MISSION

The Research Group on Law & Politics in Eastern Europe seeks to provide an understanding of the legal and political systems of Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet Union (FSU) in a context of constant and profound changes. Our research outputs will address primarily the academic and scientific communities but will also match the interest of policymakers, economic actors and the public seeking informed and research-based investigations. We aim to favour dialogue and rule of law in a wider Europe, so as to reach beyond stereotypes and to address the critical issues that have come up in the last decades. After the breakdown of Socialism, only a minor element of the legal and political systems of Eastern Europe completed the transition towards Western-style systems of liberal democracy and the rule of law. In many cases, this transition did not deliver the expected results while, in other cases, even when some sort of democratic transition occurred, there has been a retreat, including a resurgence of illiberalism. Thus, the present-day landscape of legal and political systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet area includes weak democracies, hybrid regimes and new autocracies. Our research group will deal with the legal and political structures of this complex reality, taking into account the current European and global contexts, the historical background of eastern European countries and the need for new analytical approaches.

EASTERN EUROPE IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Within the last decade, Western powers, including the EU, have entered a phase of economic crisis and political instability, so losing the global appeal they had held since the early ‘90s. Compared to the Cold War and the immediate post-Cold War years, contemporary Eastern European systems need to be situated in a world order that is undergoing restructuring, and in which a plurality of legal, political and economic models is emerging around the once-hegemonic Western models of democracy and market. While the market economy remained a globally accepted institution, the legal and political structures of capitalism have been extensively remoulded with less independent judiciaries, almost silenced oppositions, centralised leaderships and marginalised international courts and institutions.

LEGAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND

It is important to consider that while the Western countries managed historically to separate the legal realm from the political one, thus establishing legal-political reciprocity between the rulers and the ruled, and harmonizing state-building with democracy-building, the Eastern European countries and FSU did not do that, or did only partially. Hence, these countries had a markedly different legal and political background when they embarked on socialism in the 20th Century. After the post-socialist transitional parenthesis, they have retrieved systems where the legal realm depends closely on the political field: legal, institutional and constitutional profiles change according to the varying political dynamics and their political actors, while the edge between legal and political accountability is thin and porous.

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY

To reappraise the study of Eastern European systems in such a challenging global and European context, our research group embraces two key standpoints. On one hand, it is necessary to go beyond the transitional paradigms and take up new perspectives on the legal traditions of Eastern Europe and FSU, including the role of law in the political history of these countries, the coexistence of formal and informal institutions, the evolution of civil and political representation and the authoritarian legacies. Our interest is devoted to critical issues relating to institutional differences and transformations – as opposed to formulae based on an assumed homogeneity – including approaches deriving from theories of law and development, legal pluralism, uneven and combined development, constructivism and multipolarity. On the other hand, given the historical legacy of interdependence between the legal and political realms, our analysis will focus on the interplay between law and politics instead of the legal formal features only. In our prospects, an innovative combination of legal studies and political science will allow a more comprehensive understanding of the Eastern European institutional dynamic. The research group operates at both theoretical and empirical levels, making use of case studies and comparative analysis between different countries and/or different periods. Our research approach is innovation-driven and embraces the adoption of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods.