Usually delivered at the end or in the beginning of the year, the Annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, despite having no legally binding power, sets the direction of policy agenda in Russia. As a prominent example to this, in the Presidential Address delivered in January 2020, Vladimir Putin proposed constitutional changes that startled both politicians and political researchers. However, Presidential Addresses have traditionally been overlooked in the research. In our paper, we analyse presidential addresses delivered by Vladimir Putin since 2012 and explore underlying issue dynamics. It allows us to trace issue attention over the years that marked deepening isolation of Russia from Western partners and values. Preliminary results demonstrate the shift in policy priorities from economic development and social policies to increasingly belligerent defence policy. These dynamics are particularly notable given the ultimate beginning of the military operation of Russia in Ukraine in Spring 2022. The paper is based on manual content analysis of the documents using the Comparative Agendas Project coding scheme adapted for the case of Russia.

Contrasting with its slow and incoherent reaction to the Arab uprisings in 2011, the European Union responded relatively quickly and substantively to the political escalation that occurred in Egypt in 2013. Notably, its top diplomats were able to talk to both sides before, during and after President Morsi and his Islamist government were ousted by the Egyptian Armed Forces. Over months of shuttle diplomacy prior to the military coup, EU Special Representative for the Mediterranean Bernadino Leon had brokered a political deal that, at least according to some foreign diplomats, could have kept Morsi in office had he accepted it. Rather than getting involved itself, the United States threw its weight behind the EU's efforts. In the aftermath of the coup, EU High Representative Catharine Ashton continued to visit Egypt on a regular basis to try to mediate between both sides and was the first foreign diplomat allowed to visit Morsi in prison. Drawing upon interviews with EU officials that were involved in these efforts, this paper sets out to trace the EU’s efforts – most of which have not yet been described or reported. On that basis, it seeks to explain why the EU was able to play such a substantive role as well as why its involvement ultimately remained without major impact.

Multilevel governance can be understood as an analytical framework that seeks to explain the vertical and horizontal exercise of authority, in a complex structure, with multiple actors and as an answer to the challenge posed by the management of “transnational common goods” or dangers. It implies an attempt to establish a delicate balance promoted by sufficiently decentralized governance that does not, however, fail to provide networks of interactions and good practices capable of promoting collective action. This approach assesses the distribution of authority across different levels.

By positioning themselves at suprastate level, international organizations have played a particularly proactive role in this domain. Thus, starting from the proposal of the three layers of the global political system presented by Michael Zürn - normative principles; specific political institutions; and interactions between different spheres of authorities – the present study seeks to identify the actions and initiatives of the European Union, as a promoter of democracy and the rule of law in three States with different relations: Ukraine, as part of the European Neighborhood Policy on the way to the process enlargement; Turkey as the most complex candidate state; and Hungary, as a Member State whose democratic performance has been regressing considerably, having become the first in the Union not to meet the minimum requirements of a democracy.

As a first stage of a broader research project, this paper will describe the European Union’s actions towards the selected case studies, using a process tracing methodology, combined with a comparative approach under the multi-level governance lens, in order to figure out how relevant this more recent strategy has been used by this sui generis actor in order to deal with the challenges that these three States pose to democracy both within and in the nearby of the EU’s borders.