This article compares how the global policy of deinstitutionalisation (DI) of child welfare travelled, was translated and institutionalised in two post-Soviet countries – Russia and Kazakhstan. These ...countries share a Soviet legacy of child-welfare systems dominated by residential care and have recently introduced similar DI reforms based on the global child rights framework. However, despite similar institutional legacies and post-Soviet conditions, the DI reforms have produced different outcomes in terms of the scope and pace of the institutionalisation of DI policy. In Russia, the DI of child welfare has been a fast-moving and sweeping reform, while in Kazakhstan, the implementation of DI has been an incremental and gradual process. We argue that the institutionalisation of the DI policy in two post-Soviet contexts was an outcome of the interplay between structural factors and the agency of policy actors who translated global DI ideology into domestic policy discourses. Yet, they were ‘sold’ with quite different discursive frames – one nationalist, another one trans-nationalist – in these two countries. We claim that the geopolitical position of a country is also a significant factor for framing and thus, in the end, in how child-welfare systems have been reformed.
Social scientific research has become increasingly aware of power asymmetries and the elitist and exclusive nature of scientific knowledge production. These debates have resulted in more inclusive ...and participatory research practices. In this article, we focus on co-research, which is a participatory and multi-perspective research strategy that invites the people whom the research concerns to participate as active and influential agents throughout the research process as experts on ‘the studied world.’ Co-research is increasingly being adopted in research involving people who belong to marginalised groups or who face the threat of stigmatisation. Despite its increasing applications, engaging in co-research requires reflection on several methodological and ethical questions that so far have been underexplored in the methodological literature. In this article, we address challenges in practicing inclusion and overcoming power asymmetries in co-research, particularly when it is conducted with people who inhabit societal positions with institutionalised stigma and whose participation in research is usually highly limited. In this article, building on our own experiences from different co-research projects—with care leavers, experts-by-experience with a history of crime and mental health recoverers—we aim to contribute to this literature by specifically focusing on issues of inclusion of co-researchers who face the need to negotiate with institutionally stigmatised positions. We suggest that reflexivity on positionalities and attending to plurality in identity work could provide a fruitful tool for increasing inclusivity in co- (and peer) research. We claim that such reflexivity is crucial from the very beginning of a co-research process (including ways of inviting and recruiting co-researchers) because this stage is crucial, as it forms the basis for the following stages and for the possibility of practising inclusion—even if imperfect—throughout the process.
This article seeks to understand the role of civil society organizations (CSO) in contemporary Russian society. Rather than looking narrowly at advocacy groups, the investigation focuses on ...less-studied socially oriented organizations, including more recently established CSOs as well as the so-called Soviet-type voluntary organizations, which have been almost completely neglected by Western scholarship on Russian civil society. In contrast to the argument that Russia's socially oriented CSOs are apolitical - an argument often made in Western scholarship on Russian civil society - the research found that organizations from both categories - the old Soviet-type and the more recent post-Soviet - were engaged in both political advocacy work and service provision, although they were engaged in political and social action to varying extents.
This article explores the issue of the major reform of the child welfare sector that has been carried out in Russia in recent years. Focusing on deinstitutionalization and a child's right to a ...family, this reform moves Russia in the direction of international trends in this area and represents a break with previous state‐ and institution‐dominated approach to “problem families.” The article explores how and why this process has come about in a traditionally top‐down hybrid regime and applies the Multiple Streams Framework first developed by Kingdon to argue that Russian child welfare nongovernmental organizations have acted in concert with government officials to act as policy entrepreneurs in framing the policy problem and presenting solutions to it in a way that has influenced national priorities in this area. At the same time, the article acknowledges that major challenges remain in terms of implementing the reform at the regional level of government in Russia.
The essay investigates how Russian veterans' organisations represent the concerns of their constituency vis-à-vis the Russian state. An interest group approach is applied to investigate the ...'brokering' function exercised by veterans' organisations to lobby on behalf of their constituency. The analysis is based on the study of selected veterans' organisations in Karelia and St Petersburg. The research finds that veterans' organisations operate in a restricted environment, though our analysis shows that their agency has mattered, largely due to their political connections. The investigation reveals those mechanisms through which Russian veterans' organisations act as brokers.
The essay discusses the ongoing child-welfare reforms in Russia, conceptualised as deinstitutionalisation, which link Russia closely to international trends in child rights-based child-welfare ...systems. Drawing from the neo-institutional framework, we ask what kind of institutional change has followed the new ideals of care, with what consequences, and what factors explain the obvious flaws. The essay is the outcome of two research projects and discusses their main findings. We argue that ideational shift is real at the policy and programme level; however, the overall execution remains sporadic and fragmented. The essay discusses four factors that affect the fragmentation of deinstitutionalisation, including an authoritarian political regime, a kinship-like understanding of foster care, the subordinate position of children's rights to other rights and interests, and a low level of societal trust.
This collection of essays is devoted to analysis of current trends in Russian civil society development after the recent changes in the state policy that both restricts and supports the activities of ...Russian civil society organisations (CSOs). Many of the essays in this collection were first presented at the international conference ‘“Between the Carrot and the Stick”: Emerging Needs and Forms for Non-State Actors including NGOs and Informal Organisations in Contemporary Russia’. The conference was organised by the Centre for Independent Social Research in collaboration with the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute (University of Helsinki), and took place in January 2016. The essays focus on CSOs and state–society relations in contemporary Russia. Nearly all are based on recent field research including interviews with CSO leaders, activists, and other actors connected with the sector. Overall, they paint a negative but nuanced picture of organisations confronting restrictive government legislation, particularly the so-called ‘Foreign Agents Law’ (Federal Law No. 121), which controls Russian CSOs that receive international funding and engage in political activity.
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