Search

The article analyses how the Russian official representation of the war in Ukraine has been sacralised and then applied to the identity-building strategy. Sacralisation is considered a way to legitimise politics by attributing transcendental meaning and significance to it. This paper suggests a framework for identifying the use of sacralisation techniques and discusses the potential applications of the sacralised war narrative lying beyond the justification of war. It is shown that the Russian representation of the war, once sacralised, has codified the ideological leitmotifs of the last decades. It has built a holistic and comprehensive cognitive schema grounded in pre-constructed identity beliefs and ideas. The state of war allowed the establishment of this framework in a top-down way. Thus, the article claims that discursive sacralisation not only justifies warfare but can also intensify identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, US Congress renewed the sanctions regime to punish Russia for its alleged cyberattacks during the 2016 elections and asserted its role in foreign policy making vis-à-vis President Donald Trump. To understand this case of Trump's first significant foreign policy defeat, our analytical framework links two strands of the literature, the securitization concept and liberal International Relations theory. Previous studies underscored the ability of the executive branch to implement securitization discourses and practices. In this case, however, congressional entrepreneurs successfully securitized US-Russian relations despite presidential attempts to marginalize and de-securitize the issue. We trace the contested debates between the two branches of government to show how securitization processes by members of Congress forced the president to sign a new sanctions bill, which continued the policy towards Russia set by the Obama administration. Using qualitative content analysis, the paper highlights the ability of congressional actors to influence US foreign policy making despite high levels of polarization between the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers new challenges for Russian universities and the state, including flourishing and widespread corruption, politicization and state pressure, and student activism, and hypothesizes on how these three may be linked. To do so, this paper uses systematic research of media accounts from 2007 to 2012 in order to investigate student activism and its possible links with corruption and university politicization. This paper develops a theoretical extension that explains the corruption and coercion mechanism as applied to student activism, and places emphasis on higher education corruption and state pressure applied to universities. This study concludes that students are more interested in fighting for their economic rights and fulfilment of contractual obligations by the universities, while remaining politically inactive. This is normal for modern Russian society, where market reforms in higher education gain momentum, while democratic changes in the country remain very slow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinises the role of discourses on the manipulative use of information for Russia–West relations. Debates on so-called information warfare have gained prevalence both in the West and in Russia. Applying a poststructuralist framework, the comparative analysis discusses how these discourses work, respectively, how they interact, and what this interaction implies for Russia–West relations. While the contemporary discourses facilitate a confrontational stance of both Russia and the West towards the respective Other, it is argued, first, that these dispositions are malleable. On the long run, Russia–West relations are thus not condemned to remain hostile. Secondly, both sides still speak to some extent the same language. However, if the current cooldown prevails, this common discursive ground may fade and give way to more fundamental confrontational stances. Finally, by revealing each other's contingency, discourses in both countries make it appear less natural which interpretation is 'true' or 'right'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compliant activism – that is, political activity of the population, either fully supporting the regime, or merely criticizing individual shortcomings of its policies – strengthens authoritarian rule. However, compliant activism can over time turn into non-compliant one. Hence, the regimes need to ensure that the norms of compliant activism are internalized by the society and become self-enforcing. We use the case of the Communist legacies in Russia to show that compliant activism can, indeed, become highly persistent and outlive the regime, where it emerged. Using cross-regional variation in the levels of compliant activism in the contemporary Russia, we demonstrate that it is strongly affected by the variation in the membership share of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The results have broader implications beyond the Russian case and provide relevant insights for studying political activism in autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing the notion of 'ontological security', this study situates 'the West' within the contemporary Russian identity debate. It argues that opposition to an allegedly hostile West has cemented a collective Russian understanding of 'Russianness' which emphasises so-called traditional values and norms, all of which are said to be under pressure from the West. This process, so the article, is fuelled partly by endogenous preferences found within the Russian electorate, partly by political engineering and manipulation. The outcome is a more conflictual relationship between Russia and the West but also greater ontological security on part of the Russian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-democratic regional powers are increasingly blamed for authoritarian backlashes in formerly democratising countries, or for the persistence of entrenched autocratic regimes in their neighbourhood. Yet there is a striking scarcity of theoretical deliberations as to why powerful autocracies should prefer autocratic neighbours over democratic ones. Employing a rational-choice model that links foreign policy behaviour to the logic of domestic politics, this article develops a theoretical argument why, and under which circumstances, autocratic regional powers should be expected to attempt to impact upon governance structures in their regional environment. Combining a political economy perspective with findings from transition literature, the authors conclude that, all else equal, autocratic regional powers have strong incentives to favour similar political systems in nearby states, but that this interest must be weighted against an overarching interest in political stability. The article discusses these theoretical findings against the backdrop of country cases in the regional environments of Russia and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that deliberate and unintentional external influences play both direct and indirect roles in advancing non-liberal democratic political rule. Specifically, it identifies four key external factors whereby Russia has strengthened Central Asia's authoritarian rule: the diffusion of ideas and norms; the growing use of economic and cultural power; the minimal but strategic use of hard power; and the development of regional organizations. The article shows how Russia has consolidated and further entrenched authoritarianism by mapping its impact on the strength of Central Asia's regimes-its management of political contestation, use of coercion, containment of civil society, and degree of legitimacy. Through 'regional authoritarian learning', Russia has also strengthened its own autocracy. The conditions conducive to the advance of authoritarianism include the 'receptivity' of ideas and practices, the provision of benefits (financial or legitimacy), and perceived threats to regime survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three questions: what is the purpose of 'democratic' institutions and practices in Russia's authoritarian political system; how do these institutions and practices resonate with Russian public opinion; and how do they relate to the international democracy-promotion effort in the country? Democratic institutions have more than a facade, a legitimizing role to play under authoritarianism. They are relevant to the actual functioning of the regime. State-society relations in Russia should not be understood in exclusively dichotomous terms. This would underestimate the measure of popular legitimacy of the incumbent regime in Russia, as it misinterprets popular perceptions of political democracy. Russians deplore their lack of influence over what happens in their own country; they are strongly dissatisfied with their human rights situation, but they do not translate this into a widely shared commitment to civil liberties. Judging from regime features and popular opinion in Russia, the poor record of international democracy assistance in Russia may not come as a surprise. Compared with 'traditional' democracy assistance, rule of law support corresponds more closely with the (limited) capabilities of external actors, with the priorities of the Russian citizens as well as with the self-declared ambitions and international commitments of the Russian leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines some conceptual and practical tensions related to the application of the external governance framework to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in less motivated states, such as Belarus. First, it critically analyses the foundations of the external governance framework - from M. Smith's perspective - in order to suggest that the failure of the ENP to legitimize in Belarus should not be solely attributed to the vices of Lukashenko's regime. Second, it argues that an understanding of specifically Belarusian 'boundaries of order' - geopolitics and culture - is essential for tailoring a more nuanced policy that will be able to accommodate the needs and interests of 'less motivated' ENP partner states. In conclusion, it is suggested that a new policy framework - of extended partnership - should be more technical and less political, based on horizontal networks of cooperation rather than on hitherto hierarchical governance by conditionality that has found little appeal in the less motivated neighbourhood. Can an Eastern Partnership framework become such an alternative? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the articulation of and adherence to environmental values and norms in the activities of groups and individuals in Kaliningrad, Russia. It examines "environmental governance," defined as the formal and informal structured ways and means in which the divergent preferences of independent actors are translated into policy choices in the sphere of environmental protection. The discusses environment-related attitudinal and behavioral differences between Europe and Russia.

The article studies self-perceptions in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that have come to form the European Union's new "neighborhood." The three Slavic countries share the same borders but which are located outside the framework of European Union institutions and which have their own patterns of association. The article reports on the results of national representative surveys conducted in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine between 2000 and 2005.

Focuses on the debate concerning the issue of international anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-globalization, or global social justice movement in Russia. Details on the contemporary relevance of the theory of socialist organization; Emergence of the democratic forms of leadership within social movements; Emphasis on the idea of the revolutionary party as the organizational form of revolution.

The article focuses on the effect of political culture in relation to religion in Russia. It talks about national bolshevism, a phenomenon elaborated by Nikolai Ustrialov which manifests the development of nationalist parties and movements in the former Soviet Union and in eastern Europe. The role of the interaction between democracy and religion in building and developing distinctive political cultures is discussed. The article also examines the effect of the relationship between religion and globalization on a society's political culture.

The article offers information on the socio-cultural cohesion of Europe in the setting of the end of the cold war. It states that the eastern European revolutions of 1989/1990 weakened the cold war consensus of east and west both in the global and in the European contexts. It is also mentioned that since the Second World War western Europe has been molded in the image of the United States, just as eastern Europe was formed in the image of Russia. The author argued that the eastern European revolutions offered the possibility of a new model of European identity.