ABSTRACT
This chapter zooms in on the role of laws in selective law enforcement. It presents a typology of incoherence to show various ways laws may be construed exactly for quasi-legal purposes. Common among the utilized laws is how they create a legal environment in which everyone may be framed for legal violations, at least for purposes of preliminary investigations. With regard to selective law enforcement, the legal formulations are important by virtue of how they open doors for backroom solutions and bend easily when pressure is added. While the incoherence of the formal framework lubricates the quasi-legal prosecution, it cannot by itself adequately explain the phenomenon. After all, vague or flexible laws are also present in well-functioning legal systems, without repressive consequences. In order to make sense of these occurrences, we need to integrate the incoherence perspective with authoritarian rationality as well as the peculiarities of the Russian legal tradition.
