Russian-Swedish Cooperation in Local Administration Studies

On December 12-13 a research round table ‘Citizen Participation in Municipal Management and Civil Society’ was held in Malmö, Sweden. Lecturers from the HSE’s Department of Political Science presented their reports and discussed future cooperation with their colleagues at the event.

The round table was held as part of a programme run by the International center for local administration entitled ‘Developing Russian-Swedish Cooperation in Local Administration’.
Professors from the Department of Political Science Sergei Akopov, Dmitry Goncharov, and Alexander Sungurov, and Tatiana Barandova, Senior Lecturer at the Department, presented their reports and took part in discussions on the development of joint projects with their Swedish colleagues. 

The researchers plan to work on the following topics: 
- What is the difference between Russian and Swedish civil societies? How can Russian civil society be transformed?
- What are the agents of change and practices that can generate these changes?
- What are the requirements for change within civil society and why?
- What is the role of experts in collaboration with the government?

Dmitry Goncharov, Professor at the Department of Political Science, who presented the report ‘Towards a Depolitization of Russian Civil Society. From NGOs to Urban Social Movements’ co-authored by Pål Skedsmo from the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, spoke about his research:

We studied how Russian civil society is developing under the impact of social, economic and political changes in Russia. We found that a new, second generation of post-Soviet civil society influenced by these factors has emerged that is characterized by an informal arrangement, greater social mobilization, the active use of social media and an ‘apolitical’, results-driven, agenda.

Dmitry V. Goncharov
Professor, Academic Supervisor of the Master's programme in Comparative Politics of Eurasia