Ethnonationalism or a Financial-Criminal Incentive Structure? Explaining Elite Support in Crimea for Russia's Annexation
2024, Comparative Politics [main pdf] [empirical appendix] |
This paper to tests ethnonationalism in explaining elite support for Russia's annexation against a rival explanation focusing on the role of criminality and crime (financial-criminal incentive structure). By exposing how and which elites defected in Crimea, the paper demonstrates that elite breakage and realignments occurred within a financial-criminal incentive structure to motivate support for and engagement in annexation. In turn, this paper discusses broader implications for understanding Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the politics of conflict, nationalism, and the wider region of the former Soviet Union.
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The Securitised ‘Others’ of Russian Nationalism in Ukraine and Russia
2023, LSE Public Policy Review [pdf] |
This article explores how Russian nationalism has increasingly securitized and repressed three groups: Muslim minorities living in Russia as internal ‘others’, Ukrainian citizens as external ‘others’, and Crimean Tatars, as ‘others’ in between. Overall, I argue that we need to understand the breadth and depth of the repression against these ‘others’ of Russian nationalism, which now extends to Russia’s desire to legitimize its genocide in Ukraine.
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This article consider the concept of existential nationalism to understand Russia's war against, and invasion of, Ukraine. I argue that existential nationalism has more leverage than existing concepts (ethnic nationalism, civic nationalism) to explore existential nationalism as Russia's motivation to pursue war, whatever the costs, and Ukraine's motivation to fight with everything it has.
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Perpetually 'Partly Free': Lessons from Post-Soviet Hybrid Regimes on Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe
2018, East European Politics [pdf] |
This article explores the lessons of Ukraine and Moldova (rampant state capture, media capture and the role of civil society), for thinking about democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe.
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