Intelligence and democracy: A Russian case study of secret police transformation in the post -Soviet context.
Item
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Title
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Intelligence and democracy: A Russian case study of secret police transformation in the post -Soviet context.
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Identifier
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AAI3303795
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identifier
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3303795
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Creator
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Anderson, Julie.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Irving L. Markovitz
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political Science, International Law and Relations | Military Studies | Political Science, General
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Abstract
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In this dissertation, I construct a general theory of intelligence transformation as an essential aspect of a state's political transition. Filling the vacuum in the literature on the critical secret police transformation process, the project's findings are intended to serve as a guide to the political elites of states struggling to make transitions to democracy. I identify the conditions necessary for a secret police transformation into intelligence/security services that operate in line with democratic norms, a necessary condition for a post-communist state's transition to democracy. Theoretically, I argue that a lustration/vetting/de-communization (LVD) policy---a procedure for disallowing former high-ranking communist party and secret police officials and their agents and collaborators from holding high political or public office---implemented in the political arena contributes to the democratization of a post-communist state, and its institution in the intelligence/security sector is a necessary condition for a secret police transformation.;After developing an analytically useful and comparative model to illustrate the secret police transformation and democratic political transition processes, I use the Russian intelligence/security services in the post-Soviet context as a case study. I show that the post-Soviet Russian government's failure to institute LVD is a significant factor in explaining why the country's transition to political democracy failed, with the secret police unreformed and, in fact, resurgent, and the political and economic sectors, dominated by chekists in partnership with organized crime, deeply criminalized.;Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, many Russia scholars, U.S. policymakers, and observers interpreted Russia's transition from communism as one moving toward the establishment of democracy. While those views are no longer widely espoused, my research shows that Russian democratization had serious problems from the beginning, posed most prominently by its failure to institute LVD and transform its secret police. Challenging the argument that post-Soviet Russia was democratizing, this dissertation shows how the state was moving toward authoritarianism, and how its true political direction could have been identified much sooner by an assessment of the nature and activities of the chekists and post-Soviet intelligence/security services in conjunction with the political-intelligence relationship as it evolved over the years.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
