sur l'entrepreneuriat scientifique. Le point de départ étant le statut de la recherche en Union Soviétique, l'objet de l'enquête est examiné dans le contexte caractérisé par des dynamiques politiques et historiques des relations entre la recherche et l'État et par une transformation du rôle que l’État envisage pour la recherche dans le développement économique. Les ID font recours aux pratiques de la finance pour servir de multiples objectifs. Les objectifs économiques sont les plus importants pour les ID, mais ils sont entrelacés avec d'autres buts s’alignant, en particulier, avec la politique de l’État guidée par la volonté de consolider la position du pays sur la scène internationale. L'articulation complexe de divers objectifs façonne le fonctionnement des ID, y compris leurs pratiques d'évaluation des projets entrepreneuriaux éligibles au soutien via ces instruments. L'évaluation se fait ainsi en prenant en compte la multiplicité de critères non financiers. Beaucoup d'entrepreneurs scientifiques maintiennent leur ancrage dans la recherche et n'accordent pas la priorité à la dimension commerciale de leurs activités. Cependant, ces entrepreneurs sont capables de s'accommoder aux pratiques d'évaluation des ID, en présentant leurs projets en conformité avec les conventions d'évaluation financière des entreprises innovantes. Ce travail de présentation consiste en une mise en récit des ambitions commerciales du projet, sans toutefois impliquer que les activités de l'entrepreneur scientifiques soient radicalement réorientées. Certains autres entrepreneurs issus de la recherche adoptent pleinement la logique commerciale et les ID sont d’autant plus favorables à leur accorder le soutien. La politique de l'innovation russe et les ID créent un contexte où de diverses formes de l'entrepreneuriat scientifique sont reconnues comme légitimes au niveau de la société et de l'univers scientifique. De plus, dans le contexte créé par les Institutions de développement la recherche profite d'un certain prestige grâce aux engagements appliqués dans des projets à haute priorité politique, en continuité avec le statut de la recherche à l'époque soviétique.This thesis studies the Development institutions (DI), new instruments of Russian innovation policy created, following the financial logic, in the end of 2000s, and their effect on scientific entrepreneurship. The study begins by an analysis of the status of research in the Soviet Union. The study object is then examined in a context characterized par complex political and historical dynamics of relations between research and the State and a transformation of the role that the State forecasts for the research in the economic development.Appealing to the financial practices, the DI have several objectives. The economic objectives are the most important for the DI, but they are interconnected with other aims including those that align with the politics of the State guided by the ambition to strengthen the position of the country on the international scene. It is a complex articulation of different objectives that shapes the functioning of the DI, as well their practices of evaluation of business projects eligible for the financial support via these instruments. The evaluation, then, is made taken into account many non-financial criteria. Many scientific entrepreneurs keep their anchorage in the domain of research and do not place the highest priority on the commercial dimension of their activities. These entrepreneurs, however, are capable of adjusting to the practices of evaluation of the DI by presenting their projects in conformity with the conventions of financial evaluation of innovative businesses. The presentation consists in creating a narrative about the commercial ambitions of the project, which, however, does not radically reorient the objectives of the scientific entrepreneur. Some other entrepreneurs coming from research adopt the commercial logic full-heartedly, and the DI are even more likely to support their projects.Russian innovation policy and the activities of the DI create a context where different forms of scientific entrepreneurship are recognized as legitimate both at the level of the society and the scientific universe. In addition, in the context created by the Development institutions research enjoys a certain prestige thanks to its contribution to the projects with high political priority, which is in a continuity with the status that the research had in the Soviet times

SBX-HY at RuShiftEval 2021: Доверяй, но проверяй

Research in computational lexical semantic change, due to the inherent nature of language change, has been notoriously difficult to evaluate. This led to the creation of many new exciting models that cannot be easily compared. In this system paper, we describe our submissions at RuShiftEval 2021 -- one of the few recently shared tasks that enable researchers, through a standard evaluation set and control conditions, to systematically compare models and gain insights from previous work. We show that despite top results in similar tasks on other languages, Temporal Referencing does not seem to perform as well on Russian