Research Priorities of the Doctoral School of Political Science

Our first priority is not related to any subject, but rather to research innovations, renewing the methods of research, and looking at old and new subjects from a new perspective.

We expect you to become deliberately involved in our work to improve the research methods practiced at our university, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed. One of the main tasks of our Doctoral School is to involve you in HSE’s research community and to make this a lifelong professional attachment, regardless of where you end up following graduation.

We already see you as partners and collaborators in research. We would be happy for you to propose new approaches and methods to study politics that have evolved in political science globally, as well as to support university lecturers who express such intentions.

With regard to the subject framework, students are recommended to focus their doctoral theses on various aspects of political development and dynamics, regardless of whether they are related to global or local processes; public institutions; civil society; state, public, or corporate policies; administration, or civil activism.

We suggest taking guidance from the following areas for theoretical and methodological approaches.

• The general neo-institutionalist area is related to the study of the institutional aspects of political development, namely political reforms, transformations, crises, etc. Methodologically, it is based on the traditions of neo-institutionalism and especially historical institutionalism, as well as on econometric modelling.
• The general human sciences area is related to the study of the behavioural and content-related aspects of political development. Methodologically, it is based on the traditions of communicative semiotic analysis, especially critical discourse analysis, as well as on other rigorous methods of political content analysis.
• The special general geographical area is related to the study of the transformation of Russia’s political space and the bordering territories of Europe and Eurasia, to their conceptual mapping and geochronopolitical modelling, and to regional studies.

The study track’s integrity is provided by the integrity of the subject (political development), as well as by mastering methods of multi-dimension and complex modelling, formalized qualitative analysis (such as qualitative comparative analysis), other types of modelling and analysis, methodological clearness and consistency; all of these allow for reliable positive knowledge to be obtained. Such methodological knowledge and skills are essential regardless of their correlation with the requirement for the methodological innovations mentioned above.