Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe article examines the ideas and arrangements referred to as nonterritorial autonomy (NTA) in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet states. Many scholars regard NTA as a theoretical breakthrough and as a way to drastically rearrange diversity policies. The author seeks to clarify whether NTA had been a groundbreaking innovation and an area of political contestations. Two short periods of NTA-related initiatives after 1917 and in the late 1980s–1990s may look like attempts (albeit ineffective) to replace the earlier forms of diversity governance. The author shows that the ideas of group societal separateness, differential treatment of individuals, group agency, and cohesiveness, as well as a group's running of its internal affairs, were present in varying degrees in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet governments' thoughts and practices. Academia and civil society were also appropriating and developing these views, and group self-rule on a nonterritorial basis was their logical extension. However, the practical implementation was, in most cases, on a top-down basis, and group agency and self-rule were affirmed mostly rhetorically. The continuity of discourses and practices demonstrates that NTA was an integral part of "normal" and broad ethnopolitical developments across the major historic divides in Northern Eurasia.

AbstractThe article examines how territorial autonomy arrangements provide for the accommodation of ethnic diversity in the framework of unconsolidated democracies or 'hybrid' regimes. The paper focuses on Ukraine and Moldova whose politics and techniques of government combine Soviet legacies with knowledge and values transferred from 'old' democracies. The article rests on institutional analysis and involves the study of institutional settings in the domains of instrumental and symbolic policies. The examined autonomy arrangements to a large extent follow the patterns inherited from the Soviet past such as non‐articulation of the autonomies' ethnic underpinning, 'fuzzy legality', the prevalence of informal institutions and their symbiosis with the formal ones, and systemic discrepancies between symbolic and instrumental policies. The author argues that such a system can be functional and compatible with democratic governance.

The article analyses discursive and practical activities by governmental and non-governmental actors in Russia and Ukraine aimed at the conceptualization and promotion of human equality on ethnic grounds as non-discrimination. The author aims at analyzing the reasons why anti-discrimination instruments are in low demand vis-à-vis concerns about ethnic xenophobia and conflicts. The author argues that the given societies have limited incentives and institutional capabilities for the creation and effective application of anti-discrimination mechanisms. The ruling elites have no reason to regard ethnic inequalities as a challenge; civil society activists and ordinary claimants might not treat non-discrimination as an efficient remedy; and there is no commonly accepted image of injustice in inter-group relations. Moreover, the marginality of anti-discrimination agenda in the post-Soviet space begs questions about the said mechanisms' universal applicability, since the latter require pre-conditions that are not guaranteed.