Alexander Belenky's book 'How US Presidents Are Elected' covers some of the more puzzling features of the American electoral system.

Street rallies more often consist of those who get the information from the internet rather than TV.

Good nutrition can speed up the transition to democracy.

More than twenty years after the collapse of the socialist bloc, virtually none of the post-communist countries have attained the level of socioeconomic development characteristic of advanced democracies. Likewise, none of the post-communist countries have emerged as successful autocracies with high-quality public institutions, such as those found in Singapore or Oman. Professor Andrei Melville, Dean of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, and Mikhail Mironyuk, Associate Professor of the HSE School of Political Science, examine possible reasons why it is so.

The economic and political transformation following the fall of the socialist bloc has affected health and average life expectancy differently in former socialist countries. In nations where reforms led to true political and economic liberalization, health indicators are higher than in countries with hybrid regimes, according to a study by Vladimir Kozlov, a Research Fellow at HSE’s Laboratory of Social and Demographic Policies, and Dina Balalaeva, an Assistant Professor in the School of Political Science.

Many Russians volunteering to observe the elections are middle-class professionals. They volunteer because they want elections to be fair and doubt the validity of previous voting results, finds a study by Yulia Skokova, Junior Researcher at the HSE Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector

Authoritarianism has a future in Russia. In the next two decades, the 1980s generation will start to join the higher echelons of Russian society. But the situation is such that the change of generation of the elites will have little effect on the transformation of the political regime. Or so the authors of research on “The Russian elite in 2020” have concluded

Only 20% of residents in Qatar are native citizens of the country. The rest are migrant workers. Cheap workers come from the East, more expensive ones from the West. Trevor Johnston has studied the way this authoritarian regime uses deliberate segregation in order to maintain civil peace during this mass influx of migrant workers engaged in the economy of the country

The future generation of Russia's political managers is unlikely to embrace a democratic society, regardless of the protests emerging in the country today, the study 'Russian Elites-2020' shows

In many Russian regions, the opposition candidates’ success in elections rarely depends on socio-economic factors. Instead, the situation is determined by the balance of political powers in the region at the time of the vote. And, if successful, the opposition often becomes incorporated into the ruling regime and helps it to remain strong. These are the conclusions of a study by Rostislav Turovsky and Olga Khlopovskikh

The ideas of freedom and democracy are at the core of the most successful parts of human civilization today. Can modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy find a way to unite around these ideas? Maxim Bogachev from the HSE raised this question in his paper to the HSE April Conference.

Well developed telecommunications, and population density increase the chances of people taking part in public protests. Bad weather, poor salaries and the repressive habits of the authorities decrease them. So Anton Sobolev reported his findings to the XIV April Conference at HSE