Academic Articles (Peer-Reviewed) by Julian G Waller
Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 2024
The content of Russian educational material on moral-cultural issues has gradually shifted over t... more The content of Russian educational material on moral-cultural issues has gradually shifted over the Putin tenure toward a standard that emphasizes state patriotism, syncretic pride in the achievements and heroes of the Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, and traditional sociocultural values, including respect for religious authorities. The onset of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War has caused a shift in debates over national pedagogic inculturation among domestic Russian elites, with many calling for the return of “ideology” to properly ensure the formation of future, regime-loyal generations. This article analyzes the first official document of the wartime period that deals with questions of Russia’s ideology—the educational curriculum guidance packet titled “Foundations of Russian Statehood” (FORS) and promoted by the Presidential Administration for use in Russian universities. The article typifies the state of pre-war Russian moral-cultural pedagogical material within its shifting, illiberal ideological context, compares this pre-war setting with the FORS document and the concomitant discursive shift among key Russian officials, and provides a descriptive analysis of FORS itself. In doing so, the article identifies the evocative “pentabasis” framework of the FORS document as a potential core of a crystallizing, official ideology in modern wartime Russia.
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Journal of Advanced Military Studies, 2024
Traditionally, discussions of governance beyond Earth have largely been held to the purview of de... more Traditionally, discussions of governance beyond Earth have largely been held to the purview of debates about space law and global governance regimes. Yet, the priority of space exploration among ambitious, tech-industry associated billionaires and its continued potential for militarization suggest that a more dynamic approach may be needed, given that state-sponsorship of extraterrestrial colonial projects may be more akin to partnerships between private and public actors rather than nation-states assuming traditional roles as sole sources of decision-making. Permanent settlements in space will require forms of localized government that may look distinct from contemporary models of political order. This article thus asks a provocative question associated with the empirical record of human colonization and settlement in prior eras: What sort of authoritarian governance is most likely to form in human space settlements during the medium term? Reviewing variations on political order in small-scale colonial settlements in light of recent conceptual work on authoritarian rule, the article identifies three theoretical models of governance that may emerge once beyond Earth settlements become permanent fixtures of human society.
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The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism, 2024
Illiberalism is often associated with the concept of “authoritarianism,” but their relation can b... more Illiberalism is often associated with the concept of “authoritarianism,” but their relation can be underspecified, confused, contradictory, or overlapping. This is in no small part due to the tricky conceptualization of authoritarianism itself, which holds to surprisingly different definitions across several social-scientific disciplines and deals with the same common problems of usage imprecision. This chapter conceptualizes the relationship between illiberalism and the several understandings of authoritarianism current in the mainstream academic literature. In doing so, it shows how the concept of authoritarianism understood as a form of political regime is the most useful for most scholars working on the subject of illiberalism, although in some ways also the most difficult to adhere. In support of this conclusion, the chapter reviews several prominent and influential alternative definitions of authoritarianism, including psychological-dispositional, psychological-behavioral, policy-ideological, and practice-process conceptualizations. It notes that these other variants of authoritarianism suffer from diverse, internal problems with conceptual coherency, parsimony, bias, rigor, and empirical replicability. Furthermore, they are particularly susceptible to obscuring or even hindering the empirical and theoretical application of illiberalism in scholarly study, although important exceptions and further avenues of exploration are noted as well. Familiarity with definitional problems associated with non-regime conceptualizations of authoritarianism will ultimately facilitate a more precise and nuanced scholarly research approach on illiberalism.
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Journal of International Affairs, 2022
The 2010s and 2020s have been readily identified as periods of considerable disjuncture and polit... more The 2010s and 2020s have been readily identified as periods of considerable disjuncture and political disruption at the level of the global states system. Many point to observations of a relative rise in certain ideational conceptual categories, such as “illiberalism” or “populism,” or regime concepts such as “authoritarianism” to explain these patterns of breakdown and system-level uncertainty. While this scholarly approach has much to recommend itself, in the end a great deal of academic usage suffers from a poor understanding of what these conceptual categories entail and consist of, their application across states, and their interaction with seemingly antithetical concepts such as “liberalism” or “democracy” itself. This article presents a critical schematic approach to the application of these conceptual tools in the scholarly analysis of the current international system and its discontents. In doing so, it argues that the concepts of “illiberalism” and “authoritarianism,” in particular, are vulnerable to conceptual misuse, and that this misuse leads to sometimes-unintended ontological assumptions about the global states system—such as “authoritarian internationals” and “illiberal waves”—that may be empirically and functionally untenable, or otherwise misleading, although context and close case analysis ultimately determines their relevance beyond description.
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Journal of Illiberalism Studies, 2021
The modern Russian regime is one of the more prominent states espousing an explicitly illiberal i... more The modern Russian regime is one of the more prominent states espousing an explicitly illiberal ideological worldview domestically and abroad. Although regime illiberalism is many-sided, including authoritarian governance characteristics, international diffusion practices, and domestic political management, observers have often assumed that illiberalism is at its core an instrumental or cynical approach employed by the Russian leadership to bolster regime security and promote its foreign policy. This article suggests rather that observed illiberalism has additional roots in the dynamics of authoritarian domestic politics and society, rather than being characterized as simply a cynical top-down strategy of the Kremlin. Rather, regime illiberalism is congruent with many domestic drivers of political and societal influence. While decision-making elites certainly play up illiberalism instrumentally for purposes of regime maintenance and positional international influence, large institutional constituencies for substantive illiberalism also exist independent of regime goals. After suggesting two institutional formats-the Russian parliament and national broadcast media-in which observed illiberalism can best understood as an entrepreneurial behavior by lower-tier elite signaling loyalty and usefulness to the regime center, three further institutional sources are identified to be constituted by inherently illiberal organizational and symbolic forms that would promote illiberalism regardless of the regime's strategic preferences: the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Armed Forces, and the symbolic center of the patronal presidency.
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Social Media + Society, 2021
When people join in moments of mass protest, what role do different media sources play in their m... more When people join in moments of mass protest, what role do different media sources play in their mobilization? Do the
same media sources align with positive views of mass mobilizations among the public in their aftermath? And, what is the
relationship between media consumption patterns and believing disinformation about protest events? Addressing these
questions helps us to better understand not only what brings crowds onto the streets, but also what shapes perceptions
of, and disinformation about mass mobilization among the wider population. Employing original data from a nationally
representative panel survey in Ukraine (Hale, Colton, Onuch, & Kravets, 2014) conducted shortly after the 2013–2014
EuroMaidan mobilization, we examine patterns of media consumption among both participants and non-participants, as
well as protest supporters and non-supporters. We also explore variation in media consumption among those who believe
and reject disinformation about the EuroMaidan. We test hypotheses, prominent in current protest literature, related
to the influence of “new” (social media and online news) and “old” media (television) on protest behavior and attitudes.
Making use of the significance of 2014 Ukraine as a testing ground for Russian disinformation tactics, we also specifically test
for consumption of Russian-owned television. Our findings indicate that frequent consumption of “old” media, specifically
Russian-owned television, is significantly associated with both mobilization in and positive perceptions of protest and is a
better predictor of believing “fake news” than consuming “new” media sources.
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In a constitutional rupture, when the fundamental rules of political life are uncertain, it is un... more In a constitutional rupture, when the fundamental rules of political life are uncertain, it is unlikely that constitutional courts could play a major role. Yet in some remarkable cases, such courts transform into highly interventionist political actors, even achieving some success. This paper provides a series of short case studies highlighting Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and South Africa to illustrate common elements that are shared across interventionist courts in such times—namely institutional centrality, strong and personalized court leadership, and division among elected branches of the state. All of these factors then combine with a court-derived constitutional vision that undergirds a constitutional court's legitimacy in the extra-constitutional period. This dynamic is then applied in detail to the case of post-Mubarak Egypt in order to explore the ephemeral and self-limiting nature of the interventions.
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Analytic Articles by Julian G Waller
RIDDLE Russia, 2024
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Foreign Affairs, 2024
The Russian regime has shown it is fully able to maintain its own authority and ensure the acquie... more The Russian regime has shown it is fully able to maintain its own authority and ensure the acquiescence of both elites and the masses. It has proven it can do what it needs to do in order to survive. It could still encounter unexpected challenges, and the question of political succession after Putin exits the scene looms large. But the most salient feature of the current phase of Putin’s rule is not the vulnerability his consolidation of power creates. It is the regime’s resilience and its demonstrated capacity to adjust.
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The Strategy Bridge, 2023
The recent coups in sub-Saharan Africa have ushered in a new era in civil-military relations in t... more The recent coups in sub-Saharan Africa have ushered in a new era in civil-military relations in the Francophone states of the continent. While military intervention and insurgency have long been a feature of politics in the region since decolonization, the quick succession of regime change and the seizure of power by a new generation of juntas against long standing personalist dictatorships suggests a break in previous political patterns. And this is especially true in light of assumptions that have informed thinking since the Third Wave of Democratization at the end of the Cold War.
Put simply, over the last three decades many states had gone the way of electoral authoritarianism or personalist rule, rather than continue the older and more precarious tradition of military regimes. This state of affairs seems to be changing. Previous studies on coup dynamics can helpfully inform our understanding of this moment, but the new, cascade-like contagion of military-led regime-changes requires an analytic approach that is sensitive to the specific conditions of the geopolitical environment and internal domestic transformations operating in the region today.
To that end, we can shed light on the contemporary phenomenon unfolding in parts of West and Central Africa today by emphasizing two relevant conceptual dimensions that interact with each other. First, the internal guardianship self-perception of institutionalized and semi-institutionalized armed forces in the relevant states. Second, the deep and abiding concentration of multigenerational resentment at foreign influence (in this case, specifically French post-colonial quasi-hegemony).
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Russland-Analysen, 2017
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Russian Analytical Digest, 2023
While a general ideological shift toward illiberalism has been noted in Russia for over a decade,... more While a general ideological shift toward illiberalism has been noted in Russia for over a decade, recent developments suggest an increasingly deep, pervasive, and comprehensive use of illiberal rhetoric and framings by Russian elites. Policy discussions, which could once be held in a neutral or technocratic register, are increasingly suffused with illiberal legitimating and justifying language, which suggests the further integration of illiberal ideology into the worldviews of a broader cohort of Russian public figures, intellectuals, and loyalist professionals. The case of a recent public debate surrounding nuclear use policy gives rise to useful observations that underline this development.
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The Strategy Bridge, 2023
The Russian political leadership badly misjudged the domestic political environment in Ukraine in... more The Russian political leadership badly misjudged the domestic political environment in Ukraine in February 2022. In contradistinction to its apt and aggressive reading of the ground-level Ukrainian political ecosystem in 2014, Russian intelligence failures in 2022 turned an attempted regime-change operation into a grinding regional war of attrition, with its political objectives forcibly downgraded and its military and economy both substantially degraded by the conflict.[1] Expectations that a sizeable portion of the country’s population were in favor of political decapitation in Kyiv; that a large number of state, military, and security officers were ready to defect or aid in Russian efforts; and that local politicians would be waiting in the wings with sufficient clout, legitimacy, and personal skill to lead post-occupation efforts proved to be wrong on all counts.
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RIDDLE Russia, 2023
Explaining the decision to invade Ukraine has been an ongoing debate in academic and policy makin... more Explaining the decision to invade Ukraine has been an ongoing debate in academic and policy making circles since the day Russia declared its ‘Special Military Operation.’ Why exactly did Russia go to war — and why in 2022?
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Illiberalism Studies Program, 2023
The scholarly term ‘illiberalism’ can be conceptualized in brief as modern, ideological reaction ... more The scholarly term ‘illiberalism’ can be conceptualized in brief as modern, ideological reaction against the experience of political, economic, and societal liberalism, whose expressions vary significantly across country-cases and political contexts. Some political actors and intellectuals, especially in Eastern Europe, have taken the term on themselves and even describe their political projects as forthrightly ‘illiberal.’ Yet they are as likely, if not more so, to call themselves simply ‘conservative,’ ‘national-conservative,’ or even ‘Christian-Democratic.’ Coherent illiberal programs are newer in the contemporary Anglophone West and only now moving from intellectual discussions and criticism to nascent ideological projects. Yet illiberal thinkers in the English-speaking world often prefer altogether different descriptors, such as ‘postliberalism’ or ‘the dissident Right’ – in doing so, they often explicitly reject the very same labels of ‘conservatism’ or ‘center-right’ in favor of a distinct ideological vocabulary – and one that much more openly emphasizes the reactionary and radical nature of their position vis-à-vis the prevailing political forces in power.
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War on the Rocks, 2023
Will President Vladimir Putin’s regime implode? Unfortunately, the media’s fixation with this que... more Will President Vladimir Putin’s regime implode? Unfortunately, the media’s fixation with this question — understandable as it might be — has prevented us from gaining a more holistic understanding of how Russian politics are working right now.
While fully in the grips of a new form of bellicose, authoritarian rule, Russia has not fallen down the totalitarian path and rather exhibits signs of a skewed but dynamic authoritarian public politics. Putin’s regime is a personalist dictatorship in a partial state of exception, and one with a great deal of elite quiescence at the top. Yet the political dynamics playing out in the public eye are hardly uniform and reflect real claims to power and influence that can help Western observers understand Russia’s transforming political system.
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The LOOP - ECPR , 2022
The lure of typology is irresistible for social scientists, yet commonly used schemas classifying... more The lure of typology is irresistible for social scientists, yet commonly used schemas classifying authoritarian politics still miss key variation. Our frameworks often rely on organisational assumptions set one level of abstraction too high. Julian G. Waller demonstrates how a closer look at constitutional structure can confront this problem
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Illiberalism Studies Program, 2022
No longer confined to the realm of heterodox online letters, the diverse and disparate expression... more No longer confined to the realm of heterodox online letters, the diverse and disparate expressions of the illiberal Right in America have found their footing and are moving towards substantive projects.
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Ius & Iustitium, 2022
Interest in the classical legal tradition and the classical philosophies on political regime and ... more Interest in the classical legal tradition and the classical philosophies on political regime and political order from which it emerged have grown signi cantly, as this very publication outlet can attest. This revival is particularly interesting because until recently the categories and frames of reference central to the classical tradition have been largely outside the mainstream of scholarly work across an array of academic genres, from legal theory to political science and beyond. Given this, I wanted to invite the readers of I&I's attention to a recent attempt at melding older understandings of political regime with modern scholarship-thus far still a rare occasion. This summary is an encouragement for those interested in classical political concepts and their relevance to the classical legal tradition to engage with both the promise and pitfalls of this approach to the scholarly study of political order and political regime. Most scholarship today does not consciously rely on classical frameworks for these topics. It is therefore important to understand the di culty of translating old and new ways of typifying regime, and to take interest whenever such a mixing, or an attempt at application, is undertaken.
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The National Interest, 2022
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Academic Articles (Peer-Reviewed) by Julian G Waller
same media sources align with positive views of mass mobilizations among the public in their aftermath? And, what is the
relationship between media consumption patterns and believing disinformation about protest events? Addressing these
questions helps us to better understand not only what brings crowds onto the streets, but also what shapes perceptions
of, and disinformation about mass mobilization among the wider population. Employing original data from a nationally
representative panel survey in Ukraine (Hale, Colton, Onuch, & Kravets, 2014) conducted shortly after the 2013–2014
EuroMaidan mobilization, we examine patterns of media consumption among both participants and non-participants, as
well as protest supporters and non-supporters. We also explore variation in media consumption among those who believe
and reject disinformation about the EuroMaidan. We test hypotheses, prominent in current protest literature, related
to the influence of “new” (social media and online news) and “old” media (television) on protest behavior and attitudes.
Making use of the significance of 2014 Ukraine as a testing ground for Russian disinformation tactics, we also specifically test
for consumption of Russian-owned television. Our findings indicate that frequent consumption of “old” media, specifically
Russian-owned television, is significantly associated with both mobilization in and positive perceptions of protest and is a
better predictor of believing “fake news” than consuming “new” media sources.
Analytic Articles by Julian G Waller
Put simply, over the last three decades many states had gone the way of electoral authoritarianism or personalist rule, rather than continue the older and more precarious tradition of military regimes. This state of affairs seems to be changing. Previous studies on coup dynamics can helpfully inform our understanding of this moment, but the new, cascade-like contagion of military-led regime-changes requires an analytic approach that is sensitive to the specific conditions of the geopolitical environment and internal domestic transformations operating in the region today.
To that end, we can shed light on the contemporary phenomenon unfolding in parts of West and Central Africa today by emphasizing two relevant conceptual dimensions that interact with each other. First, the internal guardianship self-perception of institutionalized and semi-institutionalized armed forces in the relevant states. Second, the deep and abiding concentration of multigenerational resentment at foreign influence (in this case, specifically French post-colonial quasi-hegemony).
While fully in the grips of a new form of bellicose, authoritarian rule, Russia has not fallen down the totalitarian path and rather exhibits signs of a skewed but dynamic authoritarian public politics. Putin’s regime is a personalist dictatorship in a partial state of exception, and one with a great deal of elite quiescence at the top. Yet the political dynamics playing out in the public eye are hardly uniform and reflect real claims to power and influence that can help Western observers understand Russia’s transforming political system.
same media sources align with positive views of mass mobilizations among the public in their aftermath? And, what is the
relationship between media consumption patterns and believing disinformation about protest events? Addressing these
questions helps us to better understand not only what brings crowds onto the streets, but also what shapes perceptions
of, and disinformation about mass mobilization among the wider population. Employing original data from a nationally
representative panel survey in Ukraine (Hale, Colton, Onuch, & Kravets, 2014) conducted shortly after the 2013–2014
EuroMaidan mobilization, we examine patterns of media consumption among both participants and non-participants, as
well as protest supporters and non-supporters. We also explore variation in media consumption among those who believe
and reject disinformation about the EuroMaidan. We test hypotheses, prominent in current protest literature, related
to the influence of “new” (social media and online news) and “old” media (television) on protest behavior and attitudes.
Making use of the significance of 2014 Ukraine as a testing ground for Russian disinformation tactics, we also specifically test
for consumption of Russian-owned television. Our findings indicate that frequent consumption of “old” media, specifically
Russian-owned television, is significantly associated with both mobilization in and positive perceptions of protest and is a
better predictor of believing “fake news” than consuming “new” media sources.
Put simply, over the last three decades many states had gone the way of electoral authoritarianism or personalist rule, rather than continue the older and more precarious tradition of military regimes. This state of affairs seems to be changing. Previous studies on coup dynamics can helpfully inform our understanding of this moment, but the new, cascade-like contagion of military-led regime-changes requires an analytic approach that is sensitive to the specific conditions of the geopolitical environment and internal domestic transformations operating in the region today.
To that end, we can shed light on the contemporary phenomenon unfolding in parts of West and Central Africa today by emphasizing two relevant conceptual dimensions that interact with each other. First, the internal guardianship self-perception of institutionalized and semi-institutionalized armed forces in the relevant states. Second, the deep and abiding concentration of multigenerational resentment at foreign influence (in this case, specifically French post-colonial quasi-hegemony).
While fully in the grips of a new form of bellicose, authoritarian rule, Russia has not fallen down the totalitarian path and rather exhibits signs of a skewed but dynamic authoritarian public politics. Putin’s regime is a personalist dictatorship in a partial state of exception, and one with a great deal of elite quiescence at the top. Yet the political dynamics playing out in the public eye are hardly uniform and reflect real claims to power and influence that can help Western observers understand Russia’s transforming political system.
ambitions of acting mayor and candidate Sergei Sobyanin best explain this uncharacteristic promotion of an opposition politician by the authorities. The logic of Sobyanin’s hesitant, yet persistent, support for Navalny’s candidacy seeks to tap into legitimacy as the new basis for political agency and self-promotion. Only Navalny could deliver that legitimacy, without which Sobyanin would remain in his more subordinate role as Moscow city’s apparatchik-in-chief. This reality became clear as the campaign progressed, and strongly changed the nature of its dynamic over the course of the summer. In the aftermath of the election, it remains unclear if this policy was a success.