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Extremism Studies and Anti-Extremism Policy in Contemporary Russia

Extremism
Security
Knowledge
Decision Making
Higher Education
Mixed Methods
Narratives
National Perspective
Alexander Nikiforov
St Petersburg State University
Alexander Nikiforov
St Petersburg State University

Abstract

The research investigates how extremism studies frame anti-extremism policy in Russia. It is based on bibliometric analysis of the national publication activity in the extremism area for the last 25 years. Research design includes the analysis of the institutional affiliations of the authors, frame analysis of publication’s issue agenda, and discourse analysis of the selected publications. Bibliometric data generally support the idea that the present day social science in Russia is fragmented in the field of extremism. A significant part of such studies is formed by the bureaucratic science model, which is rooted in the Soviet era system of universities and colleges sponsored by the government agencies. The analysis of institutional affiliations of the authors shows relatively higher cohesion between scholars who use the bureaucratic science model in comparison with their colleagues from Academy. Such results support the hypothesis that the bureaucratic science in Russia provides framing of political extremism. This model of knowledge formation supports political actors and state officials with analytical and expert arguments for policy-making and agenda setting. For example, such studies on extremism have specific frames that tend to inherit the main Soviet security reasons for negative labelling contested political actors: to treat civil protest activity as the probable anti-state one, or as a security threat due to “foreign interference”. Other principles follow present day counter-terrorism international agenda (Islamic threat) and the technological challenge (informational security). As a result, such frames push forward altering of the national anti-extremism strategy in the ways that imply: systemic administrative regulation of political processes instead of define issue mediation; mixing of the state law logic mixed with theory argumentation; defining radicalism (as a radical way of thinking) as the first stage of extremism activity.