ABSTRACT
During the second term of the first Putin presidency a quiet ideological revolution swept Russia. It was “sovereign democracy,” an ambitious attempt by Kremlin ideologues to formulate a conservative ideology that suited the peculiarities of Russia. The new ideology was to create a collective homology in which a blend of liberal democracy, nationalism, authoritarianism, Russia’s past greatness, a vision of a “seventh Rome,” a form of otherness, an alternative to western liberalism, and a torchbearer for modern conservatism. This chapter explores the nature and concept of sovereign democracy as an ideological strategy sanctioned by the state during the second term of the first Putin presidency and how that ideology permeated the Russian state and formed statist policies. The notion of sovereign democracy is discussed for what it was: a primary form of enhanced ruling in Russia’s strategy of legitimizing its behavior in the domestic and international legal arena with the central aim of justifying Russia as a form of other in the international civilizational discourse and legal relations. The chapter first sets out a general background, and then contextualizes the western foundations of sovereign democracy by looking at Thomas Hobbes’s and Carl Schmitt’s position on the political concept of the state and what the chapter refers to as enhanced ruling. It then examines the emergence of sovereign democracy in the first Putin presidency (FPP) and then the later disappearance of this radical politico-philosophy thinking in Russia. The chapter then turns to an examination of the legislative developments in the FPP to analyze to what extent the concept and political thought of sovereign democracy was behind those legislative developments. The chapter offers a contextual analysis of sovereign democracy in international law and Russia’s first use of force in armed conflicts since 1991 during the Russo-Georgian war of 2008.
