Mikhail Gorbachev takes part in two international conferences organized by the International Institute of Global Development

Mikhail Gorbachev, who is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the recently launched International Institute of Global Development (IIGD), took part in two international conferences held by this independent think-tank in Venice, Italy, in October 2008.

The first of the conferences, themed “Post-unipolar World: What Does It Look Like?”, was held on 12th-13th October. It looked into the question of “Will the Unipolar World Survive until 2020?” and discussed, among others, the following topics: “The World after the Cold War: 1990s”; “The World Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (2000-2020)”; “Modernity Project”; “Possible Strategies of the Main Players: A View from Washington/Beijing/Moscow/Brussels”; “Where is the World Heading? The Future Structure of the International System”; “An Internationalists Agenda for the Coming Decades”; “BRIC-2025”; and “The Global International System after the Caucasus Crisis”.

The second conference was entitled “Elections and the Mass Media. Relations between Mass Media and Government” and held from 14^th to 15th October. It discussed themes like “Mass Media and Elections: Russian Version”; “Mass Media, Authorities and Society”; “Transformation of Mass Media in Modern Russia”; “Problems of Mass Media Functioning in Conflicts”; “Authorities’ Response to Mass Media Investigations and Publications”; “Relationship between Mass Media and Soft Power”; “Fourth Power or an Instrument of Power: Mass Media in Europe and Russia”; “News and Reporting during Periods of War and Conflict”; “Regulators of Freedom of Speech in the Internet”; “Decline of the Old Media and Rise of the New: The Role of the Internet in Changing Media Landscape”; and “Conflict of Perceptions as a Basis of a Real Conflict”.

More than 90 experts, journalists, scholars, government officials, and political scientists from Russia, Europe, North America, and Asia participated in the discussions that took place at the two conferences.

Both conferences were opened with welcome speeches by the IIGD Chairman of the Board of Trustees Mikhail Gorbachev and the Institute’s President Alexander Lebedev. Proceedings of the conferences will be posted later on the IIGD’s official Web site at http://www.misipk.org/. The International Institute of Global Development (IIGD) was launched in December 2007. Its international presentation took place in Chateau de Forget near Paris, France, in April 2008, during the Institute’s first international conference themed “Elections in Russia, the European Union and the USA in the Context of International Electoral Standards”.