Promoting Democracy and Human Rights in Russia

ISBN-13: 9780415484459 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 178 str.

Sinikukka Saari

Opis

European regional organisations have spent significant amount of time, energy and money in supporting Russia's transition towards the western liberal-democratic model since the end of the cold war. This book explores the role the Council of Europe, European Union and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have played in Russia's post-Soviet transition in the field of human rights and democracy. The book argues that the organisations have played an important initial role in setting the reform agenda and in providing a general framework for interaction in the field of human rights and democracy. However, since the mid-1990s the impact of regional organisations has been slipping. Lately Russia has challenged the European human rights and democracy norms and now it threatens the whole framework for regional normative cooperation. Russia's attitude towards western liberal order has become more assertive and its defiance increasingly concerted even internationally. The main finding is that democracy and human rights promotion is not a one-way transference of norms like much of the theoretical literature and European practices presume. The Russian case demonstrates that the so-called target state can influence the norm promoters and the interpretation of the norms in a fundamental way. This is a finding that has significant implications both for theory and practice.

Initial hopes that after the fall of the Soviet Union democracy and human rights would flourish strongly in Russia have begun to fade. This book explores what went wrong in Russia and why. It discusses how, with a great deal of effort, various international organisations, such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the European Union, successfully promoted in Russia common European norms of human rights and democracy, with Russia co-operating fully in the process, but how, more recently, Russia has begun to challenge these norms, moving towards semi-authoritarianism. The book examines the ways in which the organisations promoted European norms in Russia, how the cooperation developed over the years, and what kind of impact the interaction had, both on Russia and Europe, assessing the current state of democracy and human rights in Russia.

Spis treści

1. Introduction  2. The European Framework for Normative Cooperation  3. Norm of a Human Rights Ombudsman  4. Norm of Abolition of the Death Penalty  5. Norm of Free and Fair Democratic Elections  6. Implications for Theory and Practice Bibliography

O autorze

Sinikkuka Saari is a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. She earned her PhD at the London School of Economics.