The 23rd IPSA World Congress held in Montréal, Québec (Canada) from July 20 to 24, 2014, drew close to 2,300 participants, not including staff and exhibitors. Participants from 73 countries came to share research and discuss the event’s main theme, Challenges of Contemporary Governance. Over 500 panels and nearly 2,000 papers were presented. Research committee played an active role in organizing some 357 panels. 

 

A senior researcher at the Department of Comparative Studies of Socio-Political Systems of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Tatiana Nikolayevna Litvinova took part in the work of the World Congress. She spoke at the Ethnic Tensions in Federal and Multilevel Systems session chaired by Michael Stein (University of Toronto). Scientists from Canada, Australia, USA, United Kingdom, India, Nigeria and South Africa attended the session. They discussed the problems of federalism and the management of multi-ethnic societies, cases of violence and separatism on an ethnic basis in India, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia and Canada. T.N. Litvinova made a presentation on the topic "Contradictions of Russian federalism", noting that the Russian Federation is a unique state that combines territorial and ethnic principles of administrative management. At the same time, Russia faces two significant problems: a huge gap in economic development between different regions and unstable rules of interaction between federal and regional authorities. Over the twenty-three years of the development of Russian federalism, a clear federal structure and institutions of regional power and management have been created, but now the agenda is to increase the effectiveness of regional authorities in solving the socio-economic problems of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.