1st Edition
Justice, Crime, and Citizenship in Eurasia A Sociolegal Perspective
What role does law play in post-communist societies? This book examines the law as a social institution in Eurasia, exploring how it is shaped in everyday interactions between state and society, organisations and individuals, and between law enforcement and other government entities. It bridges the gap between theoretically rich work on law-in-action and the empirical reality of Eurasia.
The contributions in this volume include research on policing, the legal profession, public attitudes towards law, regime support and oppositional mobilisation, crime policy, and property rights, among others. The studies shift away from the common perception that, in Eurasia, the law exists only as a tool for the state to enforce order and suppress dissent. Instead, they show, through empirical analyses, that citizens evade, use, reinterpret and shape the law even in authoritarian contexts—sometimes containing state violence and challenging the regime, and other times reinforcing state capture from below.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Europe-Asia Studies.
Introduction - Justice, Crime and Citizenship in Eurasia: A Socio-legal Perspective
Erica Marat and Lauren A. McCarthy
1. Who Reports Crime? Citizen Engagement with the Police in Russia and Georgia
Lauren A. McCarthy, Scott Gehlbach, Timothy Frye and Noah Buckley
2. Popular Legal Attitudes and the Political Order: Comparative Evidence from Georgia, Russia and Ukraine
William M. Reisinger, Marina Zaloznaya and Vicki Hesli Claypool
3. Transcending Illegality in Kyrgyzstan: The Case of a Squatter Settlement in Bishkek
Eliza Isabaeva
4. Negotiating the Right to Information: Citizen–Government Interactions in the Implementation of the Regulations on Open Government Information in China
Yiyi Lu
5. Between Human Rights and Transitional Justice: The Dilemma of Constitutional Courts in Post-Communist Central Europe
Katarína Šipulová and Hubert Smekal
6. Becoming a Judge in Russia: An Analysis of Judicial Biographies
Aryna Dzmitryieva
7. Building Socialist Legality: Political Order and Institutional Development in the Soviet and Chinese Procuracies
Margaret Hanson and Michael Thompson-Brusstar
8. The Limits of Authoritarian Modernisation: Zero Tolerance Policing in Kazakhstan
Gavin Slade, Alexei Trochev and Malika Talgatova
9. Propaganda and the Police: The Softer Side of State Control in China
Suzanne E. Scoggins
10. ‘Vigilante Shows’ and Law Enforcement in Russia
Gilles Favarel-Garrigues
11. Technological Solutions for Complex Problems: Emerging Electronic Surveillance Regimes in Eurasian Cities
Erica Marat and Deborah Sutton
Biography
Erica Marat is Associate Professor at the College of International Security Affairs of the National Defence University. She specializes in violence, mobilization and security institutions.
Lauren A. McCarthy is Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her research focuses on the relationship between law and society in Russia, police and law enforcement institutions, civilian oversight, and the issue of human trafficking.
