Judicial Measures as State Repression under Authoritarian State

• In Event: Rethinking the Russian State: The Politics of Policymaking

Abstract

This research is an attempt to account for the puzzling coexistence of increasing state repression and the civil society under authoritarian regimes, focusing on the case of Russia. I argue that the rate at which state repression is increasing is gradual and only to a degree, to the extent that the concomitant growth of civil society is made possible, as a result of the authoritarian elites’ pursuit of procedural legitimacy using judicial measures as state repression. To prove this thesis, this research will take up the case of Russia, analyzing the legislation which specifically targets newly growing civil society and the process by which such laws are applied, using the data on final verdicts from Russian federal and district courts, reports on judicial persecution by monitoring organizations and interviews. The Russian case reveals that judicial measures involves different actors with different incentive schemes than that of the central state, which eventually leads to a certain level of deflection on the original contour of state repression intended by central elites.

Author

• Seonhee Kim, Columbia University