Presentations by Streams

The Putinist regime relies on nationalism and identity politics in its legitimation strategy. While this has been the case at least since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, it has been further ratcheted up in recent years. The four papers in this panel discuss various aspects of this policy.

Matthew Blackburn examines a the role of legitimation for regime stability over the last three years, interpreted through the categories of performance, ideology, and procedure. To do this, he examines major speeches, landmark policies and PR events on the federal level (the President, Prime Minister, State Duma, and Federation Council) and regional level (governors, and mayors) over the two years up to the invasion (2020-22) and the year following (Feb 2022-Feb 2023).

Jules Sergei Fediunin, Tora Berge Naterstad and Helge Blakkisrud examine how the Putin regime uses nationalism to legitimise the war in Ukraine. The paper draws on content and discourse analysis of material scraped from the websites of the Kremlin, the State Duma, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They explore how the meaning of selected nationalist tropes, such as "Russophobia", "de-Russification" and "national traitors", as well as their referent, have gradually changed.

Finally, Henry Hale and Regina Smyth in their papers both use new survey data (2021) from the Legituss project at the University of Oslo to analyze how traditionalist rhetoric is employed by the Putin regime. President Putin drew on such rhetoric in a novel way in 2020, when he attempted to mobilize support for a plebiscite on his escaping constitutional term limits by embedding (arguably even hiding) the term limit reset in a larger package of over 200 proposed constitutional amendments that included many traditionalist planks as well as socioeconomic promises. Hale examines whether people who adhere to traditionalist values were more likely to report having voted for the pro-authoritarian package of constitutional amendments. Smyth on the other hand probes the relationship between values and citizen support for - and engagement in - civic activism. She hypothesizes that if the state project is successful, traditional values should engender regime support and limit opposition activism.