Catherine started following the work of Artemy Magun, European University at St. Petersburg, Political Sciences and Sociology.
Catherine followed the research interests: Russian Studies, Russian media, and Civil Society
Catherine added a paper
Graduate Student, Politics
College of Social Science and International Studies
Thesis Title: 'Democracy': A Struggle for Meaning between Russia and Europe
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John Heathershaw
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About
My research question asks how the meaning of the concept ‘democracy’ is both employed in political discourse and enacted in political projects by three groups working on democratisation in post-communist Russia. These groups are: Russian governmental institutions, Russian citizens’ movements and European international organisations.
In order to unpack the concepts as used by these groups, I am employing insights from the conceptual history of Reinhart Koselleck, Michael Freeden’s morphological analysis of political ideologies and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of social antagonism. This approach is unique in democratisation and transition scholarship, for rather than focusing on the relationship between capitalist development and democratisation or on the extent to which Russia has been appropriately ‘socialised’ into the behavioural norms expected of a European state, my research begins with Russian state and societal understanding of ‘democracy’ and thus rejects the implicit cultural imperialism underlying these ubiquitous approaches.
