Social Developments and New Forms of Mass Opinion Research in Contemporary Russia

Research Link between the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen and the Faculty of Sociology, National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Duration: April 2014 - September 2016. The German partner has received financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation. Head of Project: Prof. Dr. Heiko Pleines

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In an economically and socially globalized world, states are no longer the only – and sometimes not even the most important – actors, both on the international and the domestic levels. State-society relations and the role of mass beliefs tend to become ever more important if one wishes to understand developments in societies around the globe.

Russia does not constitute an exception to this rule. The goal of the research collaboration between the Research Centre for East European Studies and the Higher School of Economics is therefore to bring together the experience and the expertise of 19 researchers from two countries. In order to present new approaches towards the investigation of social interaction, public opinion and state-society-relations, an inter-disciplinary and multi-perspective research strategy will be applied. Experts in the fields of sociology, political science and history will cooperate closely to identify new interaction patterns, path dependencies and changing relationships between societal groups and between the state and society and will track changes in public opinion on these issues.

The collaboration has been realized first and foremost in the form of reciprocal research visits and jointly held workshops and conferences. The German partner received financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation with funds provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.