Since 2000, literature on West (EU15) and East-Central European (EU8) welfare states has focused on a set of ‘new social risks’ including insecure employment and income, population ageing, unsustainable social security systems, and large-scale international immigration. Our State-of-the-Art (SOTA) article brings Russia into the dialogue on ‘new social risks’. We show that broadly similar structural changes in industrial economies, labour markets and demographic patterns ended the post-World-War-Two (WWII) ‘Golden Age’ of welfare expansion in both the EU15 and communist states. Shared new social risks rose to the top of policy agendas. Governments responded mainly, though not exclusively, with liberalising, privatising and exclusionary policies. The SOTA compares their policy responses, specifically pension system reforms, demographic (pro-natalist and family) policies, and integration of immigrants. We find both convergence and divergence based on states’ differing welfare legacies. The conclusion considers path-departing ‘emergency Keynesian’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis, and renewed attention to Beveridge welfare models.

The increasing focus on business and human rights (BHR) in civil society and policymaking has not been matched by research on corporate actions to respect and protect human rights. The lack of research on BHR is especially acute outside of Western Europe and Anglo-centric contexts. This paper seeks to investigate how the largest Russian firms conceptualize and fulfil their human rights obligations under the UN Guiding Principles and the extent to which internationalization of those firms may have impacted these behaviours. I use a unique dataset created from a sample made of the 100 largest firms listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange. Using the theoretical construct of institutional conflict, I find that cross-listing on other stock exchanges and the extent to which firms frame their broader social responsibility issues as ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ rather than ‘corporate social responsibility’ has a substantial impact on firm attention to human rights. While this attention is encouraging, firm disclosure of actions taken to mitigate against violations and protect human rights is extremely limited and the strength of domestic institutional pressures has resulted in very little firm action in the face of the extreme and widespread human rights violations being committed in Ukraine by Russia.

Youth unemployment rates in most countries are considerably higher than total unemployment rates and increased significantly in many countries following the global financial crisis. Young people in long-term unemployment risk becoming a ‘lost generation’. We investigate individual and family characteristics predicting young people’s vulnerability to the scarring effects of long-term unemployment. After overviewing aggregate youth unemployment trends in several European countries, we focus on Russia and Italy – countries with contrasting structural and institutional conditions and exhibiting different macroeconomic trends – in order to determine whether, despite these differences, there were similar patterns in the relationship between individual and family characteristics and the of risk of unemployment and its adverse impacts. We use a Heckman probit model to estimate the unemployment risk of young people – compared to adults – during the period 2004–2011, before and after the global financial crisis. Despite many differences between the two countries, most of the explanatory variables acted in the same direction in each and so we compare the relative size of such effects. The policy significance of the findings is that personal and family characteristics are more amenable to modification than macroeconomic variables. Specific school-to-work interventions are needed to avoid creating a ‘lost generation’.

In this article, we study the minimum wage setting reform in Russia that aimed to decentralise the fixing of the minimum wage and to increase the involvement of social partners into this process. The old system of minimum wage setting was based on a single nationwide minimum wage which was differentiated across regions and occupations via a cumbersome framework of coefficients. The new system is a mixture of the government-set minimum wage at the federal level and collective agreements at the regional level. We show that the system of minimum wage setting has become more flexible. The reform succeeded in raising the real value of the minimum wage and increasing earnings of low-paid workers without causing significant negative effects in terms of employment. The reform did not lead to greater regional variation of minimum wages. Nevertheless, it introduced some new imbalances: an unintended consequence of the reform was the emergence of separate regional wage sub-minima for private and public sector workers in many regions. The major challenge in coming years is to strengthen the institutions of collective bargaining, introduce evidence-based evaluation and boost the capacities of government and non-government monitoring agencies.

Why do some authoritarian states adopt more restrictive immigration policies than others? Much of the existing literature focuses on the politics of immigration in democracies, despite the presence of large-scale immigration to autocracies. In this article, I argue that the level of electoral competition can be a key factor in immigration policymaking in electoral autocracies. Autocrats who face high levels of electoral competition tend to impose immigration restrictions as a way of mobilizing anti-outgroup sentiment and boosting their own popularity. I test this hypothesis by conducting comparative case studies on Russia and Kazakhstan, both of which are major immigrant-receiving autocracies. Based on the analysis of original data gathered from 11 months of fieldwork in the two countries, I find that the relatively high level of electoral competition in Russia in the 2010s facilitated increased immigration restrictions, while Kazakhstan depoliticized labour immigrants and enacted a de facto open immigration policy in the absence of electoral competition.

During the early 2000s governments in Russia, Poland and Hungary declared demographic crises and adopted pro-natalist programmes to increase fertility, as well as policies to support families with children. Our article compares their ‘flagship’ pro-natalist programmes: Russia’s Maternity Capital, Poland’s Family 500+, and Hungary’s enhanced earned income tax credit, all framed by governments’ neo-familialist discourses. We confirm these policies had limited impacts on fertility, finding that their most significant and disparate effects were instead on childhood poverty. Provision of preschool public childcare and parental leaves with levels of mothers’ employment across the cases were compared. We find no relationship between coverage of childcare institutions and employment rates of mothers with young children. Data show a weak relationship between length and compensation for parental leaves and maternal employment. We conclude that post-communist governments’ flagship pro-natalist incentives, family policies and traditionalist rhetoric have had limited effects in reversing demographic decline or in re-traditionalising contemporary women’s lives.

This article investigates the determinants and consequences of manipulating COVID-19 statistics in an authoritarian federation using the Russian case. It abandons the interpretation of the authoritarian regime as a unitary actor and acknowledges the need to account for a complex interaction of various bureaucratic and political players to understand the spread and the logic of manipulation. Our estimation strategy takes advantage of a natural experiment where the onset of the pandemic adjourned the national referendum enabling new presidential terms for Putin. To implement the rescheduled referendum, Putin needed sub-national elites to manufacture favourable COVID-19 statistics to convince the public that the pandemic was under control. While virtually all regions engaged in data manipulation, there was a substantial variation in the degree of misreporting. A third of this variation can be explained by an asynchronous schedule of regional governors’ elections, winning which depends almost exclusively on support from the federal authorities.

Two factors historically played a decisive role in the West Nordic region’s affairs: its strategic location and small societies’ long struggle for independence. The current power balance shift challenges the progress of Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland towards strengthening their independence and sovereignty. The research suggests a theoretical contemplation of the West Nordic region’s shifting practices of sovereignty in current affairs with Russia and China amid the US’ patronage. Drawing on the model of Patron-Client relations, the article considers the US as a patron state for the West Nordic region, whereas Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland are discussed as clients. The Kingdom of Denmark is regarded as a junior patron due to its intermediate position in relations with the US on the one hand and the Faroe Islands and Greenland on the other. Russia and China are addressed as patron adversaries. The research enquires as to whether any of the two US opponents advertise themselves as alternative patrons for the West Nordic region and what explains the weak or alarmist US reactions to Russia and China initiatives in the region. Special focus is on the comparison of the three great powers’ behaviour in the region. Major findings raise the discussion of customisation of sovereignty and its consequences for future relations in the West Nordic and globally.

In the face of the current decline or spectacular collapse of peace processes, this article investigates whether peace has become systematically blocked. It investigates whether the ineffectiveness of an ‘international peace architecture’ (IPA) can be explained by a more potent counterpeace system, which is growing in its shadow. It identifies counterpeace as proto-systemic processes that connect spoilers across all scales (local, regional, national, transnational), while exploiting structural blockages to peace and unintended consequences of peace interventions. It elaborates three distinct patterns of blockages to peace in contemporary conflicts across the globe: the stalemate, limited counterpeace, and unmitigated counterpeace. Drawing on the counterrevolution literature, this research asks: Have peace interventions become the source of their own undoing? Which factors consolidate or aggravate emerging conflict patterns? Are blockages to peace systemic enough to construct a sedimentary and layered counterpeace edifice?

Following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, many investors responded by unloading their Russian sovereign debt holdings. However, data from Bloomberg show that at the time of the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine, ESG funds – investment funds pursuing environmental, social and governance goals – still held at least $8.3 billion in Russian assets;1 and while more than a thousand companies have curtailed their Russian operations and over 500 are holding off on new investments in the wake of Russia’s invasion,2 investors have been accused of being ‘missing in action’.3