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"State-Building as Lawfare offers a unique study on how the state and other social forces regulate everyday life. Focusing on the case of Russian state presence in postwar Chechnya, the book explores how state and non-state legal systems are used to achieve political goals. Egor Lazarev applies this theory of state-building as lawfare to study how politicians and individuals navigate Russian state law, Sharia, and customary law in postwar Chechnya. The book addresses two interrelated puzzles: why do local rulers tolerate and even promote non-state legal systems at the expense of state law, and why do some members of repressed ethnic minorities choose to resolve their everyday disputes using state legal systems instead of non-state alternatives? By analyzing the legacies of the prolonged armed conflict of the 1990s and 2000s, Lazarev sheds an important light on state-building from above and below"--
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. Theory and Ethnography: 1. State-building as lawfare: the view from above and from below; 2. The field: ethnography of legal pluralism in postwar Chechnya; Part II. Lawfare and Political Order: 3. The Chechen way: lawfare under imperial and Soviet rule; 4. 'There are no camels in Chechnya!' lawfare during the independence period; 5. 'We will use every resource!' jurisdictional politics in postwar Chechnya; Part III. Lawfare and Social Order: 6. Laws in conflict: hybrid legal order in contemporary Chechnya; 7. 'People need law:' demand for social order after conflict; 8: Chechen women go to court: war and women's lawfare; Conclusion; References.
About the author
Egor Lazarev is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
Summary
How does the state impose the rules that regulate everyday life? This book explores state-building as lawfare – the use of state and non-state legal systems to achieve political goals – to analyze how Russian state law, Sharia law, and customary law interact in postwar Chechnya.
