| JRL HOME | SUPPORT | SUBSCRIBE | RESEARCH & ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT | |
Old Saint Basil's Cathedral in MoscowJohnson's Russia List title and scenes of Saint Petersburg
Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson
#33 - JRL 2006-9 - JRL Home
From: "Richard Sakwa" <R.Sakwa@kent.ac.uk>
Subject: New Book: Alexander N. Domrin, The Limits of Russian Democratisation: Emergency Powers and States of Emergency
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006

Professor Richard Sakwa
Head of Department
Department of Politics and International Relations
Rutherford College
University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent
CT2 7NX
Telephone: 01227 827409
Fax: 01227 827033
Website: www.kent.ac.uk/politics

Alexander N. Domrin, The Limits of Russian Democratisation: Emergency Powers and States of Emergency

Russia’s transition towards greater democracy and the rule of law seems dangerously limited by Boris Yeltsin’s ‘superpresidential’ constitution that makes the Chief Executive technically unimpeachable and allows the incumbent to take on emergency powers under which individual liberties can be severely curtailed. These powers are not just theoretical, but have actually been exercised on several occasions.

This book examines the nature of states of emergency and emergency powers and respective provisions in the Russian constitution and contemporary legislation. The author discusses the use of emergency powers in earlier Russian and Soviet history, and appraises the legal thought underpinning such powers. A wide-ranging analysis of the origins and use of emergency powers in Western and non-Western countries is provided, tracing the theories and practicalities of emergency orders throughout world history. The author warns that the longer an emergency regime lasts, the less effective the measure has a tendency to become. States of emergency have a high risk of backfiring and of lending unintentional support to the terrorists and extra-state actors that such measures are aimed at in the first place. In addition, he finds that the 1993 Russian Constitution ­ adopted in the aftermath of the violent dissolution of Russia’s first democratically elected parliament - is actually a step backwards not only from the Russian law of 1991 but even from a Soviet act on emergency powers of Gorbachev’s period. The negotiation of rights and powers under Russia’s emergency legislation and national security law ties into the larger problem of constitutionalism in this still-developing democracy.

With original research and remarkable insight, The Limits of Russian Democratisation will be of interest to students and scholars examining contemporary Russia with its inherited and newly acquired contradictions, and studying Russia’s legal and political systems in the context of Russian and world history.

Alexander N. Domrin is a former Chief Specialist of the Russian parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, and Moscow representative of the US Congressional Research Service. The author earned his advanced academic degrees at leading educational institutions in Russia and America. He has taught at numerous universities in the USA. and was a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Law School. His publications include The Constitutional Mechanism of a State of Emergency (Moscow: Public Science Foundation, 1998), and reports to Russia’s Council for Foreign and Defence Policy.

This book is No. 24 in the series published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies) by Routledge. The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. Prospective authors may contact the series editor, Richard Sakwa (R.Sakwa@kent.ac.uk).

Routledge accepts pre-orders, with a discount.

Published:

1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991-2000
Roman Wolczuk

2. Political Parties in the Russian Regions
Derek S. Hutcheson

3. Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation
Edited by Simon Smith

4. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe
J.C. Sharman

5. Political Elites and the New Russia
Anton Steen

6. Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness
Sarah Hudspith

7. Performing Russia ­ Folk Revival and Russian Identity
Laura J. Olson

8. Russian Transformations
Edited by Leo McCann

9. Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin
The Baton and Sickle
Edited by Neil Edmunds

10. State Building in Ukraine
The Ukranian parliament, 1990-2003
Sarah Whitmore

11. Defending Human Rights in Russia
Sergei Kovalyov, Dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969-2003
Emma Gilligan

12. Small-Town Russia
Postcommunist Livelihoods and Identities A Portrait of the Intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999-2000
Anne White

13. Russian Society and the Orthodox Church
Religion in Russia after Communism
Zoe Knox

14. Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age
The Word as Image
Stephen Hutchings

15. Between Stalin and Hitler
Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940-46
Geoffrey Swain

16. Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe
The Russian, Czech and Slovak Fiction of the Changes 1988-98
Rajendra A. Chitnis

17. Soviet Dissent and Russia’s Transition to Democracy
Dissident Legacies
Robert Horvath

18. Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001
Screening the Word
Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski

19. Russia as a Great Power
Dimensions of Security Under Putin
Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen

20. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940
Truth, Justice and Memory
George Sanford

21. Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia
Philip Boobbyer

Forthcoming:

22. The Limits of Russian Democratisation
Emergency Powers and States of Emergency
Alexander N. Domrin

23. The Dilemmas of Destalinisation
A Social and Cultural History of Reform in the Khrushchev Era
Edited by Polly Jones

24. News Media and Power in Russia
Olessia Koltsova

25. Post-Soviet Civil Society
Democratization in Russia and the Baltic States
Anders Uhlin

26. The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland
Jacqueline Hayden

27. Television, Democracy and Elections in Russia
Sarah Oates

28. Russian Constitutionalism
Historical and Contemporary Development
Andrey N. Medushevsky.