The transition to “a new image” of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation that started back in 2008 and continued through 2011 was clearly planned, as the Russian top military leaders affirmed. In practice, however, these plans proved to be “unbaked” and required online corrections...

The transition to “a new image” of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation that started back in 2008 and continued through 2011 was clearly planned, as the Russian top military leaders affirmed. In practice, however, these plans proved to be “unbaked” and required online corrections...

The ratings of economic and political institutions are well-known and widely used in the Social Science literature. These ratings are heavily relied on Experts' evaluations with subjective ordinal ranking (i.g., from -10 to 10 points). Such evaluations can be occasionally driven by ideological...

Ratings evaluating the quality of institutions are widely known; they are generally used in academic and research literature. Among such ratings are some whose compilation procedure took decades to perfect. Dozens of assessments have been accumulated, pertaining to a large and growing list of...