Book proposal summary: Our book challenges the common perception of authoritarian regimes as incompatible with federalism/federal practices and decentralization. We focus on several cases, namely post-Soviet countries, where federal institutions and various forms of decentralization have become integral parts of non-democratic political regimes. We describe how these regimes have managed to exploit federalism and decentralization as useful instruments to help them to preserve control, avoid political instability and shift blame to the regional authorities in times of crises and policy failures. Most recently the post-Soviet authoritarian regimes have exploited federal arrangements and policy decentralization to avoid public disapproval and accountability during the coronavirus crisis.

Kennan institute arranged an online workshop on constitutional changes and political regime stability in Russia. Research fellow Ivan Grigoriev participated in the workshop and offered his vision of particularity of reforms related to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

The discussion of the manuscript of the paper "Civil-Military Relations and The Russian Military Culture: A Belief System Approach" by Kirill Shamiev is on the agenda of the seminar. It will take place online and in order to access the Zoom link, please, contact Anna Tarasenko (avtarasenko@hse.ru)

Professor Delcour presented results of her research on the topic 'The EU and its “eastern neighbourhood”: multiple external influences, policy transfer and domestic change'.