Working Papers

In his Working Paper, Andrey Makarychev addresses the situation of linguistic uncertainty that gives obvious political effects. He approaches the concept of multipolarity, which has been well-known for decades, and demonstrates that it has multiple meanings in Russia. He challenges the almost iconic uniformity of the idea of multipolarity, showing that it hides many alternative discourses, both academic and political. As a “Russian doll”, the unpacked multipolarity breaks down into a number of fragments, which constitute a certain menu of Russia´s foreign policy choices. The author invites to think more creatively about Russian foreign policy narratives by asking such questions as: how “real” is multipolarity in the eyes of Russian experts? Is there a gap between its academic understanding and political meaning? Shall Russia and EU find a common language in their worldviews, or are discursive disconnections between them to prevail?

From March 13 to 15, 2009, the Center for Global Politics at Freie Universität Berlin and the Chinese Center for Comparative Politics and Economics in Beijing held the workshop “The Role of Civil Society Organizations in China and Germany”, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The research objective was to analyze the role of civil society organizations in political regulation in China and Germany as well as their contribution to ensuring efficiency in specific policy areas.