The article is devoted to making sense of discrepancies between electoral rhetoric of Republicans and Democrats in the United States and their real actions by comparing their foreign policy approaches. The problem is seen through examples of Donald Trump’s, Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s presidencies. The article considers the time period from 2008 to 2025. The aim is to show the contradictory links between domestic and foreign policies in their development, based on academic materials published in Russia and abroad. The methods include general scholarly tools: descriptive-narrative analysis, discourse analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, case study, and holism. Theoretical framework is constructivism as the most appropriate instrument to explain all the multifaceted nature of the problem. Among other aspects, the common ground is defined within bipartisan consensus on how to develop relations with the regions that the US deems vitally important as well as internal contradictions within the parties on these issues – from Europe and the Asian-Pacific Region to the Middle East and Latin America. In conclusion, the author argues that electoral pledges aim at satisfying expectations of voters, donors and lobbyists, but not necessarily translate into real decisions after winning the race. The novelty of the study consists in an attempt to diversify the discourse about the intertwined nature of the US foreign and domestic politics.

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the transformation of the electoral institution in Germany against the backdrop of the development of the concept of a “change of eras” and the tendency towards the growing importance of security issues for Germany’s foreign and domestic policy. The aim of the study is to identify how the German political community perceives elections as an element of Germany’s domestic and foreign policy. For a long time, elections remained an important part of the German state structure, ensuring adherence to its democratic principles. However, the growing complexity of the party structure in (Western) German politics and the gradual erosion of the positions of the “people’s” parties, the CDU / CSU and the SPD, brought to the fore new political forces that came to be seen as a threat to German democracy. While the cooptation of the Eastern German PDS into German politics ultimately proceeded relatively painlessly for the German political system, the electoral successes of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party led to a rise in alarmist sentiments in Germany and the emergence of the “firewall” phenomenon – a boycott of the party by mainstream political forces. The high level of support for opposition parties has sparked a debate about destructive external interference in Germany’s electoral processes. Since the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis in February 2022, the Russian Federation has been almost invariably cited as the source of such interference. At the same time, the German government’s approach to elections in other countries through the prism of a “values-based” foreign policy has provoked crises in bilateral relations, with consequences that extend far beyond those relations. An illustrative example of this approach was the German leadership’s actions regarding the 2020 presidential election in Belarus. Criticism of the electoral processes in Belarus not only undermined the cautious normalization of the bilateral relations in the second half of the 2010s but also became a significant indicator of the escalation of crises in the European security system in the early 2020s, culminating in the escalation of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

The political development of the countries of South Eastern Europe after the collapse of the bipolar system of international relations is most often considered in academic literature as a derivative of the processes in the western part of the continent. After the launch of the European integration project in the Balkans, the relevance of this approach became even more obvious. However, this approach minimizes the impact of internal factors, including socio-political and value-based ones, as well as the role played by the rapidly changing international economic, political and legal environment. This article examines the internal political processes in the Balkans through the prism of the systemic consequences of the collapse of the socialist world, which still have an important impact on the development of the region. In addition, the study assesses how common EU factors are reflected in the Balkan environment. The research concludes that despite the obvious commonality and interconnectedness of European political processes in all subregions, the traditional explanations for the Balkans through the phenomena of Balkanization, Americanization and Europeanization are not exhaustive. However, it is in the Balkans that the public’s demand of new types of leaders and parties is most evident, due to growing disillusionment and, in some republics, a credibility gap between the government and society.

The case study of media and analytical coverage of the 2024 presidential elections in Russia shows the approaches taken by the media and think tanks in Germany and Italy towards their public positioning and influence on various target audiences amid geopolitical confrontation and a changing world order. Media coverage of the Russian elections was focused mainly on the domestic audience and exhibited some features of propaganda, which aligns with the political context. In their turn, think tanks were in a more difficult situation. Having accepted the idea of the inevitable fragmentation of the world and facing an ideological vacuum, which arose amid worsening relations between Germany, Italy, the EU and the West on the one side and Russia on the other, think tanks had to make a choice between politicizing their activities under the influence of the context or maintaining a previous relatively moderate attitude. Both strategies give these organizations the opportunity to preserve or increase their influence – through the mechanisms of “hard” or “soft” power, as well as “ideological power” – with a certain positioning of think tanks in the information space of their states. However, the same strategies are associated with the inevitable loss of influence with a different approach of “think tanks” to shaping their public images. Some German think tanks have politicized their activities, which is explained by several factors. As a result, they were identified by the Russian authorities as “undesirable organizations,” which significantly limited their own “soft power” in relation to the Russian audience, effectively making it impossible to have any dialogue with the Russian side. At the same time, leading Italian and German think tanks which deal with foreign affairs still retain the opportunity to act in a neutral modality, preserving the possibility of constructive interaction with Russia’s expert community if a Russo–Western political dialogue begins.

India is a sphere of vital national interest for Russia. Relations with it are a priority for the Russian Federation due to historical experience, geopolitical considerations, military-political ties, and, more recently, economic relations (Russia has once again become a key trading partner for the Asian giant, as it was during the bipolar period). Naturally, the positions of the key parties in India on foreign policy issues play a very important role, which is the main subject of the article. The article analyzes the essence of the discussions on macro-issues of foreign policy in the South Asian country since independence and the gradual emergence of a “supra-party” agreement on international affairs. Various social and political groups in the country hold very similar positions on the balance between political, diplomatic and military-forced methods in foreign policy. It can be assumed that this pan-Indian consensus indicates a sufficient awareness of national interests and foreign policy goals by political parties; and the absence of multiple official concepts on national security, foreign policy and defense does not prevent a sufficiently unified awareness of external threats and methods for countering them. The prospects of confrontation / interconnectedness in the foreign policy approaches of Indian parties as well as the ratio of declared objectives and real policy if elected to power is considered. A special subject of the study was the analysis of the parties’ positions regarding the foreign policy course at the last general elections in 2024.

The 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections in Indonesia have demonstrated the unique features of democratic transition in the world’s largest archipelagic state. Prabowo Subianto’s victory with 58.59 % of votes in the first round was possible due to Indonesia’s specific electoral culture, which combines elements of traditional elite consensus (Ind. musyawarah-mufakat) and distinctive democratic institutions formed after the Reformasi period of 1998–2004. The conducted analysis reveals the paradox of Indonesia’s transition: despite the technically successful conduct of elections, the political system faced deepening of structural contradictions between the main centers of influence. The electoral process exposed a transformation in elite political culture toward pragmatic situational alliances, where ideological differences recede before conjunctural interests. The study reveals that the resilience of Indonesia’s democratic model is determined by competitive interaction among political forces and institutional practices of checks and balances, which altogether compensate for persisting tensions in inter-elite relations. Moreover, the domestic political consequences of the elections are partially offset by Indonesia’s foreign policy achievements and President Prabowo’s successful personal diplomacy.

The article discusses the preparations and outcomes of the parliamentary elections in South Africa, which took place on May 29th, 2024. For the first time in 30 years, the ruling African National Congress failed to secure a parliamentary majority. It is important to understand how this new political landscape will affect domestic and foreign policy. The author analyzes the key stages of the election process, summarizes the results and considers the emergence of new actors. She highlights other factors that contributed to the outcome, including the initial actions of the new leaders of the country. There is a question about how internal change will affect South African foreign policy as a member of BRICS, given recent appointments to government and the position of Minister for International Relations and Cooperation.

The article is devoted to the study of the impact of the migration issue on political attitudes in the US presidential election in 2024. The purpose of the study is to consider the migration issue in the context of protecting US national security and as a factor in citizens’ choice between Democratic candidate K. Harris and Republican candidate D. Trump. In the United States, immigration remains one of the key factors in both congressional and presidential elections. The study was carried out within the framework of a sociological approach and includes: secondary analysis of data from sociological surveys of research organizations (Pew Research Center, AS / COA and others) and expert reports; content analysis of media discourse of leading American publications (The New York Times, The Washington Post and others), as well as content-analysis of the political texts of the campaigns: the rhetoric and election programs of the candidates. The majority of the materials relate to the pre-election period of 2024, while the data from the 2016 and 2020 elections were used selectively to analyze the dynamics of electoral attitudes and the migration agenda. The results of the study show that the migration crisis played a crucial role in the US presidential election in 2024, and candidates actively linked it to US national security. The author’s conclusion shows the importance of exploring the political agenda around the migration issue, since migration affects not only the political and economic spheres, but also highlights acute security problems in various forms.

The article analyzes the political discourse (including expert and media discourse) in post-socialist Central and Eastern European countries regarding the 2024 Russian presidential election. The authors consider the discourse on Russian electoral processes as a tool for constructing European identity based on the “friend-foe” divide. The study aims to identify the influence of domestic political processes in Russia on the self-identification of the countries of “new” Europe in comparison with the Russian Federation as a significant “Other,” which Central and Eastern European countries resort to in the course of national identity construction. This process is viewed as a cornerstone for binding the “European” identity of Central and Eastern European countries with their transition from socialist past. The latter, in turn, is associated with a discursive separation from Russia and the transformation of the image of the “foreign” into the image of the “enemy,” both in regard to their history and the current crisis in Russo-Western relations. Upon conducting discourse and comparative analyses, it is concluded that the very contraposition of European “democracy” and Russian “authoritarianism” serves not only to construct enemy images in the Central and Eastern European states, but also to assert their own European identity. Foreign policy issues, however, do not play a defining role, and if they are articulated in discourse, they are related neither to relations with European states nor with the European Union.