Interpreting Territorial Autonomy in Authoritarian Environments

Alexander Osipov

International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity Studies

Many so-called ‘hybrid’ and authoritarian regimes utilise autonomous or federal arrangements whose origins, design, functionality, and effects need closer examination. The former Soviet Union is an area with numerous territorial autonomy arrangements (TA arrangements). Most are inherited from the communist past and persist under authoritarian rule. My main argument in this post is that the post-Soviet autonomies provide good opportunities for studying depoliticized consent-based governance (as opposed to ‘political’ rule resting on contestations or coercion), and as a framework for a shared rationality and common aspirations of the rulers and the ruled. 

Although one can barely regard authoritarian constitutions and law as a set of fundamental normative regulations upfront, it would be productive to depart from ‘reductive nomenclatures’ (e.g., characterizing such constitutions as cultist, sham, isolationist, or dead letter). Authoritarian legal institutions do matter as they perform roles as operating manuals, billboards, blueprints and window dressing. I argue that one can go even further and address law in these cases as part of a broader consent-manufacturing machinery. The issue is a matter of concern mostly for political science. However, constitutional and legal frameworks are important as such and as parts of wider structures of governance. In this post, I will suggest a promising outlook and a research perspective rather than an accomplished interpretative scheme. My intention is to offer an explanation for post-Soviet TAs’ resilience and societal acceptance by using Foucault’s governmentality as a theoretical framework.

Post-Soviet experiences 

Seven ex-Soviet countries – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan – have or used to have TA arrangements after 1991. Most have been inherited from the Soviet past, and only one functioning TA arrangement was established after the USSR’s collapse (Gagauzia in Moldova). Two TA arrangements were formally abolished by their ‘mother’ countries (Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and South Ossetia in Georgia). Three TA arrangements are fictive autonomies (Abkhazia, Crimea (from 2014 on) and Transnistria) in terms of their ‘mother’ states’ law – being in fact breakaway or annexed territories. Only three countries on the list can be conditionally deemed democratic. One could have expected that after communism’s fall, ‘nationalizing’ and homogenizing policies in newly independent states would put an end to TA arrangements as an imperial remnant and a potential challenge to national and territorial integrity. On the contrary, the TA framework demonstrates remarkable endurance.

Notably, all but two (Adjara in Georgia and Nakhchivan in Azerbaijan) are ethnically distinct from their mainland. There is a widely spread anxiety that carving a special status territory of and for a separate ethnicity (or ethnicities) may generate intergroup conflicts. However, both Soviet rulers and their heirs have handled this challenge. 

After the 1917 takeover, the Bolsheviks actively promoted ethnicity-based TA arrangements, partly by coercion and the rhetoric of class struggle. The rationale behind this promotion was to make power structures ‘adoptable’ (i.e., able to be supported) for non-Russian minority ethnicities. Notwithstanding state violence and purges, federation units and autonomous republics were institutionally developed and entrenched in the Soviet Union: they obtained structures of government, bureaucracy, literary languages, cultural institutions, symbols, and legitimizing narratives. 

Theoretical perspective

I would emphasize two ideas of Michel Foucault, namely (1) the consideration of the practices of government as independent of concrete organizational structure and regime and (2) governmentality as power exercised through shaping the attitudes and perceptions of the subordinate populace. Governmentality thus differs from rule based on coercion, or sovereign and disciplinary power, although these mechanisms can intertwine with and complement each other. Numerous scholars argue that the governmentality framework is applicable to studying authoritarian environments. 

Bolshevik rationality

How did the Communists adjust their rationality to match the rationality of the ruled? First, the official metanarrative was eclectic, mechanically combining contradictory elements: the rhetoric of group entitlements with individual equality and class-based legitimacy with ethnonational self-determination. Second, the issues that could provoke rejection and controversies were narrated in an ambiguous way or silenced. The ‘belonging’ of an administrative territory to a certain titular ethnicity was rather an implication and an object of common knowledge; it was never clearly stipulated and specified in constitutional or legal texts, or Communist Party declarations. From the late 1930s, such institutions as state or official languages were abolished in all but a few constituent entities. Third, the system created positive expectations for all population segments with regard to sub-state nation-building: there were the imaginaries of participation and upward mobility of minority nationalities, institutions that retained local ethnic cultures and languages, and factual protection of ethnic Russians and other ‘non-titular’ groups. Fourth, ethnicity-based statehood as a symbolic and organizational framework was banalized and routinized.  

In line with the general trend, after Stalin’s death, the ‘common sense’ of the ruled largely rested on the reproduction of social forms and rituals that lost their substantive meaning. Additionally, the adjustment of rationalities was intertwined with disciplinary practices, and unauthorized activities were suppressed and punished. 

The liberalization and the overall ‘restructuring’ (perestroika) of the late 1980s in the USSR brought about ethnic mobilization and new legislation that reproduced the features of the old metanarrative: eclecticism and non-articulation of controversial issues, particularly regarding autonomous regions within ‘nationalizing’ first-tier republics. After the Soviet Union’s breakdown most autonomy arrangements survived, and the related national constitutional provisions, laws, and policies reproduce similar patterns. First, there is conceptual and terminological ambiguity: no autonomous region except for one (Gagauzia in Moldova) is straightforwardly framed as belonging to the ‘titular’ ethnicity, and the status of languages remains unclear. Second, there is a balance of group expectations within autonomous regions. 

The existing autonomy frameworks in Eurasia do not require the notion of group agency, interests, and rights to analyze their durability. Collective subjectivity cannot be conceived as such; rather, it is produced and reproduced as part of ‘common sense’, social imaginaries, metanarratives, and the modes of articulating or silencing. There is a broad tendency for the Eurasian populaces to prefer individual adaptation to collective action including ethnic mobilization (beyond ritual forms). 

Modern scholarship tends to understand legitimacy broadly as the correspondence between the expectations of the ruled with the behavior of the rulers. The boundaries between legitimacy and other forms of acceptance (such as toleration and acquiescence) are blurry if conceivable at all. In this regard, autonomy arrangements in Eurasia can be assessed as legitimate or having a high degree of adoptability on the part of the populace and the elites. Presumably, the major cause of consent is negative equilibrium: autonomy arrangements are part of an acceptable worldview and a tolerable daily routine, whereas few people are ready to take the risk of initiating changes that may lead to a worse situation.

An alternative analytical framework?

What does this experience say? Autonomy arrangements can endure and contribute to stability in a multi-ethnic society when (1) they are part of ‘common sense’ and acceptable routines; (2) they retain positive expectations of all population segments; and (3) they do not cause rejection (which is achieved by being devoid of controversial symbols and utterances). 

Is such a tentative framework of analysis relevant to other environments? The functioning of TA arrangements in the post-Soviet space has parallels with the phenomena denoted as post-politics and post-democracy. These trends bring about depoliticization in favor of technocracy; an overall taken-for-granted consensus about the basics leads to the replacement of the citizen with the customer. A silent conformist agreement about potentially controversial TA arrangements might be a viable alternative to conflict prone identity politics. Or another way to unfreedom? 

Alexander Osipov is a Board Member at the International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity Studies (Prague)

This blog post is a result of the workshop of the network of scholars of territorial autonomy initiated by the Åland Islands Peace Institute. The network first met and discussed ‘The Many Faces of Territorial Autonomy’ at a workshop in Berlin, convened in cooperation with the Finland Institute in Berlin. The blog symposium is hosted by the IACL Research Group on Constitutionalism and Societal Pluralism: Diversity Governance Compared.

Suggested citation: Alexander Osipov, ‘Interpreting Territorial Autonomy in Authoritarian Environments’ IACL-AIDC Blog (12 October 23) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/territorial-autonomy/2023/10/12/interpreting-territorial-autonomy-in-authoritarian-environments