Sociological Approach to the Russian Constitution

Comparative Sociology. 2016. Vol. 15. P. 747–793.

Smirnova M., Thornhill C.

This article offers a nuanced alternative to widespread accounts of the

Russian polity as a fully authoritarian political system. First, it explains how the Russian political system has evolved a range of distinctive accountability structures, which are increasingly subject to constitutional protection. Second, it argues that the Russian constitution is in a process of functional evolution, which intensifies the standards of accountability that it imposes on the government. To develop these ideas, the article argues that the Russian constitution is most accurately observed if we adopt secondary constitutionalization as an analytical legal-sociological paradigm: that is, if we observe the constitution as a sui-generis legal order, produced through relatively contingent societal processes, which affect the legal order of government in often unintended ways. These processes have the result that judicial bodies possess extensive norm-setting autonomy, and they impose a distinctive constitutional order on the state. This constitutional order is produced through (a): the increasing impact of international law; (b) the growing power of the courts in high politics; (c) the rising force of administrative litigation; (d) new patterns of legal argument. As a result, although constitutional provisions for political accountability remain weak in Russia, provisions for legal accountability are surprisingly strong.

Keywords: Конституция России, The Russian Constitution, Constitutionalism, Russian Constitution, legal principles, constitutionalcycles, constitutional dysfunction, constitutional modernisation, социология конституции, sociology of constitutions