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Purpose: There is an increasing interest in the international management literature in cultural differences between in-country regions. Yet, the regions of any country may be merely political products and not necessarily cultural units. The goal of this article is to propose clear empirical criteria for deciding if a set of entities, such as a country's administrative regions, can be legitimate units of cross-cultural analysis and to test these criteria in an empirical study. Design/methodology/approach: The authors review the literature on what constitutes a unit of cross-cultural analysis and propose empirical criteria. For instance, the regions of a given country are meaningful units of cross-cultural analysis if one can replicate (an) established dimension(s) of culture at the regional level, including some of the dimension(s)' antecedents and predictive properties. The authors apply this test in the context of the Russian Federation (RF), using an RF database (18,768 respondents from 60 administrative regions) with items borrowed from the World Values Survey. Findings: The RF regions pass the authors' test. At the regional level, the selected items yield an individualism-collectivism (IDV-COLL) dimension that is similar to its nation-level counterpart in the revised Minkov-Hofstede model in terms of concept and antecedents (wealth differences and geographic latitude) and outcomes that are relevant in business (innovation rates and quality of governance). The authors also find other patterns that confirm the properties of RF regions as meaningful units of cultural analysis. Research limitations/implications: The authors' criteria and the test based on them are suitable for large countries, with significant geo-climatic variety and ethnic diversity, but may be inapplicable in small countries with less diversity. It is questionable if the latter countries contain enough cultural variation to justify a cross-cultural analysis of their sub-national regions. Practical implications: The authors' criteria can be used in future research in any large country to decide if its regions justify a cross-cultural analysis in the field of management and business or any other field. Social implications: Cultural differences within a country are important as they may inform political and management decisions. Yet, to demonstrate that those differences are real, and not imaginary, one needs a methodology like the authors'. Originality/value: The study contributes to the discussion of the meaningfulness of in-country regions as cultural units for cross-cultural analysis in international business by focusing on the RF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The author examines Russian President Vladimir Putin's reassertion of the central government's authority in the Republic of Tatarstan, which former President Boris Yeltsin ceded in a 1994 power-sharing treaty. [...]

The authors seek to contribute to academic debates on migration studies by examining the role of Islam in the integration of Muslim migrants into a multicultural society with a long-standing Islamic component. This study examined some transformations in the religious practices of both Muslim labor migrants and Russian indigenous Muslims in the situation of large flow migration from Central Asia to Russia. The results demonstrate that these transformations take place in both directions by bringing some Central Asian practices into the life of Russian Muslims and vice versa. The authors also pay special attention to the formation of solidarity between and inside these two quasi-communities. They conclude that social solidarity on the basis of common religion is formed inside migrant communities despite ethnic differences rather than between autochthonous Muslims and migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the relationship between support of democracy and attitudes to human rights, in particular, support for gender equality, in the countries covered by the first wave of the Arab Barometer project. We use cluster analysis and negative binomial regression modelling to show that, unlike in most countries of the world, correlation between support of democracy and gender equality is very low in the Arab countries. There is a group of people in the region who support both democracy and gender equality, but they are a small group (about 17% of the population) of elderly and middle-aged people characterized by higher education and social status. A substantial number of poorly educated males express support for democracy but not for gender equality. Many people, especially young males aged 25–35 in 2007, are against both gender equality and democracy. Younger people tend to be both better educated and more conservative, those belonging to the 25–34 age group being the most patriarchal in their gender attitudes. Yet, controlling for age, education does have a positive effect on gender equality attitudes. Nevertheless, this phenomenon may reflect two simultaneous processes going on in the Middle East. On the one hand, people are getting more educated, urbanized, etc., which means the continuation of modernization. On the other hand, the fact that older people are the most liberal age group may point to a certain retrogression of social values in the younger generations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines correlations between the genetic characteristics of human populations and their aggregate levels of tolerance and happiness. A metadata analysis of genetic polymorphisms supports the interpretation that a major cause of the systematic clustering of genetic characteristics may be climatic conditions linked with relatively high or low levels of parasite vulnerability. This led vulnerable populations to develop gene pools conducive to avoidance of strangers, while less-vulnerable populations developed gene pools linked with lower levels of avoidance. This, in turn, helped shape distinctive cultures and subsequent economic development. Survey evidence from 48 countries included in the World Values Survey suggests that a combination of cultural, economic and genetic factors has made some societies more tolerant of outsiders and more predisposed to accept gender equality than others. These relatively tolerant societies also tend to be happier, partly because tolerance creates a less stressful social environment. Though economic development tends to make all societies more tolerant and open to gender equality and even somewhat happier, these findings suggest that cross-national differences in how readily these changes are accepted, may reflect genetically-linked cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the contents of books about Europe-Asia studies. 'Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State,' by Mark R. Beissinger; 'When Majorities Fail: The Russian Parliament, 1990-1993,' by Josephine T. Andrews; 'Post-Communist Democratization: Political Discourses Across Thirteen Countries,' by John S. Dryzek and Leslie Holmes.

In his article Eduard Ponarin examines contemporary Russian nationalism as it emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the former Soviet Republics, including the Russian Federation, and suggests possible scenarios for its development. The author starts with a thesis of retarded development of Russian national identity, which was due to the underdevelopment of the Russian empire (viewed from the perspective of modernist theory of nationalism) and the supranational project of the Soviet nation in the USSR. He notes that in the post Soviet period Russians faced the crisis of national identification, which was addressed by numerous concerted efforts to construct the Russian national identity. He contends that historical legacy plays only a part in this process. More importantly, the author argues, the effects of globalization, the process of resettlement of those who identified themselves as Russians from the former Soviet republics to the Russian Federation, and the legacy of Soviet ethnofederalism contribute to the development of contemporary Russian nationalism. Out of these three factors globalization is the main determinant of Russian nationalism, for the latter is primarily a product of activity of intellectual and political elite, which is exposed to the globalized environment and suffers from the loss of social and political status during the current period of transition. Ponarin observes that ressentiment nationalism of the elite has gradually spread across the political spectrum in the 1990s and, though being fixed and shared in its anti-Western part by all self pronounced Russian nationalist, it is still open to different scenarios of development. He argues that post-Soviet Russia could follow the path of nation-state building or it could pursue the imperial tradition. Assessing possible consequences of either of the ways and a combined one (when a modern ethnic project would incorporate the imperial tradition of differentiating the population on the basis of religion), Ponarin evokes the comparative dimension, which includes the cases of Yugoslavia, the French and British empires, and modern Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]