CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Darchinova, Lala |
|---|---|
| Title | Applying a Decolonial Approach to Post-Soviet Constitutionalism |
| Summary | Western worldviews and beliefs constitute a significant part of modern knowledge. Legal knowledge is also part of this worldview and belief system. Modern constitutions first emerged in the West and then travelled to the rest of the world. Imperialism and colonialism played an essential role in the export of these ideas. Today, mainstream constitutional law theory offers a comparative analysis of constitutions and their main concepts and principles. Nevertheless, the role of the colonial and imperial past and its influence on constitutionalism in the former colonies are often neglected and less spoken. In this thesis, a decolonial approach to constitutional law is researched and analysed. The project covers different decolonial approaches to constitutional law and applies these theories to the example of Russian/Soviet colonialism in post-Soviet countries. First, the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union colonised these countries. Nowadays, these countries have challenges in forming stable democracies. These similarities were the primary reason for choosing the comparators. The main research question of the work is how colonialism affected the origins and development of constitutional law in post-Soviet countries. By linking this historical overview with the current developments, the author investigates how or whether this factor continued to take place after the rupture with the former empire, for example, in the form of new constitutions or the rule of law and development programs. The primary methodology to make this research possible is a comparative constitutional analysis of constitutionalism in most similar cases. The overall purpose of the thesis is to decolonise the legal knowledge system, offer an alternative interpretation to the comparative constitutional law theory and contribute to the research from the post-Soviet region. |
| Supervisor | Mathias Möschel |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/darchinova_lala.pdf |
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