Politics and Legitimacy in Post-Soviet Eurasia

Martin Brusis, Joachim Ahrens, and Martin Schulze Wessel are the editors of the anthology "Politics and Legitimacy in Post-Soviet Eurasia", which has been published with Palgrave Macmillan recently. The book includes findings from the multi-disciplinary research network "KomPost" and investigates the politics of legitimation in post-Soviet countries, focusing on how political and intellectual elites exploit different modes of legitimation.

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.

The book includes findings from a multi-disciplinary research network studying institutions and institutional change in post-Soviet countries (KomPost). This network has been generously financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through its area studies program.

ISBN: 9781137489432
264 pages
Published with Palgrave Macmillan in October 2015
Hardcover (£70.00 / $110.00) and Ebook (EPUB / PDF)