Kin-States and Kin Majorities from the Bottom-Up: Developing a Model of Nested Integration in Crimea & Moldova
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Kin-States and Kin Majorities from the Bottom-Up: Developing a Model of Nested Integration in Crimea & Moldova Eleanor Knott a thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Government London School of Economics September 2015 Abstract With the increasing importance and prevalence of kin-state policies, this thesis identifies three gaps in existing kin-state research. Theoretically, existing literature focuses on how kin relations can induce or reduce conflict between states, overlooking the dynamics of interaction between kin-states andkin communities. Conceptually, existing literature focuses on kin communities as minorities, overlooking kin majorities. Methodologically, existing literature focuses on top-down institutional and state-level analyses of kin-state relations, overlooking bottom-up agency-centred perspectives. To address these gaps, the thesis develops a model of nested integration, to analyse relations been kin-states and kin majorities from a bottom-up perspective. Nested integration does not challenge the borders separating kin-state from kin communities, but affects the meaning of this border. The thesis examines the comparative explanatory power of this model of nested integration by generating evidence about the meanings of kin identification and engagement with different kin-state practices, through a cross-case comparison of Crimea vis-à-vis Russia and Moldova vis-à-vis Romania. These cases are selected from a wider kin majority typology as two contrasting examples of kin-state policies: Romanian citizenship in Moldova and Russian quasi-citizenship Compatriot policy in Crimea. Overall, the thesis argues that Moldova exhibits more nested integration than Crimea because of the type, legitimacy and availability of kin-state provision, which the thesis argues is consequential for the degree of nested integration observed. The thesis also refines the model of nested integration, by taking account of empirical evidence, arguing for the importance of considering internal fraction- alization within the kin majority, social dependence and geopolitical dependence. Incorporating these elements within the model shows kin-state relations to concern not only issues of identity, but also security, public goods provision and geopolitical region-building narratives. These elements have been overlooked by existing research and demonstrate the importance of a bottom-up, agency-centred and comparative perspective for kin-state scholarship. Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided thatfull acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. All maps, tables and figures are the author’s own. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 101,904 words. I can confirm that my thesis was copy edited for conventions of language, spelling and grammarby Judith Knott. Parts of this thesis have been published as journal articles: - Knott, Eleanor (2015a) ‘Generating Data: Studying Identity Politics From a Bottom-Up Per- spective in Crimea and Moldova’, East European Politics and Societies, 29(2): 467-486, doi: 10.1177/0888325415584047 (Sections 1.5 and 1.3 in Chapter 1); - Knott, Eleanor (2015b) ‘What Does it Mean to be a Kin Majority? Analyzing Romanian Identity in Moldova and Russian identity in Crimea from Below’, Social Science Quarterly, 96(3): 830–859, doi: 10.1111/ssqu.12193 (Chapters 4 and 6) 1 Acknowledgements I thank my supervisor, Denisa Kostovicova, for her support and direction, enabling me to write a the- sis covering issues that have mattered to me since its inception, while pushing me to conduct research more rigorously and systematically, and for the guidance in navigating how to tell a story that quickly became a ‘history of the past’. Thanks also to my advisor, John Breuilly, for his insights about nation- alism, his historical perspective and his probing about the relevance of the everyday for politics. Significant thanks goes to my respondents, friends and hosts in Crimea and Moldova, who remain nameless. You are much more than the subjects of this research. I am grateful also to the Economics and Social Research Council for funding this research and the fieldwork, and to conference funding from the LSE Travel Fund and Government Department atLSE, which allowed me to present this research internationally. I am grateful to my mentors and colleagues at the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Na- tionalism (ASEN) and doctoral seminar in nationalism studies. I thank John Hutchinson for keeping the debate on nationalism studies lively. I am indebted for the opportunities that being involved with ASEN has provided, both participating in, and organising, its annual conference and seminars. I thank those who contributed valuable insights which helped to develop the arguments in the thesis, in reading and commenting on the papers drafted from it, in particular Jon Fox, Paul Goode, Angela Kachuyevski, Jan Kubik and Gerard Toal. I am thankful also to those who have been critical in my education previous to the PhD: Gerry Kearns and Andy Tucker, as a Geography undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge, who kept me cloistered from positivism and immersed in culture and geopolitics, and Dennis Deletant, Svetlana McMillin and Richard Mole, at SSEES. I’m grateful also to those who intercepted earlier at Simon Balle School, most prominently Mike Moss and Andrea Robins, who taught me how to argue. Writing a thesis was made much easier by my friends, inside and outside academia. Specifically, I thank those from the Government Department at LSE who I worked alongside in 4.21, in particular the 2010 MRes cohort: Kenneth Bunker, Gisela Calderon, Pınar Dinc, Ed Gareth Poole, Randi Solhjell, Slo- bodan Tomic, Robert van Geffen, Marta Wojciechowska; and beyond: Stefan Bauchowitz, Eri Bertsou, Mollie Gerver Jose Olivas Osuna, Laura Robbins-Wright, Fabrizio Scrollini and Anahi Wiedenbrug. I’m grateful also to Aoife for putting up with me as a flatmate for the entirety of the PhD.Andto Russ, for providing support, inspiration, provocation and belief, and for being an enduring participant in discussions, from the ridiculous to the ontological. Lastly, I thank my parents for their help and support, in particular during the last stages, to my mum, the tireless proof reader and soundboard, and my dad, for the early and ongoing political discussions, foreign, domestic and chess-related. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, and to my diverse setsof grandparents, who all provoked my interest in geography, politics and being a pochemuchka (a person who asks too many questions). In writing this thesis, I learnt the power of family histories in shaping the present and for disen- tangling the crucible of politics. It is from the personal and everyday that I hope I can contribute to political science. 2 “The earth does not particularly care whether Celts or Slavs inhabited Bohemia, whether Romanians or Russians occupy Bessarabia.” Milan Kundera (1980) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 3 Contents List of Figures 6 List of Tables 8 1 Introducing Kin Majorities and Nested Integration from the Bottom-up 15 1.1 Why Study Kin Majorities from Below? ........................... 15 1.2 A Kin Majority Typology ................................... 17 1.3 A Bottom-up Approach to Identities and Institutions ................... 22 1.4 Main Arguments ........................................ 25 1.5 Methodology and Research Design ............................. 26 1.6 Thesis Outline ......................................... 35 2 Theorising Nested Integration for Kin Majorities 38 2.1 Existing Approaches to Kin-State Relations ......................... 38 2.2 A Nested Approach for Kin Majorities ............................ 43 2.3 Conceptualising Kin-State Meanings ............................ 46 2.4 Conceptualising Kin-State Practices ............................. 50 2.5 Conclusion: A Model of Nested Integration to Examine Diverse Kin-State Practices .. 52 3 Crimea and Moldova as Kin Majorities 55 3.1 Historical Background: Russia and Crimea ......................... 56 3.2 Historical Background: Romania and Moldova ....................... 63 3.3 Institutional Background: Russia’s Kin-State Policies in Crimea ............. 69 3.4 Institutional Background: Romanian Kin-state Policies in Moldova ............ 78 3.5 Conclusion: A Framework to Analyse Kin-state Practices ................. 89 4 Kin Majority Identification: What Does it Mean to be Russian in Crimea? 91 4.1 Identity Politics in Post-Soviet Crimea ............................ 91 4.2 Discriminated Russians .................................... 98 4.3 Ethnic Russians ........................................ 102 4.4 Political Ukrainians ...................................... 106 4.5 Crimeans ............................................ 109 4.6 Ethnic Ukrainians ....................................... 112 4.7 Conclusion ........................................... 115 5 Russian Kin-state Practices in Crimea: the Bottom-up Perspective 119 5.1 Existing Approaches to Russian Kin-State Practices .................... 120 5.2 Entitlements to Russian Kin-State Practices ......................... 123 4 CONTENTS 5.3 Associational