This study examines how victims’ alcohol abuse affects sentencing in cases where a woman is killed by her intimate partner in Russia, focusing on gender differences among judges. The research uses a dataset of 1,478 court verdicts (2013–2019), obtained via web scraping from official sources and processed through text mining techniques. Using regression analysis, the study shows that the victim’s alcohol abuse is, on average, associated with more lenient punishment — particularly when the presiding judge is a woman. This effect remains significant after controlling for legally relevant factors, and its size is comparable to them. This influence is driven by the mere fact of alcohol abuse rather than by subsequent provocative behavior of the victim. The findings contradict common assumptions that male judges are more prone to victim-blaming. On the contrary, in Russian judicial practice, female judges tend to show greater leniency toward defendants when the victim has violated traditional gender norms. The results are interpreted through the lens of just world theory and gender role attitudes, emphasizing that judicial decisions reflect not only legal reasoning but also culturally embedded beliefs about appropriate female behavior. The study also demonstrates the potential of automated text analysis of court verdicts as a powerful tool for exploring social biases and gender stereotypes in the Russian judiciary.

   This article examines the relationship between homicide rates and the severity of judicial sentences across Russian regions. Deterrence theory posits that in areas with high crime rates, judges are likely to impose harsher punishments to increase the expected costs of criminal activity and thereby reduce its prevalence. However, social and psychological factors may induce a normalization effect, resulting in no significant change in average sentencing lengths. To ascertain which mechanism predominates in the Russian context, a two-stage regression analysis was employed. The first stage involved a multilevel regression analysis of sentencing data under Part 1 of Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code (homicide) for the period from 2013 to 2019 (N = 20,265). The findings indicate that judges tend to assign stricter penalties in regions with higher homicide rates, consistent with the deterrence hypothesis. However, intraregional comparisons revealed that within a given region, increases in homicide rates were associated with harsher sentences only for repeat offenders. The second stage aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this sentencing strategy through a regression analysis aggregated at the regional level (N = 448). The results demonstrated that neither the severity of punishment nor the crime clearance rate had a statistically significant impact on subsequent homicide levels in the regions. These findings call into question the efficacy of using sentence severity as a tool to reduce violent crime.

   Despite a downward trend, the level of violent crime in Russia — including homicides and intentional infliction of serious bodily harm — remains comparatively high. This article examines the socio-economic factors —previously identified as significant in international studies — that influence violent crime rates across Russian regions. The analysis focuses on three primary determinants: regional economic development, alcohol abuse, and the deterrent effect of crime detection. The study relies on official statistics from the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation for the period from 2011 to 2021. To address issues of endogeneity and the persistence of criminal behavior over time, we employ dynamic panel models (System GMM). The results reveal a statistically significant negative correlation between gross regional product (GRP) per capita and violent crime, supporting the hypothesis that increased economic well-being reduces incentives for violent behavior. In contrast, regional unemployment levels show no significant explanatory power for the types of crimes under investigation. We find that alcohol consumption plays a substantial role: a higher incidence of newly diagnosed alcohol dependence is associated with increased levels of severe violence, particularly in cases of involuntary manslaughter. Additionally, higher detection rates for specific categories of violent crime are linked to lower future crime incidence, in line with Gary Becker’s rational choice theory of crime. Based on these findings, we argue that the reduction of violent crime in Russia is shaped by the effectiveness of law enforcement, public policy on alcohol consumption, and broader prospects for regional economic development.

   Women convicted under Article 105 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (“Homicide”) of the Russian Federation, in about one third of cases, claim in court that they committed the homicide in self-defense. This contradicts the court decisions finding them guilty of premeditated murder. The court verdicts, although presenting the women’s positions on the homicide, are distorted, primarily due to the institutional conditions of testimony. Thus, it remains unclear how the women feel about the homicide: the court has ruled that she is guilty, but how do they feel about their act and themselves? To answer this question, six biographical and three expert interviews were conducted. For the analysis, the concept of moral career proposed by E. Goffman is employed, which allows us to trace the process of transformation of women’s “self” and the experience of damaged social identity (stigma). The result of the study is the reconstruction of the moral career of women who committed homicide, highlighting the narratives of self-blame and self-justification. The author suggests that whether a woman leans toward self-blame or self-justification depends less on how successful her post-prison life is, and more on whether she has found — or hopes to find — an alternative identity. This new identity must be strong enough to compete with the identity of a “killer”. For some women, the identity of a mother becomes this alternative. It allows them to present themselves as “normal” and to separate themselves from the label of a “killer”.

   Socio-legal studies have consistently documented the phenomenon of the “female discount”—a tendency for female defendants to receive more lenient punishments than male defendants. However, the literature on courts in authoritarian regimes suggests that decision-making patterns may differ in cases involving state interests. We analyze 15,229 court decisions under the most common parts (2, 5, 6.1, 8) of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, issued in Moscow from 2017 to 2024, to determine whether the “female discount” effect is observed in political cases. Using regression analysis, controlling for legal and extralegal factors, and including fixed effects for the year of the court decision and the court, we demonstrate that the “female discount” is observed at all stages of judicial decision-making in administrative protest cases (case dismissal, imposition of a more lenient or severe punishment, and the amount of the imposed penalty), with the exception of the possibility of imposing a fine less than the minimum. Our models also include judges’ gender; however, it has a significant impact on judicial decision-making only when deciding whether to impose a fine less than the minimum. This study contributes to the literature on empirical legal research and the study of courts in authoritarian regimes by demonstrating that even in the context of political cases in authoritarian regimes, extralegal factors in judicial decisions, and in particular the gender of the defendants, are a significant factor in judicial decisions.

   Redistricting is an important tool of political struggle, distinguished by several features that set it apart from other methods of creating a non-competitive electoral advantage: secrecy and non-provocativeness. These characteristics have led to significant scholarly attention, primarily focused on the political consequences of redistricting. However, the administrative and legal aspects of redistricting remain less studied, which may limit our understanding of electoral processes, especially outside the United States—the context of most existing research on the topic. Drawing on the electoral reform that took place in several Russian regions between 2019 and 2021 and was accompanied by mass redistricting, this study aims to examine the administrative and political consequences of redistricting as a legal procedure at the regional level in Russia. For this purpose, data were collected using a custom algorithm on the quality of public goods provision and the volume of their funding. Using the event study method, which allows for causal interpretation, the impact of redistricting on the quality and funding of public goods was assessed. The results indicate an increase in planned education expenditures in the year preceding elections in municipalities where at least 25 % and 50 % of precinct election commissions (PECs) did not have incumbents. The findings do not provide strong evidence of a significant impact of mass redistricting on the allocation of financial resources for publicly provided goods. However, there is moderate evidence to support the hypothesis that the reform had a positive effect on the quality of the goods provided.

   This study focuses on the institutional crisis of zoning in Russia, understood as a legal and administrative institution, which manifests in the gap between its official purpose as a mechanism for regulating construction and its actual law enforcement practice. The theoretical framework of the research is based on the principles of neo-institutional theory, including a discursive approach that explains how zoning — formally established as a regulatory legal act—is transformed in practice into a tool of ad hoc administration. The proposed hypothesis suggests that the absence of a clear narrative on zoning in official discourse contributes to the institutional uncertainty surrounding it. This results in the loss of regulatory autonomy, dependence on the functional zoning of the general plan, and subordination to the bureaucratic logic of administrative simplification. The key research questions include an analysis of institutional communication between different levels of government, the distinction between zoning as an institution and as a tool, and the identification of information asymmetry in law enforcement. The study employs discourse analysis methods, including the examination of legal acts, explanatory notes to draft laws, departmental acts, public reports, and analytical reviews. Empirical discourse is explored through in-depth expert interviews, surveys of local self-government bodies and state authorities of the Russian Federation, judicial practices, an analysis of land use and development rules, their amendments, and individual acts applying special procedures. The analysis is conducted through the lens of key narratives such as the simplification of administrative procedures, the reduction of regulatory barriers, and the centralization of powers in urban planning. The results indicate that zoning is losing its institutional agency, transforming into an instrument of administrative regulation that fails to ensure regulatory certainty and predictability in land use and development.

   The purpose of the study is to identify the elements and characteristics of the interaction of Brian Tamanaha’s normative systems for a more detailed analysis of the intersection of social orders.

   The research uses interviews collected during two expeditions to North Ossetia. Based on the results of coding interviews collected by the authors in August 2023 and October 2024, the authors identified elements and patterns of interaction between normative systems. These systems include elements such as the declared norms, their sources, institutions for the implementation of norms, attitudes towards them, and the procedure for their implementation in practice. Many elements occur in several systems at the same time, intersect with each other, creating a complex network of regulatory systems. The boundaries between regulatory systems can be strict and lax. In the first case, there is a clear understanding that a specific normative system is applied in a certain situation and no other. If the boundaries are not strict, it is possible to refer to two or more regulatory systems. Even strict boundaries between regulatory systems are dynamic and can change over time and depending on the subject of their application. In places where regulatory systems intersect or have strict boundaries, various forms of their interaction are possible. The institution of implementing the norms of one system can comply with the norms of another, even if these norms are in conflict. Or, on the contrary, institutions of different regulatory systems may compete for the right to implement their own norms.

   The article raises the problem of legal mechanisms and techniques used for the regulation of foreign labor migration from the late Russian empire, where a unified emigration law did not exist. The research situates itself within the framework of migration history, emphasizing the need to analyze government policies in countries of emigration (points of exit) for a better understanding and reconstruction of global migration processes. A historical analysis of archival and published sources has identified the main strategies and practices of law enforcement imperial actors used in order to control temporary labor migrants from Grodno and Minsk provinces, who crossed the Atlantic, and emigration agents who were intermediaries between out-migrants and steamship companies. In the situation when passport legislation and norms of criminal law appeared to become outdated and ignored by both migrants and imperial officials, it was crucial to work out unified procedures for the control of migration processes. Article 62 of the Statute of Punishments Applicable by the Justices of the Peace was used in order to impose a fine on those peasant laborers who went abroad without a foreign passport. The Statute of State Security was brought into play to expel emigration agents who helped labor migrants cross the imperial border illegally. Practices of administrative law enforcement were not adapted for the protection of migrants’ interests. Changes in the Penal Code, combined with a systematic usage of the Statute of State Security, resulted in simplifying legal procedures as well as in intensifying processes of foreign labor migration.

    “Boys don’t apologize” is not a TV slogan or nostalgia for “fights for asphalt,” but a working principle of a street culture of honor that emerged at the intersection of institutional breakdown, migration, and new urban anonymity. We read Slovo patsana (The Boy’s Word) by Robert Goraev as a dense corpus of testimony and translate it into sociological language: from anomie and social disorganization to initiation rituals; from “chushpan” as stigma to the technique of boundary-drawing; from masculine bodily regimes to street-level legal pluralism and “micro-Leviathans” that generate order from below where the state is effectively switched off. We turn to sociological theory as a slab of static asphalt to account for the blood on the boys — since they themselves frequently say they “just fell.” In doing so, we close the theoretical gap left by the book’s narrative style and offer readers a set of lenses through which familiar plots cease to be “local exotica” and become recognizable mechanisms for producing order and violence. Addressed not only to sociologists and criminologists, the review shows why the Kazan phenomenon still resonates and renders urban “noise” into a structure of rules, practices of body, and emergent orders. Thus the case stops being a “local history” and becomes an instrument: it calibrates our language for describing informal authority and street order; in this article we unpack a mechanism recognizable not only in the “Kazan template,” but also in today’s back alleys and Telegram chats.

   Modern public administration systems are characterized by significant institutional inertia due to historically established practices, which limits their ability to transform operationally. However, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and the deepening of global uncertainty require fundamentally new approaches to strategic management that are adequate to the challenges of our time. Based on interdisciplinary ontological analysis, which includes understanding the evolution of management paradigms and complex systems, the study proves that the formation of future management systems will be determined not only by strategic planning, but also by tactical adaptation to changing conditions. The paper reveals the managerial dilemma of the need to simultaneously maintain the operability of existing management systems, adapt them to digital technologies and form a strategic vision for the future; (b) it is proved that the expansion of AI, especially generative models, transforms cultural codes and value attitudes, imperceptibly changing mass consciousness and management practices; (c) it is argued that strategic management in the context of digital transformation requires a fundamental distinction between algorithmized operational tasks and the sphere of value-semantic solutions, which remains the prerogative of human intelligence. The main conclusion is that responsible implementation of AI in public administration requires overcoming the technological approach and considering the deep ontological and cultural consequences. The research results may be useful to government officials and developers of digital transformation strategies that consider the interaction of technological, managerial and value factors, as well as to the academic community for further development of management theories in the context of technological singularity.