Beyond the Militarisation Theory : The Legitimacy of Law Among Elites in Contemporary Russia a Soviet Political Culture Legacy?

The so-called polpredy has been both the personification of Putin “re-centralization” fitting into Russian federalism evolution since the fall of the U.S.S.R. and a sample of the reshaping of Russian political and administrative elites. We first deconstruct concepts that arise from a pathological look at the Russian contemporary political regime. Among those, the “militocratic paradigma” and the notion of “illiberal democracy” are especially symptomatic. Then, by “sociologizing” the question of the “law dictatorship”, we make the hypothesis that a common political culture exists within elites revolving around the law issue. Consequently, those elites are more than “a perfect blend” of former executives from the CPSU and the 1990s Saint-Petersburg city council. In fact, our hypothesis is that, even if law should not necessarily be regarded as a part of the cultural background within elites, the ruling team may actually bet on its existence, considering it as an effective political strategy.