East Asia at the Crossroads of Cooperation and Rivalry at the Regional and International Levels: Editorial Introduction

The rise of new powers throughout the 2000s and the 2010s augurs the end of the unipolar system that has persisted since the end of the Cold War. In no region is this transition more compelling than in East Asia. Economic revitalization of this region and a steady redistribution of power related to it is a dynamic process characterized by intense changes in foreign policy strategies, practices, and orientations of China, Korea, and Japan. The proposed special issue seeks to critically assess the emerging developments of Chinas, Japans, and Koreas core international perceptions and policies. More specifically, the special issue addresses two complex and interrelated questions. Firstly, how do China, Korea, and Japan adapt to the changing international landscape? Secondly, how do China, Korea, and Japan respond to the challenges inherent to the pursuit of the enhanced international status? The contributions to this special issue aim at scrutinizing Chinas cybersovereignty and industrial policy; exploring the strengths and limitations of Koreas public diplomacy; and examining Japans contributions to regionalism. The special issue also discusses Russias relations with East Asia and its role in regional politics.

The Сoncept of Сyber Sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China: Development History and Essence

The transformation of cyber sovereignty into an independent concept is a recent phenomenon, and thus its development and distribution is currently underway, which indicates the relevance of studying this topic. Being one of the most influential actors of contemporary international politics, China uses the concept of cyber sovereignty to promote its national interests and is able to shape the rules in the highly volatile field of international cyberspace. The study is based on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of legal acts and concept of Chinas cyber sovereignty. The author defines a concept of cyber sovereignty and identifies its place in the system of international law and in the architecture of international information security. Chinas concept of cyber sovereignty does not imply the division of a common cyberspace into separate segments but contributes to the creation of a cyber community of a common destiny, in which states can exercise their rights to govern the Internet on the principles of equality, justice, cooperation, peace and rule of law. It is concluded that this concept can be used as the basis for the formation of an international legal framework that regulates relations between states in the field of cyberspace.

The Key Components of South Korea’s Soft Power: Challenges and Trends

To this day political processes are less and less impacted by military force. States are increasingly resorting to the use of means of latent influence or relying on cultural attraction. Such phenomena have led to the emergence of soft power in international relations. Many countries, including the Republic of Korea, effectively use soft power tools in implementing policies at various levels. This manuscript seeks to analyze the main soft power components and tools of the Republic of Korea in foreign policy. The paper examines the background of the formation and development of soft power strategies. Many factors have predetermined the growing popularity of Korean culture, a phenomenon subsequently called the Korean Wave (Hallyu). This paper identifies the main elements of the Hallyu, including public diplomacy and South Koreas cultural economy exporting pop culture, entertainment, music, TV dramas, and movies, and examines how these elements complement each other.

Historical Policy of the Roh Moo-hyun’s Government in South Korea: Seeking Reconciliation with the Past

Historical policy was one of the main directions of the domestic policy of the Roh Moo-hyuns government (2003-2008). The ideological justification of revising the 20th century history of Korea was the idea of building a new Korean society based on the principles of democracy and the rule of civil rights and freedoms. Through the implementation of a new historical policy the Roh Moo-hyuns government tried to prove that the creation of such a society was impossible without revealing the truth about the historical past, in which the state repeatedly neglected civil rights and committed crimes. Increased attention to issues of restoration of the historical justice is typical for the current government of Moon Jae-in, the political successor of Roh Moo-hyun. Based on the analysis of the governmental documents, legislation this paper reveals the main disagreements between political parties of the Republic of Korea around the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, identifies the key results of its activities.

Interpretation of Communism and Post-Communist Transformations in Russia: Modern Theoretical Discussions

The analysis of discussions on various aspects of the evolution of the modern state, the specifics of post-communist transformations and the role that Marxism and the tradition of radical socialist thought can play in the near future in their search for a way out of the crisis generated by the agony of the neoliberal global world order. As a starting point for the analysis, theoretical articles published in the second edition of the collection Communism, Anticommunism, Russophobia in post-Soviet Russia. 2nd ed., Add. / Auth.: P.P. Apryshko et al. - Moscow: World of Philosophy, Algorithm, 2021 (607 p.) were selected. A comparative analysis of the polemical works of domestic scientists, political theorists and philosophers with those discussions that for many decades have been conducted by their colleagues abroad clearly indicates that today none of the existing ideologies, as well as the paradigms of economic and socio-political theory, can pretend to be the only recourse. The experience of recent decades clearly excludes the very possibility of transforming the economy and society on the basis of a certain universal synthetic model. In post-communist Russia, the heat of political passions, which stimulates the extreme polarization of political programs for overcoming the crisis, also hinders the achievement of agreement and the search for a solution acceptable to all.

Identity in the Political Constructions of Modernity: Editorial Introduction

L.A. Fadeeva is the author of numerous publications and key co-author of fundamental encyclopedias published by the Russian Academy of Sciences (Identity: The Individual, Society and Politics. An Encyclopedia, 2017) and the Russian Political Science Association (Trends and problems of the development of Russian political science in the global context: Tradition, reception and innovation, 2018), representing the leading scientific school for identity studies in Russia (see: Perm School of Political Science: Sources, Development, Content, 2019), who has served multiple times as guest editor for the thematic issues of the best Russian political science journals on this topic (Political science (RU), 2020, No. 4). In this introductory article, our guest editor L.A. Fadeeva presents the materials of the current issue of our journal, interpreting their cross-cutting themes as the politicization of the non-political through the prism of identity processes at the macro-regional, regional and national levels.

Perception of Patriotism by Schoolchildren of the Siberian Federal District

In 2020, the actualizing of another Government program called Patriotic education of Russian Federation citizens has been fulfilled. The main subject of the program is school students, as the Analysis of their idea of patriotism provides us with a Great chance to evaluate the effectiveness of patriotic education in Russian Federation, as well as to find the dominating idea of a citizen in minds of the Youth. In this article, based on Data coming from a mass Survey of senior school students from Siberian Federal District, we define students ideas of patriotism, as well as forms of behavior, acceptable for a patriot, and finally, subjects and reasons for Russian patriotism development and establishing. It was found that the idea of patriotism among school students is quite stereotypical with explicit retrospective, militaristic and imperial tendencies. There is also a correlation between patriotic identity and national identity. Thus, the school students who identify as Russians are highly patriotic, while school students with local national identity are less keen to be patriotic, according to their own words.

Social Capital of Youth in a Modern City: Opportunities for Empirical Research

Modern megalopolis concentrates all groups of resources including economic, political, cultural, information, human resources, etc. The high population density, economic and geographic situation, complex multiethnic and multicultural structure of large cities contribute to certain types of values and behavioral models in the younger generation. The neo-institutional approach and social capital theory were chosen as a methodological basis. The article examines a number of methodological works devoted to various aspects of the social capital and explores the opportunity for this concept application for analysis of the protest behavior motivation and assessment of the protest potential of young people. Combination of the economic model of multilevel analysis for measuring social capital by S.А. Sysoev and socio-political parameters for the empirical part allowed to clearly defining the main categories and indicators of analysis. Measuring the levels of social capital of a megalopolis with the inclusion a network component expands the range of opportunities for assessing and identifying the protest potential of large Russian cities residents.

Key Identity Features of Urban Youth: The Case of Krasnodar Krai

This article is devoted to the study of urban youth local identity in a large and medium city. This identity is manifested in everyday interaction with the urban community, its socio-political institutions and visitors and affect the level of public and political participation, the presence of constructive civic practices. The aim is to identify and describe the main components and place of local youth identity in the system of social identities in large and medium-sized cities of Krasnodar krai (Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Sochi and Armavir). The empirical basis of the study was made up of focus group transcripts conducted with various groups of young people (schoolchildren, students, and working youth). To verify the conceptual model a modified version of the Kuhn-McPartland method was used. On the basis of the conducted empirical research, the place of local identity in the system of urban youth social and territorial identities was revealed. The dependence between the size of a city and a cohort of young people and a local identity was shown. Such components of young people local identity as awareness of the city and its socio-political life, attitude towards representatives of other communities, a sense of their involvement in city life, the desire to stay and live in the city, the will to work for the benefit of the city, to participate in its socio-political life. The study made it possible to identify the valence of youth identity (negative, neutral, positive). The trajectories of young people spatial mobility that affect the degree of actualization and valence of local identity were also described. The dependence between the strength of youth local identity and participation in public and political activity for the benefit of the city and the region, participation in the activities of public and political organizations has been revealed.

Political Trust and Values of Loyal and Oppositional Youth in the Exclave Region of Russia

The study determines the level of trust in public and political institutions among the loyal and oppositional youth of the Kaliningrad region, as well as their attitudes towards materialistic and post-materialistic values. The study is based on R. Ingleharts theory of value and the understanding of trust as described in the works of P. Sztompka and A. Giddens. The author relies on an online survey conducted among young people aged between 18 and 35 (n = 987). As a result of the study, the author defines three groups of institutions, depending on the degree of trust in them. The study confirms the hypothesis that young people loyal to the government demonstrate greater trust in traditional and state institutions. It also reveals that, in general, young people put post-materialistic values in the first place, while materialistic values are more characteristic of the youth loyal to the government. The author concludes that the level of the political trust towards a certain institution among loyal and oppositional youth differs depending on the possibility of influencing the institution. The trust of loyal youth is based on the importance of social status, and the trust of oppositional youth is based on the freedom of expression.