Social and Economic Geography

This interpretive article relies on insights from three critical literatures -world-systems analysis, postcolonial studies and, to the extent of an extended simile, the economic sociology of flexible global production -to propose a geopolitical understanding of what the European Union (EU) is. The authors begin by interrogating the tendency within much of the current research and commentary on the EU to treat it as a state of sorts. They then outline some mechanisms -pertaining to its internal and external linkage structuresthat have enabled the EU to perform successfully in a geopolitical context where most of the main actors are states. Finally, drawing on critical insights from the sociology of subcontracted production and distributed organization, the authors suggest ways in which the EU, in its current form, might be thought of beyond the constraints of the current theoretical language of statehood.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the conceptualization of some aspects of largescale social change under and, eventually, away from, semiperipheral state socialism by theorizing about East-Central Europe's dependency and by examining certain elements of transformations of Hungary's external linkage structure during the post-war period. The main thrust of the argument is the following:

Background: ‪‪The Belarusian-Polish borderland has great tourism potential but in the same time suffers from many restrictions, especially geopolitical ones. An overall facilitation of foreigners’ trips into Belarus has facilitated the development of cross-border tourism and local resources could be used by tourists. One of the most important tourist attractions is the Augustów Canal. This article seeks to discuss changes made to one border crossing between Poland and Belarus whose location may be considered exceptional, given that it is
on the Augustów Canal.
Material and methods: Analysis of historical, legal and statistical materials; cartographic analysis and feldwork.
Results: Eased restrictions on crossing the border (i.e. 5 years of gradual, stepwise introduction of visafree regimes and zones by the Belarusian authorities) have combined with the emergence of new possibilities to travel along the Canal by bicycle or on foot to increase numbers of foreign tourists (including Poles) who take advantage of the visa-free opportunities.
Conclusions: ‪Opportunities for the development of tourism (especially of a transboundary nature) are influenced by the simultaneous “internationalisation” and “touristifcation” of border crossings in Belarus’s western borderland area, which serve as a tourist destination of global signifcance (the Augustów Canal) and/or trafc at the individual-visitor level. The factor of overriding importance encouraging steady enlargement of tourist space and its utilisation either side of the border is the so-called “Brześć-Grodno Space”, as a visa-free continuous corridor for tourism established in the period since November 2019. This allows for visits into western Belarus, in particular in a south-north direction. The Augustów (Augustovsky) Canal and its Rudawka-Lesnaya border crossing are expected to play a particular part in this process.
Key words: tourism, Poland, Belarus, border, border crossing, the Augustów Canal.

This paper decomposes global inequality in redistribution, using data from the World Development Indicators data set of the World Bank. It finds that per capita income has a modest, yet persistent effect on redistribution. More provocatively, the paper also demonstrates that, over and beyond the impact of per capita GDP, global inequalities in redistribution over the last generation or so strongly reflect the double legacies of colonialism (improving the likelihood of redistribution in former-colonizer societies and sharply reducing it in erstwhile-colonized, recently independent societies). In addition, it also finds that the history of recent exposure to state socialism increases the presence of redistributive institutions, partly counterbalancing the effects of lower national incomes. The data have been obtained from the World Bank's online open-access data site World Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org.

The subject of the article is to analyze the changes in the grid of municipalities in the Russian Federation during the reform of local government under the influence of demographic factors. The research based on a systems approach to the studying of the regions where the interaction between demographic and government subsystem. The main research method was to analyze the legislation and regional statistics. Detailed analysis of the demographic situation in the Kirov oblast, the impact of natural and migration decline on change in the territorial organization of local self-government in the region. The prospects of development of the municipal division under the influence of population decline. It is concluded that the present time grid municipalities in depopulated regions of Russia is not stable and will continue to vary according to the dynamics of population.