Politics and Legitimacy in Post-Soviet Eurasia - by Martin Brusis & Joachim Ahrens & Martin Schulze Wessel (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Political legitimacy has become a scarce resource in Russia and other post-Soviet states in Eurasia. Their capacity to deliver prosperity has suffered from economic crisis, the conflict in Ukraine and the ensuing confrontation with the West. Will nationalism and repression enable political regimes to survive? This book investigates the politics of legitimation in post-Soviet countries, focusing on how political and intellectual elites exploit different modes of legitimation. Combining cross-national comparisons and country case studies, it addresses state-economy relations, pro-presidential parties, courts, ideas of nationhood, historical and literary narratives. Weak economic performance, evidence of electoral fraud, unresponsive governments and the waning authority of presidents continue to jeopardize institutional legitimacy. Whilst incumbent elites have been able to shift between legitimation modes, this collection argues that shifts towards nationalism, artificial charisma and traditionalism will not be sufficient in the long term to keep elites in power"--

Book Synopsis

Political legitimacy has become a scarce resource in Russia and other post-Soviet states. Their capacity to deliver prosperity has suffered from economic crisis, war in Ukraine and confrontation with the West. Will nationalism and repression enable political regimes to survive? This book studies the politics of legitimation in Post-Soviet Eurasia.

Review Quotes

"It is quite rare to find an academic publication of the same analytical depth and theoretical insight as Brusis, Ahrens, and Wessel's edited volume. The book presents a great selection of theoretical and empirical contributions focusing on a variety of issues in the former Soviet republics." (Aijan Sharshenova, Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Vol. 3 (1), 2017)

"The volume consists of 10 chapters focusing on different geographical areas of post-Soviet Eurasia (PSE) that range substantively from the evaluation of party systems, political economy to national discourses, patriotic education, court systems, literature and memory politics, ... the book will be of a great interest for postgraduate students and scholars in a variety of fields and will hopefully serve as a good basis for further detailed and comparative studies on legitimacy in democratic and non-democratic states." ( Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Democratization, Vol. 25 (2), September, 2016)

"This edited volume of ten articles provides an in-depth look at various facets of the concept of institutional legitimacy, as it pertains to the states of post-Soviet Eurasia. The book's interdisciplinary nature provides a wide scope in a variety of case studies, showcasing the different levels of interaction within the Eurasian regimes. ... It is an important resource for the study of legitimacy, especially as many of the regimesunder study currently find themselves in crisis." (Mark Teramae, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 68 (9), 2016)

About the Author

Joachim Ahrens, Professor of International Economics, Private University of Applied Sciences, Göttingen, Germany Martin Brusis, Managing Director of the project network 'Institutions and Institutional Change in Postsocialism', University of Munich, Germany Philipp Bürger, Historian and PhD candidate, University of Munich, Institute of Historiography, Germany Fabian Burkhardt, PhD student in political science, Graduate School of East and Southeast European Studies, University of Munich, Germany Adele Del Sordi, Post-Doctoral Researcher in Political Science, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Julia Grauvogel, Research Fellow, GIGA German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany Herman W. Hoen, Professor of International Political Economy, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Leslie Holmes, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Melbourne, Australia Martin Schulze Wessel, Professor for the History of East and Southeast Europe, University of Munich, Germany Martin C. Spechler, Professor of Economics at Indiana University, USA Alfred Sproede, Professor of Slavonic and Baltic Literatures, University of Münster, Germany Christian Timm, PhD student of political science and researcher, Private University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen, Germany Alexei Trochev, Associate Professor for Political Science, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan Christian von Soest, Senior Research Fellow, GIGA German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany Oleksandr Zabirko, PhD candidate in East European cultural studies, University of Münster, Germany