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Almost twenty five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and several Central Asian republics appear to be converging on what may be termed a 'hierarchic party system', characterised by controlled and unequal competition between parties. Addressing the juncture between international politics and party politics, this article explores this convergence and considers Russian authoritarian norm diffusion as a possible explanation. This article argues that although Russia continues to build significant party-based linkage in Central Asia, similarities between party systems are the result of complex, multidirectional norm diffusion, as regimes look to liberalise or close their respective political systems.

The extensive reflexive literature from many social science disciplines suggests that there are multiple factors that combine to affect the process of research. However, the relatively weak reflexive tradition in the field of political science often suggests some kind of exceptionalism in this regard, reinforcing the notion of problem-free research and the kind of sanitised research ideal depicted in most textbooks. This article draws on original fieldwork notes to highlight some of the problems of interviewing elites and experts in the Russian Federation, arguing that along with a number commonly identified problems of research in this challenging environment, the prevailing political backdrop is also a factor to contend with. In the Russian case, the pressured domestic politics of 'managed democracy', along with events occurring on the international stage, resulted in some largely unanticipated problems during fieldwork which, in turn, elicited a number of researcher strategies in response.

Introduction: East European diasporas, migration and cosmopolitanism / Ulrike Ziemer and Sean P. Roberts -- The Past in the present : fostering cosmopolitanism -- Cosmopolitanism in practice : perspectives on the Nansen passports / Rebecka Lettevall -- Between long-distance nationalism and "rooted" cosmopolitanism? : Armenian-American engagement with their homeland / Tsypylma Darieva -- Making and re-making diasporas from former Yugoslavia -- Diaspora impact on European community policy-making : ex-Yugoslavia as a case study / Branislav Radeljic -- Diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and post-territorial citizenship in contemporary Croatia / Francesco Ragazzi -- Locating diaspora in and beyond Germany -- Cosmopolitanism in Kazakhstan : sociability, memory, and diasporic disorder / Rita Sanders -- Migration memoirs and narratives of Polish migrants in Berlin / Dorota Praszalowicz -- Exploring ethical challenges in research on migration -- The beginning and end of a beautiful friendship : ethical issues in the ethnographic study of sociality amongst Russian-speaking migrants in London / Darya Malyutina -- Facets of migrant identity : ethical dilemmas in research among Romanian migrants in the UK / Oana Rom