Post‐communist Russia: a historic opportunity missed

This article analyses the nature of the current Russian system and its future trajectory. First, the continuity between the Yeltsin and Putin presidencies is made clear. The nature of the Russian system has, to a great extent, been influenced by Yeltsin, who strengthened demands not for independent institutions but for a new and more powerful authoritarian leadership. Putin has consolidated the system, based on personalized power. But despite signs of economic growth and outward stability there is evidence that the Russian system is unsustainable in the long‐term. The current system is based on a modification of the petro‐economy that reproduces the merger between power and business with the rentier class. Thus far, however, the model has not been able to solve social conflicts or stop the degradation of ‘human capital’. Nor is it likely to do so in the future.     

Greetings from the cybercaliphate: some notes on homeland insecurity

One of the paradoxical effects of the 7 July bombings in London was to expose the ambivalence in the British government's attempt to wage war on terror by forcefully prosecuting war against those who resort to jihad abroad, actively participating in coalitions of the willing whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, while affording some of Islamism's key ideologists and strategists a high degree of latitude in the United Kingdom itself. This indicates a number of contradictions in official policy that simultaneously recognizes the globalized threat from violent Islamic militancy while, under the rubric of multiculturalism, tolerating those very strains of Islamist radicalism, some of which draw upon the interdependent and transnational character of conflict, to render the UK vulnerable to those very same violent forces. Consequently, the British authorities displayed a studied indifference towards this developing transnational phenomenon both during the 1990s and in some respects even after the London bombings. To explore the curious character of the government's response to the Islamist threat requires the examination of the emergence of this radical ideological understanding and what it entails as a reaction to modernization and secularism in both thought and practice. The analysis explores how government policies often facilitated the non-negotiable identity politics of those promoting a pure, authentic and regenerated Islamic order both in the UK and abroad. This reflected a profound misunderstanding of the growing source and appeal of radical Islam that can be interpreted as a consequence of the slow-motion collision between modernity in its recent globalized form and an Islamic social character, which renders standard western modernization theory, and indeed, the notion of a 'social science' itself, deeply questionable.     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.     

Russia's economic agenda to 2020

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union the role of Russia in international relations has been in flux—a reflection of its changing capacities, positions and interests. To a certain extent, this variability has been defined by the Russian economy, which in the 1990s passed through a stage of deep structural transformation and severe financial crisis, but which then benefited from a period of fast and mainly stable economic growth in the first years of the twenty‐first century. Now, the serious economic decline as a result of the global crisis of 2008–2009 has been replaced by an unstable and uncertain recovery. In the 2000s a very specific political regime of personalized power under Vladimir Putin—set to be back as president in 2012—was established in Russia. During his next term Putin will face the most serious challenges to Russia's economic policy yet. According to some scenarios, these challenges could significantly destabilize the country's politics and economy. Russia is facing a demographic trap; the ageing of the population is increasing the pension burden on the budget, while the shrinking labour force will surely become an obstacle to growth. The dependence of the budget and balance of payments on the price of oil has grown so great that even price stabilization becomes a threat to macroeconomic stability. The poor quality of the investment climate leads to falling private investment which, in turn, hinders the much‐vaunted modernization of the economy. If combined, these problems will lead to the widening of the gap in technology and living standards between Russia and developed countries. Elimination of political competition and the impossibility of replacing political leaders through elections have led to widespread corruption and abuses, crony capitalism, and the complete undermining of the independence of the courts and law enforcement which further complicates the search for adequate responses to the mounting economic challenges. As there are no reasons to believe that Vladimir Putin is going to reform the country's current political system, the gradual accumulation of economic problems could well become the main threat to his presidency as Russia heads towards 2020.     

A Matter of Framing: Explaining the Failure of Post‐Islamist Social Movements in the Arab Spring

Shortly after the Arab Spring began in 2010, multiple scholars noted that the dominant discursive trend present within these protests was that of post‐Islamism. Post‐Islamism is broadly defined as an ideology seeking to establish a democratic state within a distinctly Islamic society. Despite the presence of post‐Islamist opportunity structures, social movements embodying post‐Islamist principles have had little success consolidating power. The theoretical argument presented here is that the failure of these movements is the result of inherent flaws within post‐Islamist frames. Specifically, this study posits that unlike traditional Islamist frames (i.e., frames emphasizing the creation of a state governed by Shari‘a) post‐Islamist frames limit the ability of movements’ to monopolize religion as a cultural asset. As such, when post‐Islamist movements face political challenges during contentious periods they cannot rely on nontemporal legitimacy to retain power. Additionally, the challenging task of integrating Islamic and democratic frames in contentious moments renders post‐Islamist movements susceptible to counterframing. The preceding claims will be tested through a comparative analysis of the Iranian Hierocracy (1977–1979), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (2011–2014). Comparing the experiences of a post‐Islamist movement (Brotherhood) with that of an Islamist movement (Hierocracy) will explicate the flaws within post‐Islamist frames.     

So far,so good? Russia and the ESDP

The progression from a European Security and Defence Initiative to a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) has not left Russian policy–makers indifferent. The Yeltsin administration greeted the emergence of the European Union as a new player in European security, seeing it as a potential challenge to NATO and American influence. President Putin's emphasis on developing trust and cooperation with the West has changed the Russian perspective on the ESDP. Russian interest in dialogue and functional cooperation with the ESDP now stems primarily from a wish to add substance to the still nascent EU–Russia partnership, which Putin has chosen as Russia's foremost external priority. In view of the imbalance between EU and Russian economic capacities, the security sphere appears as the most promising area of cooperation on which to found a meaningful long–term partnership. This article traces the evolution of Russian perceptions of the ESDP since it was first launched in June 1999 and outlines the development of EU–Russia relations in this field, which has given Russia the most advanced mechanism for interaction with the ESDP available to a non–EU country. It explores prospective areas of cooperation, as they are viewed by each side, and looks into issues of potential discord. Finally, the article considers the future of Russia–ESDP cooperation in the light of Russia's revitalized partnership with NATO.     

Islam,Territory, and Contested Space in Post-Soviet Russia

A noted American specialist on nationalism and identity politics in the former USSR reviews the political, institutional, and territorial complexities identified with the Muslim minority in the Russian Federation. Coverage includes the size and distribution of Muslim communities, the government's approach to the diverse adherents of Islam (including Wahhabis), fragmentation of Islamic institutions, and federal policies before and after the October 2004 terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, North Ossetia. Considerable attention is devoted to differences between Islamo-internationalism and Islamo-nationalism in Chechnya, as well as similarities and differences among approaches to Muslim affairs in Russia and other parts of Europe. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, Z13. 1 table, 53 references.     

Islam,Human Rights and Interfaith Relations: Some Contemporary Egyptian Perspectives

Abstract

This paper explores current discussions and debates on Islam, human rights and interfaith relations in Egypt through an analysis of the public statements and writings of various religious scholars and spiritual teachers and the textbooks used to teach Islam in public secondary schools. It is well known that Islamist perspectives have become mainstream in Egypt, a largely devout and socially conservative country that is also the source of most of the major Islamic trends and political ideologies that have impacted the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, there is a broad tendency in government-issued textbooks on Islam and in the population at large to equate Islam with democracy and human rights, despite the authoritarianism of the state and the contradictions between traditional interpretations of Islam and international human rights norms. The rhetoric of democracy and human rights is linked to the threat of terrorism, which is labeled un-Islamic. Among ordinary Egyptian Muslims, even those who support Islamist politics, there seems to be a new concern to eradicate Islamic extremism and more openness to unconventional Muslim approaches. The most liberal example of this is an association that teaches the unity of all religions from a somewhat Sufi perspective, promotes interfaith dialogue, and advocates reinterpreting the Shari'a to promote gender equality and equal human rights for all Egyptians.     

Lev Gumilev: The Ideologist of the Soviet Empire

Summary

Russian intellectuals like to appeal to examples of foreign history. Lev Gumilev's views on history are a good example. Gumilev was one of the most well-known representatives of Eurasianism, which was in turn one of the most interesting intellectual constructs in Russian historiography. Gumilev believed that Russia was born not from Kievan Rus—the view of the majority of Russian historians of his time—but from the empire of the Mongols. While Gumilev saw Europe as a hostile entity to Russia/Eurasia, this was not the case with the neo-Eurasianists of the Yeltsin era. This article examines Gumilev's Eurasianism and its influence on modern Russian national identity.     

Pan‐Islamic ideals and national loyalties: Competing attachments amongst early Muslim activists in France

Islamist movements are often considered the epitomes of transnational movements; however, little is known about the concrete workings of their transnational ambitions. In investigating the evolution of Muslim activists in France from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, this article shows that their embrace of pan‐Islamic ideals initially conflicted with strong investment in (Arab) homeland politics. Later on, their engagement with a French Islam signalled less the emergence of a de‐territorialised, de‐culturalised Islamic identity than it did the assertion of new nationally bounded (French) attachments. Overall, the analysis sheds light on a stimulating puzzle regarding cosmopolitanism: the persistence of national forms of identification in movements that aspire to bypass national affiliations.     

Socioeconomic Rights: A Dialogue With Islam

There are some who believe that there will be an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the Muslim world and the West. By contrast, this article contends that there are many opportunities for constructive dialogue between the two that can bridge the cultural divide. Specifically, the article proposes a cross‐cultural dialogue on social justice as a promising starting point for productive intercultural engagement. The article discusses the rich tradition of social justice in the Muslim world, and the ways in which these Islamic tenets are implemented by a range of Islamist political parties, including Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), Morocco's Justice and Development Party (PJD), and Tunisia's Ennahda Movement. Given the West's relative dearth of mainstream social justice parties, the article proposes that, on this count, it has much to learn from the Muslim world.     

The state of environmental protection in the Russian Federation: a review of the post-Soviet era

Abstract

In the 25 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, sweeping political, economic, and social changes have profoundly influenced environmental protection in Russia, the world’s largest country and one of global importance with respect to natural resources, biodiversity conservation, wilderness preservation, and climate change mitigation. This paper reviews the state of the environment by assessing post-Soviet era changes to legislation, government regulatory institutions, and civil society. A gulf exists between Russia’s formal environmental laws and state agency capacity and interest in enforcing them. This stems, in part, from repeated bureaucratic reorganizations that have progressively eroded environmental institutions. The Russian environmental movement, which blossomed during Gorbachev’s reforms in the late 1980s, struggled in the 1990s to mobilize the broader public due to economic hardship and political instability. Since then, the Putin administration has labeled many environmental groups “anti-Russian” and used aggressive tactics such as raiding NGO offices, intimidating journalists, and instituting severe legislative measures to quash advocacy and dissent. Post-Soviet environmental successes have been relatively few, with expansion of the protected area system and forest certification notable exceptions. These successes can partially be attributed to efforts by large environmental organizations, but expansion of certification and corporate social responsibility is also tied to Russian business interests dependent on natural resource export to global markets increasingly sensitive to environmental concerns. The paper concludes by illustrating how corruption, poor enforcement, and the muzzling of civil society render the state incapable of resolving arguably its most significant environmental challenge: illegal and unregulated resource use.     

Russia and the Islamic World

This article offers a historical retrospective of the interactions between Russia and the Islamic world in all their diversity, beginning from the first trade contacts of Medieval Rus with the Arabs and Persians of the Abbasid era, as well as with the Turkic-speaking residents of Volga Bulgaria. The author concludes that except for the initial sporadic period, the connections between Russian and Muslim worlds have been stable and close throughout all the following periods. Moreover, with time, these two civilizational communities turned into communicating vessels because of the growing number of Muslims within the Russian State and in Russian society. Special attention is paid to Russian-Turkish relations across several centuries. A complete comprehension of the relations between Russia and the Islamic world through an example of the historical retrospective of Russian interactions with the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey helps to provide a full appreciation of the importance of joint efforts to secure a bridge connecting East and West and the oriental civilizations with Russia.     

The future of NATO enlargement after the Ukraine crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that his country's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was partly in response to NATO enlargement. NATO leaders counter that eastern enlargement is not a cause of the Ukraine crisis, and they argue that enlargement does not threaten Russia, but rather it creates stability for all of Europe. This article examines the history of NATO–Russian tensions over enlargement, considers how NATO's enlargement policy factored into the Ukraine crisis, and reviews options for the future of enlargement. Drawing on diplomatic history and geopolitical theory, the article explains Russia's persistent hostility towards NATO's policy of eastward expansion and highlights NATO's failure to convert Russia to its liberal world‐view. The alliance's norm‐driven enlargement policy has hindered the creation of an enduring NATO–Russia cooperative relationship and helped fuel the outbreak of conflict in Georgia and Ukraine. In light of this, NATO should alter its current enlargement policy by infusing it with geopolitical rationales. This means downgrading the transformative and democratization elements of enlargement and, instead, focusing on how candidate countries add to NATO capabilities and impact overall alliance security. A geopolitically‐driven enlargement policy would prioritize countries in the Balkan and Scandinavian regions for membership and openly exclude Georgia and Ukraine from membership. Ultimately, this policy would have the effect of strengthening NATO while giving it more flexibility in dealing with Russia.     

The narratives of exclusion and self-exclusion in the Russian conflict discourse on EU–Russian Relations

The article focuses on the interplay of the narratives of ‘exclusion’ and ‘self-exclusion’ in the Russian discourse on EU–Russian relations. Since the late 1990s, this discourse has acquired an increasingly conflictual orientation, whereby the official foreign policy objectives of ‘strategic partnership’ with the EU and Russia's ‘integration with Europe’ are increasingly problematised across the entire Russian political spectrum. In the analysis of the Russian conflict discourse we shall identify two at first glance opposed narratives. Firstly, the EU enlargement has raised the issue of the expansion of the Schengen visa regime for Russian citizens, travelling to Europe. Particularly acute with regard to Kaliningrad Oblast', this issue has also generated a wider identity-related discourse on the EU's exclusionary policies towards Russia. Secondly, the perception of Russia's passive or subordinate status in EU–Russian cooperative arrangements at national, regional and local levels resulted in the problematisation of the insufficiently reciprocal or intersubjective nature of the EU–Russian ‘partnership’ and the increasing tendency towards Russia's ‘self-exclusion’ from integrative processes, grounded in the reaffirmation of state sovereignty that generally characterises the Putin presidency. This article concludes with the interpretation of the two conflict narratives in the wider context of debates around the project of European integration.     

Putin's Russia: slowing the pendulum without stopping the clock

Vladimir Putin has been president of Russia for eighteen months, sufficienttime for some judgement about his style of leadership and achievements to have been made. He set out to restore order to a Russia that was fragmenting in Yeltsin's latter years and to revive Russians' pride in their country. Nonetheless, he remains committed to a liberal market economy integrated with the world economy. He encouraged force to bring order to Chechnya, but has not really tackled the problem of reconstruction. He has brought the regions under greater control by the centre, but has been prepared to compromise to avoid confrontation. His most tangible achievement to date has been in championing legislation, most of it long overdue, to establish the legal basis of a market economy. He has been able to exploit a working majority in the parliament, which Yeltsin never enjoyed. The success of this enterprise will depend to some degree on its political context. Persistent efforts by Putin and his team to exert control over the political process and the media will be counterproductive if they concentrate power with the president but leave him without broadly based, independent political support. Putin is likely to remain in power until 2008, however, so he has time on his side.     

Pierre Manent and the Politics of the Possible

Pierre Manent's recent works are marked by what he describes as a sense of realistic political possibility, which he uses to form a political response to the challenge of Islamic radicalism. Manent's “politics of the possible” differs from the usual alternatives that propose to integrate Islamic communities on liberal-individualist terms, or to repatriate Islamic immigrants to their countries of origin. Neither of those alternatives involves “politics” in the sense of articulating a political form within the polity given to us—a polity that now includes a sizable antiliberal minority. Manent's proposal to incorporate Muslim communities formally into the French polity by way of a certain social contract is thus a “politics of the possible” even if it is unlikely to be pursued. This article outlines Manent's account of political possibility and discusses two difficulties with his approach. First, the modern state's success and account of its legitimacy have distanced it from the foundational experiences in which it was capable of addressing the question of religion. Second, the situation caused by the radicalization of existing and new Muslim communities occurs at a different juncture in European political history from that which gave rise to the modern state.     

An Enlightened path towards conservatism: critical junctures and changing elite perceptions in early nineteenth-century Russia

This article explores the historical roots of Russian conservatism by analyzing the evolution of Russia’s Westernized, Enlightenment-minded nobility to a conservative segment of Russian society in the early nineteenth century. The events of 1789 and 1812 were critical junctures that made the Russian nobility painfully aware of their own deep level of Westernization. The article first describes the reverberations of the French Revolution among the Russian elite. It also discusses the internal and external scrutiny of Russia’s relations with France under Napoleon, which made Russian conservatism a contingency. It then describes the evolution between 1789 and 1812 of a corpus of conservative ideas ranging from traditionalism to ardent patriotism and xenophobia. Napoleon’s 1812 campaign against Russia overshadowed the generational gap and diverging political and literary preferences among the elite. The reaction to it illustrates the intrinsic duality of the Russian elite: culturally Westernized, yet politically conservative. Yet the influence of several Western defenders of the ancien régime on Russia’s conservatives shows that the essentially conservative Russian identity as propagated by Putin these days originally might have been more pan-European than purely Russian.     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

The Crimea conundrum: legitimacy and public opinion after annexation

ABSTRACT

The widespread international condemnation of the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014 is at odds with the strong local support for the transfer of territory in the peninsula. Though regarded as illegitimate by most governments as indicated in a UN General Assembly vote, the Russian government argued that the transfer was justified since it reflected the majority opinion in Crimea. The examination of attitudes in December 2014 through a representative survey in Crimea confirmed the support for territorial transfer and indicated that most residents believed that their well-being would improve as a result. Most lamented the end of the Soviet Union but strongly trusted President Putin and his policies as a way to improve the local economy. Nearly everyone had Russian citizenship less than a year after the annexation. There was little difference between the biggest demographic groupings, Russians and Ukrainians, in attitudes and beliefs. Exceptionally, the Tatar minority consistently demonstrated opposition to the annexation, distrust of Putin and supported a return to the circumstances that the peninsula had experienced after 1991. With the exception of this minority, the annexation continues to garner wide popular approval despite international opprobrium, sanctions against Russia and sustained geopolitical tensions in the Black Sea region. This is the Crimea conundrum.