![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
The article seeks to suggest a way to explain such cases of minority policies in which deliberate avoidance of implementing certain normative provisions generates no criticism in the given society and goes in combination with the overall silent consent on this state of affairs of all the stakeholders, including minority activists themselves. The author argues that one may regard this as a normal pattern of public politics rather than a deviation, and the lack of implementation as a generally anticipated and accepted outcome rather than a failure. This pattern is labelled as ‘systemic hypocrisy’, i.e., de-coupling public representation of an organization from its actual functions. It is supposed that diversity policies in general are likely to be prone to systemic hypocrisy since the mainstream group-centric approaches to the management of ethnic diversity are not fully compatible with modern techniques of government. The article exposes and specifies two cases of ‘systemic hypocrisy’ in minority policies that are non-territorial autonomy and ethnic federalism within the domain of contemporary Russian diversity management. The framework explanation of why systemic hypocrisy demonstrates persistency is that the symbolic policies aimed at ethnic relations become values in themselves as a non-controversial ground of communication for different social and political actors and thus supersede instrumental policies.
Notes
1 Kontseptsiia Natsional'noi Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Ukaz Prezidenta RF ‘Ob utverzhdenii Kontseptsii Natsional'noi Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, No. 909, signed 15 June 1996, Sobranie Zakonodatel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii (SZRF) (1996) No. 25, item 3010. Translated by the author.
2 Federal'nyi zakon ‘O natsional'no-kul'turnoi avtonomii’ (with subsequent amendments), No. 74-FZ, signed 17 June 1996, SZRF (1996) No.25, item 2965.
3 This means only NCAs of the same territorial level. Local NCAs are not obliged to join regional NCAs of the same group operating on the same territory. Likewise, regional NCAs are not forced to become parts of federal NCAs.
4 Postanovlenie Konstitutsionnogo Suda RF ot 3 marta 2004 goda No.5 ‘Po delu o proverke konstitutsionnosti chasti tret'ei stati 5 Federal'nogo zakona “O natsional'no-kul'turnoi avtonomii” v sviazi s zhaloboi grazhdan A.H.Ditsa i O.A.Shumacher’, SZRF (2004) No. 11, item 1033.
5 Russian public officials repeatedly recognized the non-obligatory character of these provisions; see, for instance statements made by the staff of the State Duma Nationalities Committee at an ECMI seminar held in 2001 in Kaliningrad (Martynuk, 2003).
6 Calculated according to the Ministry of Justice database, Available at: http://www.minjust.ru/common/img/uploaded/docs/2010.03.09_NKA_na_01.01.2010.xls (accessed 26 August 2010).
7 The Council convened eight times in five years (1997–2001) (Osipov, Citation2004, p. 193).
8 Komi Republic, Penza, Tambov, Tula, Tver’, Tiumen and Ulianovsk oblasts; the NCA councils in Tambov, Tiumen and Ulianovsk have been reconfigured and renamed.
9 The total number of ethnicity-based NGOs is unknown and official estimates differ; according to a recent data provided by the Ministry of Justice for Russia's official report on the fulfillment of its obligations under the FCNM, there were approximately 2,600 ethnicity-based NGOs aside from NCAs throughout the country by 1 January 2009 (calculated according to: ANNEXES, Citation2010, Annexes 2 and 3).
10 The 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation. Official translation. Available at http://www.government.ru/eng/gov/base/54.html (accessed 31 March 2012).
11 The term ‘titular’ currently denotes ethnic groups that give names to the respective territorial unit which they populate.
12 For example, in the federal law ‘On the General Principles of Organization of the Legislative (Representative) and Executive Organs of the State Power in the Constituent Regions of the Russian Federation’ (No. 184-FZ) of 6 October 1999, and the Federal Constitutional Law, ‘On the Process of Accession to the Russian Federation and Foundation of a New Constituent Unit of the Russian Federation’ (No. 6) of 17 December 2001.
13 Basically, the compromise approach towards defining the ethnic character of republic statehood has not changed throughout the 1990s and the following decade, but some constitutions of the early 1990s contained a number of radical provisions that were deleted after Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. For more on the early versions of republican constitutions (see Guboglo, Citation2000, pp. 154–164).
14 ‘Constitution of the Republic of Tatarstan’. Official portal of the Tatarstan government. Official translation. Available at http://portal.tatarstan.ru/eng/documents/constitution.htm (accessed 9 December 2011; emphasis added).
15 ‘Konstitutsiya (Osnovnoi zakon) Respubliki Sakha (Yakutiya). Official information portal of the government of the Republic Sakha (Yakutia). The authors’ translation. Available at: http://sakha.gov.ru/node/17668 (accessed 29 May 2011).
16 The texts overviewed at the website of the legal information system ‘Garant’, http://www.constitution.garant.ru/DOC_7000.htm (accessed 29 May 2011).
17 ‘Ustav Pskovskoi oblasti’. Website of the legal information system ‘Garant’. The authors’ translation. Available at http://www.constitution.garant.ru/DOC_16603701.htm (accessed 12 June 2012).
18 Setu is an Orthodox Christian group speaking Estonian and living on both sides of the Russian–Estonian border.
19 The Constitution of Dagestan declared as state languages alongside Russian the languages of unspecified ‘peoples of Dagestan’.