Democracy Promotion and Authoritarian Diffusion: The Foreign Origins of Post-Soviet Election Laws

Flawed electoral legislation in post-Soviet states has facilitated the conduct of undemocratic elections. This article argues that the low quality of electoral legislation in the region results in large part from a process of ‘authoritarian diffusion’, whereby the election laws of the post-Soviet states extensively borrow and adapt from Soviet laws and post-communist Russian laws. The authorities of most post-Soviet states have routinely disregarded recommendations by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Venice Commission to improve electoral legislation. Besides presenting evidence of ‘authoritarian diffusion’ across the post-Soviet area, the article highlights the enduring impact of the Soviet legacy and of Russia's relatively hegemonic position in the region.     

The Uses of Sovereignty in Twenty-first Century Russian Foreign Policy

Contemporary Russian foreign policy demonstrates a dual approach to state sovereignty, using a Westphalian model of sovereignty outside the former Soviet region and a post-Soviet model inside it. This approach performs three functions in contemporary Russian foreign policy: securing Russian national interests at domestic, regional, and international levels; balancing against the United States; and acting as a marker of ‘non-Western’ power identity in an emergent multipolar order. The conflict between these two models increasingly appears to threaten the last of these objectives, however, and as a means of advancing foreign policy objectives the approach thus appears caught in a self-defeating logic.     

If not by tanks,then by banks? The role of soft power in Putin's foreign policy

This article considers the benefits of the recently developed concept of ‘soft power’ in understanding Russia's foreign policy. It argues that claims that Moscow is exercising a form of soft power imperialism in the former Soviet region cannot be fully supported by the existing evidence. To differentiate between the imperialist and stabilising objectives of Russian foreign policy the article analyses the Russian domestic discourse on exploiting soft power in foreign policy. It then compares the views of different schools of thought with Vladimir Putin's philosophy and foreign policy record. Finally, it selects for closer investigation Russia's policy in the Caucasus.     

Russian hegemonies: historical snapshots, regional security and changing forms of Russia's role in the post-Soviet region

The broad purpose of this study is to exemplify changing forms of hierarchical rule manifested in post-Soviet Russia's varying provision of regional security related to military conflicts. Russia's regional role varies in form and in thickness. Although the endurance of Soviet legacy can be observed in four major areas (stabilising borders, economic interest, unification of fellow Slavs and fluctuating alliances), there is enough variance to suggest that over-deterministic theories about Russian regional foreign policy do not account for conjunctural factors that can contribute to change. Instead, we can view the Soviet and post-Soviet regional dynamic as one that is on a fluid anarchy–hierarchy spectrum.     

Generational Differences in Russian Attitudes towards Democracy and the Economy

The purpose of this article is to explore whether there is evidence of generational differences in Russian attitudes towards democracy. Are the attitudes, values and beliefs of those who came of age politically after the fall of the Soviet Union significantly different from those who did so in the Soviet period? The main finding is that the post-Soviet generation of Russians is generally more supportive of democratic values and institutions and a free market economy than the generations which came of age politically during the Soviet years. Such a result is not surprising. However, while support was found to be the case generally, the differences appear much more strongly for economic reforms than for political ones. In trying to explain why this should be, the authors argue that instrumentalist rather than culturalist considerations are paramount. Put another way, the current generation appears to be less interested in politics than in getting ahead in the world. If these differences are generational and not simply a function of aging, in the future this generation may be less interested in the public good than in their own.     

The conferences

Each of the post-Soviet Central Asian states inherited both inefficient collectivized agricultural systems and an understanding of the nation rooted in categories defined by Soviet nationality policy. Despite the importance placed on territorial homelands in many contemporary understandings of nationalism, the divergent formal responses to these dual Soviet legacies have generally been studied in isolation from one another. However, there are conceptual reasons to expect more overlap in these responses than generally assumed; in this paper, we engage in a focused comparison of three post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) in order to investigate how nationalizing policies and discourse, land distribution, and ethnic tensions interact with each other over time. We reveal that the nationalizing discourses of the three states – despite promoting the titular groups vis-à-vis other groups – have had limited influence on the actual processes of land distribution. Furthermore, the Kyrgyzstani case challenges the assumption that the effect flows unidirectionally from nationalizing policies and discourse to land reform implementation; in this case, there is evidence that the disruption caused by farm reorganization generated grievances which were then articulated by some nationalistic political elites.     

Who has led Russia? Russian regional political elites, 1954 – 2006

Quantitative measures are used to compare the age, tenure, gender and change of political elites in 18 Russian regions from 1954 to 2006. The study finds more similarities than differences between regional elites from the Soviet era and from the post-Soviet Russian era. The Russian regional political elite since 1992 is actually older than the Soviet elite and resembles it quite closely in terms of years in office and turnover, comparing both the total time spans of the elites of each era and at 10-year intervals from 1956 through to 2006. Even in relation to differences by region and gender since 1992, there has been a re-emergence of a regional political establishment in a similar pattern to that of the Soviet era.     

Obtaining redress for abuse of office in Russia: The Soviet legacy and the long road to administrative justice

This article examines the options for redressing abuse of office available to citizens in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. I consider the courts, the procuracy, and the complaint mechanism as sites for citizens to lodge claims against abuse of office in late-Soviet and post-Soviet times. After the collapse of the Soviet system there was an attempt to overcome the Soviet legacy, to strengthen legal institutions and establish administrative justice. Analysis of Soviet and post-Soviet normative documents and statistical data allows us to argue that opportunities for Russian citizens to combat service crimes in the courts have improved substantially. However, the system for coping with abuse of office remains imperfect, and retains features of the Soviet legacy despite vague legislation about administrative justice and dual ways of coping with abuse through legal and quasi-legal mechanisms. The re-establishment of the complaint mechanism in the conditions of contemporary Russia exacerbates this imperfection. Overall, the complaint mechanism occupies a significant place in people's options for making claims against officials, especially claims against high-ranking officials.     

National Identities and Virtual Foreign Policies among the Eastern Slavs

The three eastern Slavic states-Russia, Ukraine and Belarus-have virtual foreign policies towards each other that are a product of weakly defined national identities inherited from the former USSR. In addition, this virtuality has been compounded by the presence of centrist, former high-ranking nomenklatura elites who have led all three countries at different times since 1992. Former “sovereign communist” centrist oligarchs are ideologically amorphous, in both the domestic and foreign policy arenas. Of the three eastern Slavic states, Ukraine had the strongest ethnic national identity by 1917–1918 when the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed. A Russian ethnic identity had not been promoted in the Tsarist era, in contrast to an imperialstatist one. Belarus was heavily Russified and all of its territory was to be found within the Tsarist empire. Of the three ethnic groups therefore, only Ukrainians made a major attempt, unsuccessfully, to create an independent state in 1917-1921. In the USSR the situation did not radically improve, with the exception again of Ukraine. Russian and Soviet identities were deliberately intertwined, especially after 1934. Belarus emerged from the former USSR with a stronger Soviet Belarusian than Belarusian ethnocultural identity. For Ukraine the record is mixed with nation building accompanied by nation destroying. The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (SFSR) was the only Soviet republic to never declare independence from the USSR, Ukraine held a highly successful referendum on independence while Belarus failed to hold a referendum after declaring independence a day after Ukraine.     

‘Mimicking’ the West? Russia's legitimization discourse from Georgia war to the annexation of Crimea

The 2008 Georgia war represented a turning point in Russian foreign policy. It was for the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when Moscow invaded an independent country and for the first time when two members of the Council of Europe fought against each other. A premiere for Russian post-Soviet foreign policy was registered in 2014 too. The annexation of Crimea represented the first incorporation of foreign territories by Moscow since World War II. These two events generated the West's protest and blatantly contradict Russia's proclaimed foreign policy discourse centered around the respect for states' sovereignty and equality of actors in the international system. Starting from the assertion that the formulation of Russia's foreign policy is determined by the West's international behavior – Moscow looking whether to emulate or to find alternatives to it; the present paper will compare Russia's legitimization arguments for the 2008 war and the 2014 annexation of Crimea trying to assess how Moscow answers Western criticism and whether there is a continuity in Russian official legitimization narratives.     

The evolution of Russian federalism and its current fiscal dilemmas: an institutional account

In order to make sense of the fiscal component of the emergent federalism in the post-Soviet Russian political system, this article provides an historical-institutional analysis which charts over time the development both of legal frameworks and informal political contexts, thus providing an overview of the changing mix of constraints, resources, and strategic opportunities present to actors occupying various roles within the federal system. Several discrete stages in the evolution of Russian federalism from the late Gorbachev era to the present are identified. According to this analysis, Russia's political system has elements of genuine federalism, but federalization is constrained by specific attributes of the Soviet legacy. Russian federalism is asymmetrical, that is, ethnically defined subunits (the republics) enjoy greater powers than their non-ethnically defined counterparts. This asymmetry may have been a necessary response to the ethnic ambitions of the so- called “autonomous” entities inherited from the Soviet era. At the same time, however, some of the non-ethnic subunits (principally the oblasts, or regions) have demanded similar rights of autonomy, especially with regard to control of natural resources, shared tax revenues, and other economic concerns. Developments since the mid-1990s suggest a modest return of power to the federal center at the expense of the subunits, but the latter still enjoy a degree of independence unheard of during the Soviet period. Meanwhile, there has been a trend toward equalization of economic powers between the republics and oblasts. Still worrisome, however, are the disparities in wealth among the various subunits and the penchant for self-enrichment on the part of leaders of otherwise impoverished regions and republics.     

Divergence and dispersion in the Russian economy

While post-war economic development In market economies was characterised by geographical concentration of economic activity, this was not the case in the Soviet Union. Soviet economic development resulted in a highly dispersed economic landscape with mono-industrial towns scattered around the country. One plausible reason for this was low perceived transport costs as seen by Soviet planners. Another reason was that political and not only economic motives governed industrial location (Maurseth, 2001a). In addition to the sheer size of the country, these factors made the Soviet Union one of the most transport-intensive economies in the world. The post-Soviet Russian economic geography faces Russia with important challenges. Production, population and employment patterns are likely to change dramatically. There are at least four reasons for this hypothesis. The first is structural change in the Russian economy. Production patterns in Russia were highly distorted. In the future industrial production, and in particular heavy industry, will represent a smaller share of total production while consumer industry and services will probably experience relatively higher growth rates. The second reason to expect a changing economic geography is that transport costs are likely to increase. While the Soviet Union implicitly subsidised transport heavily, Russia now faces important challenges due to increasing transport prices. The third reason for expecting change is population changes. Recently, migration from the climatically least hospitable areas has been growing. In the future, these trends are likely to continue. Fourth, and partly as a consequence of the above-mentioned factors, market access will probably become more important for location of Russian industry. The Russian economic landscape is therefore likely to become more concentrated in the years to come.     

Conflicting Patterns of Thought in the Russian Debate on Modernisation and Innovation 2008–2013

This article draws conclusions based on an analysis of the relationship between economic ideas and institutional change in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, so far covering roughly the years from 1971 to 2007. It analyses the recent debate on economic modernisation in Russian economics. We argue that the relative failure of transition has to be seen in the context of a ‘failed transition of the mind’ and that the recent modernisation debate resembles the debate of the Brezhnev period.     

Culture and Post-Soviet Transitions: A Pilot Study in the Republic of Armenian

In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia declared its independence and thus began her abrupt journey back to democracy and a free-market economy. Using semistructured interviews, this study examined the differences in values, beliefs, and attitudes among three differnet age groups of Armenians about the post-transition world. The groups were Generation1 (those who lived under the Soviet system), Generation 2 (those who grew up under the Soviet system and have lived in the post-Soviet Armenia), and Generation 3 (those who were either still children during the Soviet Union or were born after its demise). The study found one major theme for each cohort: nostalgia, ambivalence–nostalgia, and euphoria–nostalgia, respectively. Nationalism was common to all groups, though not as prevalent as nostalgia. The study can help expand understanding of the link between micro issues (e.g., values, beliefs, and attitudes) and macro issues (e.g., history, economic systems, post-Soviet transition, and globazliation), as well as provide insight into the policy implications of micro issues.     

Pussy Riot as agent provocateur: conspiracy theories and the media construction of nation in Putin's Russia

This article studies the impact of conspiracy theories on post-Soviet Russian nation-building through the analysis of how the Pussy Riot trial was constructed by the Russian media. Conspiracy theory as a phenomenon is defined as a populist tool for relocation of power among different political actors, which creates identities and boosts social cohesion. This interpretation of conspiracy theories helps investigate how the media constructed the image of Pussy Riot and their supporters as a conspiring subversive minority, which threatened the Russian nation. The ability of conspiracy theory for swift social mobilization helped the authorities to strengthen the public support of its policies and model the Russian nation as ethnically and religiously homogeneous.     

Privileged Exclusion in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Ethnic Return Migration,Citizenship, and the Politics of (Not) Belonging

This article explores issues of citizenship and belonging associated with post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s repatriation programme. Beginning in 1991, Kazakhstan financed the resettlement of over 944,000 diasporic Kazakhs from nearly a dozen countries, including Mongolia, and encouraged repatriates to become naturalised citizens. Using the concept of ‘privileged exclusion’, this article argues that repatriated Kazakhs from Mongolia belong due to their knowledge of Kazakh language and traditions yet, at the same time, do not belong due to their lack of linguistic fluency in Russian, the absence of a shared Soviet experience, and limited comfort with the ‘cosmopolitan’ lifestyle that characterises the new elite in this post-Soviet context.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

Soft Power: A Comparison of Discourse and Practice in Russia and China

This article compares soft power as a normative and operational construct in the Russian and Chinese political context. I examine Russian and Chinese discourse on soft power as well as the efforts of the Kremlin and Beijing to devise programmes for its implementation. I then compare and evaluate the similarities and differences in Russian and Chinese soft power strategy. The similarities between the two states indicate their joint status as authoritarian regimes with a Marxist–Leninist heritage. The differences can be attributed to their vastly disparate economic circumstances, but also to historical, social, and political factors that influence soft power policies.     

The Soviet and the Post-Soviet: Street Names and National Discourse in Almaty

Abstract

While discussing Kazakhstan's post-Soviet identity, scholars treat ‘Kazakhisation’ as a given, and the substance of the process of developing such an identity is usually ignored. This article gives an insight into this process by analysing the politics of street names in Almaty and its relation to collective memory in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. It is argued that the so-called ‘Kazakhisation’ of the country has been shaped primarily by the Soviet legacy, and it is in no sense pursuing the elimination of the Soviet past, or moving essentially anti-Russian lines. In fact, the post-Soviet discourse of the Kazakh nation is not a rupture but a continuation of Soviet discourses.     

Migration diplomacy in the Global South: cooperation,coercion and issue linkage in Gaddafi’s Libya

Despite a recent resurgence in research on the politics of migration, foreign policy analysts have yet to approach cross-border population mobility as a distinct field of inquiry. Particularly within the Global South, scant work has theorised the interplay between migration and interstate bargaining. This article proposes the framework of migration diplomacy to examine how mobility features in states’ issue-linkage strategies, in both cooperative and coercive contexts. Drawing on Arabic, French and English primary sources, it empirically demonstrates the salience of its framework through an analysis of Libya’s migration diplomacy towards its Arab, African and European neighbours under Muammar Gaddafi.