Authoritarian conflict management in post-colonial Eurasia

ABSTRACT

This contribution considers ‘illiberal peace’ in post-colonial Eurasia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and in the shadow of Russia and China as ‘emerging powers’. Authoritarian modes of conflict management – which have economic, spatial and discursive aspects – are oriented towards regime consolidation and the creation of a particular type of political economy. We should understand these as a form of authoritarian interventionism which had three main goals in this context: (1) to end violence conflict by preventing rebels from influencing public discourse; (2) to control the resources; and (3) to shape the political space. Despite the fact that liberal actors do illiberal things, and vice versa, this contribution argues that in order for this complexity to make political sense the distinction between liberal and illiberal should be maintained. Furthermore, in order for these illiberal practices to make historical sense we must situate them in their regional, colonial and post-colonial contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Eurasia
• authoritarianism
• empire
• liberal peace
• conflict management
• illiberalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Ambrosio, ‘Catching the “Shanghai Spirit”’; Kaczmarski, ‘Non-Western Visions of Regionalism’; Sakwa, Russia against the Rest, 57.

2. Lewis, ‘Illiberal Spaces’; Glasius, ‘Extraterritorial Authoritarian Practices’; Polyakova and Boyer, ‘The Future of Political Warfare’.

3. Diamond, ‘Facing up to the Democratic Recession’.

4. Acharya, ‘Global International Relations and Regional Worlds’; Stuenkel, ‘Post-Western World’; Vasilaki, ‘Provincialising IR?’.

5. Heathershaw, ‘The Global Performance State’.

6. Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’.

7. Chandler, International Statebuilding; Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace.

8. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance.

9. Duffield, ‘Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound’.

10. Sabaratnam, ‘Avatars of Eurocentrism’.

11. Hobson, ‘Is Critical Theory always for the White West?’.

12. Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

13. Hale, Patronal Politics.

14. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’.

15. Glasius, ‘Extraterritorial Authoritarian Practices’.

16. These examples are considered in detail in Owen et al., Interrogating Illiberal Peace.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Heathershaw

John Heathershaw is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter and the co-author of Dictators Without Borders (Yale, 2017). His research focuses on questions of conflict, security and development with a regional focus on post-Soviet Central Asia.

Catherine Owen

Catherine Owen is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter. Her current research focuses on authoritarian governmentality and the production of active citizenship in Russia and China.