The article examines the concept of the national dream, which is seen as a crucial narrative for unifying society and shaping the vision of the future. The concept of the national dream plays a significant role in consolidating society and forming clear, shared values that can contribute to significant improvements in quality of life. The notion of the Russian dream is less widespread in Russian public and scientific discourse than the American dream. Scientific discussions are vital for the evolutionary formation of the Russian dream concept. The Russian dream is articulated through five core concepts: its territorial and symbolic dimension, the quality of life, well-being, security, and the fruitfulness of human activity and these concepts are deeply rooted in Russia's national identity and historical experience. The realization of the Russian dream is inextricably linked to three necessary conditions: sovereignty, solidarity as a sense of common destiny, and steady economic development. Like any grand narrative, the Russian dream can be further detailed. Here, it is important to understand its historical, institutional and economic foundations. The five ideal types of economic ideologies are considered through the prism of J. Schumpeter's "prescientific cognitive act" and as "lenses" through which researchers see or fail to notice systemic patterns. Special attention is paid to the ideology of the "special path", which, in a non ergodic world, correlates most fully with D. North's institutional concept of adaptive efficiency. Based on the analysis of social and political discourses, stable dominance of the ideology of the special path has been shown. It has been concluded that a constructive ideology of the special path, considering the historically formed institutional matrix, national identity, and the need for political stability, is not isolationism or rejection of "normal science". The constructive ideology of the special path serves as an important intellectual foundation for the realization of economic sovereignty, flexible adaptation to fundamental uncertainties, and the successful pursuit of the Russian dream.
The article provides a critical analysis of J. Schumpeter's essay "The Sociology of Imperialisms", which offers a unique interpretation of this phenomenon. The author focuses on the problematic aspects of this work: - the definition of imperialism given by J. Schumpeter, led to a reduction of its semantic content; - the conclusion that wars throughout the history of mankind have been waged without any adequate reasons needs to be clarified; - it seems controversial that Great Britain has pursued an anti-imperialist policy since the end of the 17th century, and the imperialist rhetoric of its representatives was decorative in nature; - the conclusion that capitalism is inherently anti-militaristic needs additional argumentation; - the assumption that capitalism will lead to the death of imperialism is somewhat optimistic. Nevertheless, Schumpeter's legacy opens up new horizons for the analysis of imperialism and its impact on modern economic systems. The article notes the importance of integrating his ideas into current discussions of globalization, a balanced system of global economic relations, and the equitable distribution of wealth.
The article is devoted to assessing the impact of government support measures on the performance of Russian microenterprises. The purpose of the study is to identify the role of institutional government support in the income dynamics of microbusiness and compare its importance with other internal and external factors of enterprise development. The empirical basis was the data from the longitudinal study "Sociology of Small Business" conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation, covering the period 2022-2024. Based on the questionnaire data, a panel sample of microenterprises was formed, covering both recipients of government support measures and those who did not participate in the relevant programs. The study used econometric modeling methods, including regression with fixed individual and temporal effects, to control the unchangeable characteristics of enterprises and general macroeconomic and institutional shocks. The models took into account indicators reflecting the growth strategy, structural changes and the specifics of firms' activities. The modeling results indicate that there is a statistically significant but relatively weak positive effect of government support on the incomes of microenterprises. At the same time, internal management and organizational factors have a more pronounced impact on the incomes of microenterprises. The findings indicate the limited ability of existing government support measures to act as an independent source of microbusiness growth and emphasize the importance of institutional conditions and the behavior of firms themselves. The results of the study can be used in improving the mechanisms of state support for small businesses and assessing the effectiveness of economic policy at the micro level.
The article is devoted to the consideration and justification of institutional changes as a political-economic process. It is based on the interaction between political and economic actors. New political economy in conjunction with other di-rections of modern political and economic research is methodology used in the article. Special attention is paid to the microfoundations of individuals’ political actions and specific institutional mechanisms within the framework of the chosen interdisciplinary approach. This allows overcoming the limitations of static models of microeconomics of politics. The latter explain why political decisions are ineffective from the perspective of standard economic principles. However, these models do not take into account the time factor focusing on the equilibrium, while ignoring long-term institutional changes. New political economy in its modern development brings a dynamic aspect to the study of political-economic interaction. This allows introducing into the analysis the figure of institutional entrepreneur who initiates and implements transformations by creating new institutions or transforming existing ones in his own interests. He may have a motivation to carry out productive, unproductive or destructive activities both in the formation and in the selection of discrete structural alternatives for organizing political-economic interactions. Approaches to characterize comparative effectiveness of discrete structural alternatives are highlighted. The characteristics that distinguish institutional entrepreneur from "Baumolian" entrepreneur are revealed. It is concluded that the criterion for determining the type of institutional entrepreneur is the results that arise from the “exploitation” of the selected institutional structure (consequential approach).
Global defragmentation and technological protectionism are leading to the emergence of restrained economies. Firms operating in such environments must contend with restricted markets and distorted incentives. While some companies benefit from the opening up of the domestic market, others have to solve the problem of maintaining economic efficiency within the framework of technological sovereignty policy. Therefore, the state needs to adjust its approach to supporting import-substitution projects based on pull innovations (i.e. extending domestic research and development edges) and adapt its methods for subsidising and estimating economic efficiency. This study aims to demonstrate that solving the problems of technological sovereignty in a restrained economy incurs additional costs. We use modelling methods with simple numerical examples to demonstrate how additional inefficiency can arise. First, we introduce the concept of a technological scheme or graph of a complex product, identify import-substitution nodes on it and evaluate the added value. Next, for the simplest scheme, we identify typical relationships between subsidies and the new added value and demonstrate that, in some cases, financial control logic can impede technological sovereignty (i.e. the formation of domestically-owned research and development edges). We then correlate these theoretical conclusions with current subsidisation practices within the framework of industrial policy in Russia. As a result, we highlight areas for the theoretical and practical study of mechanisms that compensate for the additional inefficiency of a restrained economy. We propose considering the additional costs associated with such compensation as a necessary payment for technological sovereignty in restrained market conditions.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide are experiencing unprecedented institutional change facing both digitalization and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). This paper adopts the institutional economics perspective in order to analyse how the rise of large language models (LLMs) and the rising popularity of employer-driven micro-credentials are transforming the institutional landscape of higher education. We show that these innovations were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption and now act as drivers for both formal and informal institutional change. Formal rules (such as accreditation standards, government policies on digital learning, and certification frameworks) are being reshaped alongside informal norms (such as societal perceptions of educational credentials and the role of universities). The traditional dominance of university degrees is increasingly challenged by digital badges and micro-credentials thus raising questions about market signalling, governance, curriculum design, as well as the overall legitimacy of HEIs. Our analysis includes global perspectives but focuses on post-COVID Russia as a main case study. In the Russian Federation, governmental initiatives (e.g. the “University 2035” digital platform) and corporate actors (e.g. Sberbank’s GigaChat) are actively reconfiguring higher education, illustrating how governments, universities, and private providers form new alliances. We find that sustainable transformation in higher education in Russia and beyond would require adaptive institutional frameworks that balance innovation with quality assurance and equity. Our results that employ institutional theory reveal how HEIs stakeholders and policymakers can navigate these shifts to ensure that smooth transition toward micro-credentials and AI-supported learning enhances the long-term credibility and inclusivity of higher education systems.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the origin and main content of the institutions research direction, the supporters of which call it evolutionary-institutional (or institutional-evolutionary) economics. The content of the works attributed by their authors to this direction speaks of its practical indistinguishability from the original (old) economic institutionalism, which gives rise to the question of the reasons for renaming the latter. While followers of other institutionalisms usually clearly formulate the grounds for their selection from the entire set of approaches to studying institutions, there is no such clarity for evolutionary-institutional economics: the world and domestic literature contains very different opinions on this matter. The only exception is the often-repeated reference to the famous article by T. Veblen from 1898, devoted to the question of why economic science is not evolutionary. To achieve the goal of the article, firstly, it examines various interpretations of the features of evolutionary-institutional economics proposed by the latter's supporters, and secondly, it provides an analysis of ideas about the nature of evolutionary theories reflected in Veblen's works, from the point of view of their relationship with the provisions of modern evolutionary theory, which indicates their inconsistency. The analysis conducted leads to the conclusion that the actual renaming of the original (old) institutionalism into evolutionary-institutional economics represents a rebranding of this original direction, probably aimed at increasing its attractiveness for beginning researchers.
Understanding how youth relate to the current course of the country's development and how they see its future is especially important when planning public policy. Taking into account the importance of this issue in the conditions of aggravation of external challenges for Russia, the article shows the peculiarities of the Russian youth's perception of the current path of Russia's development and the factors that determine it, based on the data of the representative all-Russian survey of the IS FCTAS RAS for 2024. It is demonstrated that despite the difficult time for the country about 80% of young Russians are convinced that the current path of Russia's development will eventually bring positive results. At the same time, the part of young people who are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs in the country form their opinion based on the internal Russian situation and intergroup contradictions typical for the Russian society, and not because of sympathy for the West. It has also been established that depending on the peculiarities of world outlook and political views, young people are divided into two groups in their assessments of Russia's future. The first group is the group loyal to the authorities, for which it is important to preserve the norms and rules established in the Russian society. The second group opposes the authorities, is dissatisfied with the current situation in Russia, and is more often oriented toward the West than representatives of the first group. However, the key to belonging to these groups that see Russia's future differently is the different prevalence of individualistic attitudes among their members. The personal experience of a young person, especially his or her assessment of local changes, his or her life in general, and satisfaction with government assistance, plays a special role in forming an opinion about Russia's future. It is very important that the predominantly statist views of the country's young citizens do not differ significantly from other Russians; this proves the stable reproduction of statism as an informal foundation of social institutions in post-Soviet Russia.
This article focuses on the transformation of parenthood and its sub-institutions (motherhood and fatherhood) in the context of digitalization in Russia. The author notes that parenting has become more complex, as new functions are required alongside familiar ones such as care and socialization. In this context, online communities are becoming an important resource for parents, and in online interactions, parent groups often form the core of regional online communication networks. This article presents a study of parent online communities in the Kemerovo Region. The sample consists of 27 communities. The research tools used are the Polyanalyst data analytics platform and the Popsters service. Using network and content analysis, we can identify the key functions of parent communities: informational support (searching for answers, sharing knowledge, etc.) and emotional support (sharing experiences, worries, support, etc.), finding like-minded individuals, and communication. The growing role and influence of parent communities may exert additional social pressure on parents and lead to the emergence of new rules and standards for digital parenting. The main topics of interaction in parent communities are health and medicine, education, entertainment, and leisure. These topics are socially sensitive and can be used to influence political and economic decisions. Regarding the prospects for the digitalization of parenting, the author identifies risks associated with the increasing use of technology in parent-child interactions, the growing agency of children on social media, and the security and limits of parental control in online interactions. In conclusion, the author notes that the number and influence of parent communities in online interactions will continue to grow, and the study of the digitalization of parenting
The article examines the processes of institutionalization of medical and social care. Institutionalization is conceptualized as the establishment of normative frameworks, organizational roles, and structural mechanisms designed to ensure the stability and predictability of service provision. Among the key preconditions for the institutionalization of medical and social care are the growing prevalence of disability within the population - which necessitates coordinated efforts between healthcare and social work institutions - and the development of a new public health approach. This paradigm extends beyond disease treatment and prevention to encompass social, economic, and environmental determinants of health, thereby aligning with the eco-social approach. The study presents empirical findings based on the interviews with managers and employees of social service organizations, including non-governmental organizations (N = 15), as well as surveys conducted among medical university students (N = 235). The experts' interviews and surveys explored barriers, prospects, and potential forms of medical-social collaboration. The research identified several key barriers to the institutionalization of medical and social care: the persistence of traditional institutional boundaries separating healthcare, social protection, and environmental policy sectors; the absence of a coherent regulatory framework to support intersectoral collaboration; the shortage of professionals possessing the requisite interdisciplinary competencies; the lack or insufficiency of financial mechanisms that incentivize institutionalization processes, particularly at the stages of early intervention. The study concludes that the ongoing reform of healthcare and social support toward greater integration fosters a reduction in social inequality and enhances the resilience and sustainability of healthcare and social protection systems.
The article presents the results of a scoping review of conscious consumption as an informal institution complementing the formal regulations designed to ensure the transition to the sustainable development. We used OpenAlex platform, a free global research catalogue, to access the full text of publications. The goal of meta-analysis was to select qualitative and quantitative studies on the reasons for forming conscious consumption habits. Out of 800 publications selected by keywords and year of issue, 58 were selected by the experts for the review according to the international PRISMA standard. Among them, eight studies are based on in-depth interviews, focus groups and experiments, the rest use online and offline surveys. The theory of planned behavior by Ajzen remains theoretical basis for scientific groups and design of studies is often meant to reveal the causes of the gap between intention (value-settings) and behavior (value-action gap). Consciousness is not always translated into ecological consumer behavior, and therefore factors that potentially help to bridge this gap become subject to factor and regression analysis. Researchers found that the green purchase intention was determined in different samples by the influence of social norms, the ecological way of life of the respondent, product knowledge, environmental concern, but not correlated with altruism. The effect of price on the desire to buy eco-goods was found ambiguous: for clothing, no significance has been identified, for food in some studies, the price influenced the consumer’s choice. Informal social norms and the desire to appear environmentally responsible often have a greater impact on pro-ecological behavior than the actual understanding of the environmental impact.
Government institutions related to maintaining political stability, respect for the rule of law, voice and accountability, regulatory quality, efficiency of government spending, control of corruption have a significant impact on human development opportunities, which is an important driver of economic growth and sustainable development of the country. This paper examines the impact of the integrated governance quality indicator on the Human Development Index (HDI) using Ethiopia as an example. The study employs time series data covering 46 semi-annual observations from 2000 to 2022. The research methodology includes both descriptive and econometric methods of analysis. Trend analysis showed that slowing economic growth, rising inflation, and declining spending on education and health in Ethiopia since 2018 have been accompanied by decreasing governance quality amid rising political and ethnic tensions, internal wars, and conflicts. The constructed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model showed that in the short run, the current government quality and the previous value of the HDI are important determinants of human development, which is consistent with the concept of path dependence. Econometric analysis also showed that in the long term, the government quality, economic growth rate, and government expenditures on education and health have a significant positive impact on human development, while the inflation rate has a negative impact. Human development in countries with fragile institutions like Ethiopia requires strengthening peace, political and ethnic harmony, developing federal state institutions, and fiscal and monetary policies aimed at increasing investment in education and health care and controlling inflation.
The article analyzes the recent tendency to base institutional analysis on certain philosophical positions, drawing conclusions from them that are not supported by empirical testing, which is replaced by providing individual examples that allow for multiple interpretations. The purely external similarity of such logic of writing texts with scientific research can create in researchers, especially beginners, the idea that such logic is a completely normal option for conducting institutional research. To substantiate the erroneousness of such a conclusion, the article analyzes the differences in the methodologies of philosophical and scientific research and provides two real examples of the philosophical foundations' use in discussing institutional problems, the analysis of which demonstrates the difficulties that arise with the validity of the formulated results and conclusions.
According to the institutional approach, trajectories of industrial development are mediated by the ability of the institutional environment to generate and implement technological innovations. Within the framework of contemporary Russian reindustrialization policy, a complex of formal institutions aimed at achieving technological sovereignty and import substitution has been formed. However, achieving a qualitative breakthrough in industrial modernization is associated with systemic difficulties and is of a complex, non-linear nature. The paper presents an analysis of the causes of this paradox through the lens of T. Veblen's dichotomy, which reveals the conflict between the instrumental values of technological progress and ceremonial attitudes that reproduce established practices. The hypothesis about the dominance of ceremonial patterns is verified through qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with industrial actors, which allowed for the reconstruction of the system of latent value coordinates. Despite the declared focus on innovation, the real behavior of managers is determined by the inertia of hierarchical orders, bureaucratic routine, and an orientation toward short-term financial gain. The main obstacle to reindustrialization is informal institutions-entrenched ceremonial values that mediate the perception of reforms, trust in development institutions, and willingness to take risks. These attitudes materialize in institutional barriers: excessive administration of support measures, technological dependence on Asian analogues instead of creating own developments, and a shortage of qualified personnel. Overcoming these dysfunctions requires a shift in the emphasis of industrial policy from creating formal rules to transforming the value-normative foundations of key actors' behavior.
This paper examines the role of national culture in knowledge production, cross-nation transfer, and innovation in the oil industry of Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Norway. It analyzes the influence of power distance, trust, and individualism, assuming these variables modulate knowledge management performance within this technology-intensive industry, drawing on Hofstede's framework and Nonaka's SECI model. High power distance and low trust hinder tacit-explicit knowledge conversion, while low power distance and high trust enable easier learning cycles. Trust-interpersonal, institutional, or religious-emerges as a critical variable in organizational learning. Although global digital collaborations mitigate cultural tensions, they remain incomplete without cultural adaptation. The paper also addresses how religious and tribal norms in Arab oil economies shape collaboration and innovation, offering a legitimacy-based alternative to Western and post-Soviet models. It contends that cultural-institutional compatibility is a stronger predictor of innovation performance than R&D intensity alone. A cultural boundary model is presented to refine SECI theory and highlight the need for culturally resonant knowledge strategies in globally integrated yet knowledge-intensive industries such as OFS.
The study of the processes of formation of statistical institutions is particularly relevant, as the United Nations prolonged efforts to improve statistical tools for macroeconomic measurements have been effected in adoption of the new version of the system of national accounts (2025 SNA). In the paradigm of the institutional economic history and the modernization paradigm, the author of the article examines the processes of making statistical information, as apractical economic knowledge, resulting from interaction of the government and academic structures as social actors in a certain historical context. The author contributes to the discussion by formulating criteria for the quality of national statistical institutions. Based on the evidence of published historical sources and academic literature, the author argues the continuity in the development of the national statistics in consequent historical periods and its overall successful pursuit of the catch-up development path during the 19th century to the first third of the 20th century. The author concludes that while in the early and mid-19th century the gap between Russia and the economically advanced European countries in terms of central government statistical institutions was quite large, this gap had greatly narrowed by the end of the imperial period, and it was levelled in the early Soviet period. However, this was accompanied by a slowdown in demand for scientific knowledge from the part of the government. The attempts to raise an autonomous status of think tanks, as intermediaries between the academic community and the government, could make the institutional environment more complex. This was in sharp contrast with the rigidly vertical structure of the public administration. The material presented in the article sheds light on the reasons behind the institutional choice made in favour of an over-centralized model of interaction at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, which meant the failure to implement the principle of independence of statistics from politicians' demands.
The article examines the societal functions of the Russian language as a key integration factor in the multi-ethnic regions of Southern Russia. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that combines sociology, economics, and linguistics, the authors trace the historical stages of the spread of the Russian language in the national republics of the region and reveal its societal functions. These include macro-level integration, the optimization of economic interactions, the preservation and transmission of common cultural values, and the formation of a unified civic identity that transcends ethnic boundaries. The research relies on statistical data from the 2020 census, departmental reporting from the Russian Ministry of Education, and a series of expert interviews. The results indicate the universal command of Russian as a means of interethnic communication, while also revealing disparities between language knowledge and its everyday use in rural areas and in the republics located in the eastern part of the North Caucasus region. An institutional analysis of language policy in the republics of Southern Russia (Adygea, Kalmykia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia) identifies a weak version of a symbolic language regime, where national languages are granted official status, but their practical use is limited. Experts, in turn, emphasize that the Russian language is perceived not only as a tool for social mobility but also as a mechanism for preserving cultural heritage, confirming its societal role in maintaining a balance between national unity and ethno-cultural diversity.
This article aims to demonstrate that a serious gap exists in the system of knowledge about the functioning of the economy, and that this gap is the cause of both the formation of unrealistic macroeconomic models and the protracted crisis of economic science. The essence of the gap: economists ignore the significant microeconomic phenomenon of each firm's periodic switches from its core activity to the process of capital renewal and back. This phenomenon determines both the impulsive nature of economic growth and the periodic transitions from the accumulation of firms' monetary capital to their expenditure. However, this phenomenon disappears from researchers' purview when, through aggregation, they move from the micro to the macro level of the economy. A contradiction arises between the realities of the micro level and the macroeconomic image of the economy, which does not reflect these realities. Macroeconomists ignored this contradiction. They developed DSGE models, indifferent to the peculiarities of the movement of monetary capital and other monetary assets. However, the "moneyless" nature of these models played a cruel joke. Models were transformed into simulacra, into something that doesn't correspond to reality. It is this discrepancy that is the cause of the crisis of economic theory. This article proposes a solution to the aforementioned contradiction. Its essence lies in disaggregating the single-product macroeconomic system so that the resulting macroeconomic subsystems can reflect the inherent micro-level features of the phenomenon ofperiodic switches in the movement of monetary capital. On this basis, the SMR model was constructed-a model of shifting mode reproduction. The advantage of this model over "moneyless"DSGE models is that it cannot exist outside the monetary environment, and its dynamic properties are directly linked to the circulation of money and money emission. The SMR model is interesting from a practical perspective. It suggests that, to combat inflation, more subtle tools can be used to manage the distribution of cash flows in favor of financing investment in fixed assets.
In this paper, we conducted a study of the prevalence of cheating among university students and analyzed the factors contributing to this phenomenon. Cheating is a form of opportunism, when an individual chooses a strategy to achieve success through deception, manipulation, or forgery. The research was carried out on the basis of a survey created by the authors, whose respondents included more than 500 students from various higher educational institutions throughout Russia from November 2024 to January 2025. 5probit models were built to test hypotheses about which categories of students are more likely to cheat. Significant factors affecting the level of cheating among students were the following: ease of cheating, the prevalence of cheating among students in the environment, the year of study, the university level, the size of the city, plans to work in the profession, the presence of a stowaway, theft, lying in real life, monthly expenses. Based on the survey, it was possible to prove that economics-studying students cheat off more often than students who are not involved in economic educational programs. In addition, studying on a commercial basis and having a job will increase the likelihood of academic fraud. Despite the fact that it was not possible to prove the influence of students' rationality on cheating, it cannot be completely denied as an influencing factor. The results obtained in the course of the work can be useful for preventing and minimizing cases of cheating, as well as for developing and implementing strategies to increase the degree of academic integrity in universities.
The growing importance of social capital is seen as a manifestation of the growing public nature of production. The most important characteristic of social capital is indicators of institutional and interpersonal trust, analyzed using data from representative nationwide sociological surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the 2020s. The return on social capital as a public good is verified as an increase in participation in patriotic volunteering (voluntary assistance to SMO participants in Ukraine with money and goods, assistance to the families of SMO participants, etc.), associated with increased trust in institutions and individuals. Using survey data conducted in the spring of 2024, the hypothesis was tested: the higher the respondents' trust indicators, the more often they voluntarily helped their fellow citizens fighting in the war. This hypothesis was confirmed with regard to institutional trust. Specifically, while almost 56% of Russians who distrust the President of the Russian Federation do not participate in patriotic volunteering, considering assistance to SMO participants to be the sole responsibility of the state, only 24% of those who trust the President do so. However, with regard to interpersonal personalized trust, the hypothesis being tested found weak support: Russians with higher trust in their neighbors differed little in their participation in helping SMO participants; by some characteristics, they were even less inclined to do so. The observed patterns were explained using the Marxist concept of the growth of the social character of production in the broad sense. Higher returns, understood as increased benefits for society as a whole, are achieved by those elements of social capital associated with solidarity at the level of larger communities (in the empirical data examined, within the Russian nation). Conversely, individual membership in small communities (social networks) is less associated with an increase in public goods; cohesion at the micro level can even weaken society as a whole.
