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In the context of international law, "transitology" is often used to describe the literature surr... more In the context of international law, "transitology" is often used to describe the literature surrounding the former Soviet Union (fSU) and the subsequent reform attempts by Western and Eastern/Central European market reformers. While it is often acknowledged there have been other "waves" of transition, this literature typically asserts that the situation in the fSU is somehow distinct in human history, and thus, to a large extent, unmixable with other past "transition" histories. Likewise, the story of the Soviet Union's dissolution, and the subsequent reforms in its aftermath, largely avoid the radar of critical colonial discourses. In short, there is almost no effort to link the fSU to the 19 th century colonial project of Western European states, in particular the story of informal empire. This article seeks to re-frame the post-communist transition debate in terms of the broader international challenges of decolonization, "neo-colonialism," and informal empire building in the West, the former Soviet Union, as well as between the two in the post Soviet space.
Framing the crisis in Ukraine in broader geo-political terms, this article is a preliminary attem... more Framing the crisis in Ukraine in broader geo-political terms, this article is a preliminary attempt to think about Cold War Two as a manifestation of two competing historical trends in the evolution of global capitalism—globalization and Balkanization —and the relative ineffectiveness of international law to anticipate and resolve interstate disputes inherent within globalization, while seemingly facilitating and encouraging Balkanization. It proceeds in three parts. Part One offers a brief overview of the Ukraine crisis and surveys the international legal responses to this crisis from several key vantage points—U.S., EU, Russia, China. Part Two broadens the aperture to consider how international legal responses to the Ukraine crisis appear to replicate Cold War legal discursive strategies while actually concealing the true nature of the conflict—thereby exacerbating it. Part Three concludes with reflections on the role that international lawyers could play in the new Cold War.
To speak of ‘Soviet international law’ as a precursor to Bandung in even the most general terms s... more To speak of ‘Soviet international law’ as a precursor to Bandung in even the most general terms suggests an inquiry into the dual role that Soviet international legal doctrine played in enabling independence movements that culminated in statehood and recognition for former colonies, while simultaneously constraining internal self-determination movements within its vast territory. This type of argument could be developed in at least four ways: (1) by exploring various realist justifications for exploitative Soviet state practice despite high-minded decolonization doctrinal talk; (2) it can rest on critical lines of thought that suggest the indeterminacy of international legal argument more generally, without distinguishing between Soviet or ‘Western’ positions; (3) by revisiting settled historical episodes (such as ‘exclusion’ of the Soviets from Bandung) through new empirical or archival research; (4) by tracing the evolution of Soviet decolonization discourse through the writings of several leading theorists in effort to understand, as much as possible, the types of constraints and anxieties these scholars labored under, and the actual effect of their work on particular emancipatory projects.
Despite the inherent intellectual merit and policy-relevance of these research questions, the Soviet experience remains an often overlooked dimension of the intellectual, institutional and professional development of the discipline of international law. Typically, histories of international law treat Soviet approaches to international law as anomalous, as aberrational moments in the continuous teleological development of liberal international law doctrines and institutions. More recent attempts to rethink the place of Soviet approaches to international law vis-à-vis ‘Western’ international law either describe the Soviet experience in terms of a ‘civilizational dialogue’ with Europe or as an integral part of a longer historical narrative dating back to Russia’s imperial era. Furthermore, in the contemporary moment, when Russian aggression or economic expansion is frequently, if erroneously, labeled ‘Soviet’, any attempt to explore fractures in Soviet modes of argumentation on decolonization may appear revisionist and/or trivial, akin to an aesthetic study of the monumental grace of Werner March’s 1936 Olympiastadion in Berlin as a proxy for understanding Nazi ideology. Without suggesting the resurrection of Soviet-style critiques or political postures, this chapter seeks to reframe our understanding of Soviet participation in particular anticolonial projects by focusing on the writings of early Soviet international lawyers Evgeny Korovin and Evgeny Pashukanis, and, later, fragments of recollections by the late Soviet ambassador to Indonesia during the Bandung Conference. Revisiting this history is important for, at least, two main reasons. First, it adds to the growing empirical account of decolonization generally, and Soviet participation (direct and indirect) in particular decolonization projects. Second, it helps to understand the complex role of the Soviet Union as both a peripheral post-imperial subject and neo-colonial actor in its own right. For lack of space, this chapter does not engage with many of the questions it poses, particularly with respect to the contemporary relevance of Bandung for Russian and post-Soviet international lawyers and international relations specialists. But as the essence of this volume suggests, even encyclopedic efforts to capture the complexity and far-ranging consequences of Bandung are but preliminary ultimately attempts to approximate the true nature of a rapidly evolving contemporary frame of reference.
This chapter is an attempt to put early Soviet property rights theory into conversation with prop... more This chapter is an attempt to put early Soviet property rights theory into conversation with property rights theories in various Western legal traditions, and to bracket that discussion within more foundational critiques of legal formalism. This is important not just because of the endurance of various socialist property regimes to this day, but also because unlocking shared ontological, political or ideological commitments in two nominally-opposed theoretical contexts can help us understand the actual normative stakes in these deliberations, and thus, shed light on the deeper institutional contours of property reforms by identifying previously overlooked actors, interests, and pathways of governance. The chapter starts with a heuristic mapping of several theoretical moorings for property rights in the Western legal tradition and attempts to problematize the formalist claim that property law regimes are relatively autonomous/internally constituted. It then examines early Soviet critiques of formalism and their remarkable ‘anti-formalist formalist’ argumentative logic. Following recent research that shows the deep embeddedness of private right as a default assumption in both Soviet and Western legal thinking, the chapter lays out several intuitions regarding the ideological and political functions that are served by the recognition of formal individual property rights regimes in socialist and liberal societies, including: (1) the reification of the individual as a primordial legal actor; (2) promotion of individualism in socialist societies and collectivism in liberal societies as an affective dimension of bipolarity; (3) instrumentalisation of private rights to occlude class conflicts or channel distributional conflicts towards particular institutional forms of dispute settlement. These themes are directly relevant to ongoing policy debates over the role of strong and clear property rights as prerequisites for economic growth not only in the context of various post-socialist ‘transitions’ but also globally.
papers.ssrn.com
Abstract: In the wake of the tragic collapse of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and mor... more Abstract: In the wake of the tragic collapse of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and more than twenty five years after the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl (1986), nuclear safety is again a top policy priority in the US. The United States is the world's largest ...
Review of Central and East …, Jan 1, 2010
Global Jurist, Jan 1, 2009
Recommended Citation John D. Haskell and Boris N. Mamlyuk (2009) Capitalism, Communism ...and Co... more Recommended Citation John D. Haskell and Boris N. Mamlyuk (2009) Capitalism, Communism ...and Colonialism? Revisiting Transitology as the Ideology of Informal Empire, Global Jurist: Vol. 9: Iss. 2 (Topics), Article 7. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/gj/vol9/iss2/art7
Southeastern Environmental Law Journal, Jan 1, 2010
I.# INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... more I.# INTRODUCTION................................................................................. 44# II.#AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE POLLUTER PAYS PRINCIPLE ................ 46# A.#What Is the Polluter Pays Principle?......................................... 46# B.#Background and History of the Polluter Pays ...
In the context of international law, "transitology" is often used to describe the literature surr... more In the context of international law, "transitology" is often used to describe the literature surrounding the former Soviet Union (fSU) and the subsequent reform attempts by Western and Eastern/Central European market reformers. While it is often acknowledged there have been other "waves" of transition, this literature typically asserts that the situation in the fSU is somehow distinct in human history, and thus, to a large extent, unmixable with other past "transition" histories. Likewise, the story of the Soviet Union's dissolution, and the subsequent reforms in its aftermath, largely avoid the radar of critical colonial discourses. In short, there is almost no effort to link the fSU to the 19 th century colonial project of Western European states, in particular the story of informal empire. This article seeks to re-frame the post-communist transition debate in terms of the broader international challenges of decolonization, "neo-colonialism," and informal empire building in the West, the former Soviet Union, as well as between the two in the post Soviet space.
Framing the crisis in Ukraine in broader geo-political terms, this article is a preliminary attem... more Framing the crisis in Ukraine in broader geo-political terms, this article is a preliminary attempt to think about Cold War Two as a manifestation of two competing historical trends in the evolution of global capitalism—globalization and Balkanization —and the relative ineffectiveness of international law to anticipate and resolve interstate disputes inherent within globalization, while seemingly facilitating and encouraging Balkanization. It proceeds in three parts. Part One offers a brief overview of the Ukraine crisis and surveys the international legal responses to this crisis from several key vantage points—U.S., EU, Russia, China. Part Two broadens the aperture to consider how international legal responses to the Ukraine crisis appear to replicate Cold War legal discursive strategies while actually concealing the true nature of the conflict—thereby exacerbating it. Part Three concludes with reflections on the role that international lawyers could play in the new Cold War.
To speak of ‘Soviet international law’ as a precursor to Bandung in even the most general terms s... more To speak of ‘Soviet international law’ as a precursor to Bandung in even the most general terms suggests an inquiry into the dual role that Soviet international legal doctrine played in enabling independence movements that culminated in statehood and recognition for former colonies, while simultaneously constraining internal self-determination movements within its vast territory. This type of argument could be developed in at least four ways: (1) by exploring various realist justifications for exploitative Soviet state practice despite high-minded decolonization doctrinal talk; (2) it can rest on critical lines of thought that suggest the indeterminacy of international legal argument more generally, without distinguishing between Soviet or ‘Western’ positions; (3) by revisiting settled historical episodes (such as ‘exclusion’ of the Soviets from Bandung) through new empirical or archival research; (4) by tracing the evolution of Soviet decolonization discourse through the writings of several leading theorists in effort to understand, as much as possible, the types of constraints and anxieties these scholars labored under, and the actual effect of their work on particular emancipatory projects.
Despite the inherent intellectual merit and policy-relevance of these research questions, the Soviet experience remains an often overlooked dimension of the intellectual, institutional and professional development of the discipline of international law. Typically, histories of international law treat Soviet approaches to international law as anomalous, as aberrational moments in the continuous teleological development of liberal international law doctrines and institutions. More recent attempts to rethink the place of Soviet approaches to international law vis-à-vis ‘Western’ international law either describe the Soviet experience in terms of a ‘civilizational dialogue’ with Europe or as an integral part of a longer historical narrative dating back to Russia’s imperial era. Furthermore, in the contemporary moment, when Russian aggression or economic expansion is frequently, if erroneously, labeled ‘Soviet’, any attempt to explore fractures in Soviet modes of argumentation on decolonization may appear revisionist and/or trivial, akin to an aesthetic study of the monumental grace of Werner March’s 1936 Olympiastadion in Berlin as a proxy for understanding Nazi ideology. Without suggesting the resurrection of Soviet-style critiques or political postures, this chapter seeks to reframe our understanding of Soviet participation in particular anticolonial projects by focusing on the writings of early Soviet international lawyers Evgeny Korovin and Evgeny Pashukanis, and, later, fragments of recollections by the late Soviet ambassador to Indonesia during the Bandung Conference. Revisiting this history is important for, at least, two main reasons. First, it adds to the growing empirical account of decolonization generally, and Soviet participation (direct and indirect) in particular decolonization projects. Second, it helps to understand the complex role of the Soviet Union as both a peripheral post-imperial subject and neo-colonial actor in its own right. For lack of space, this chapter does not engage with many of the questions it poses, particularly with respect to the contemporary relevance of Bandung for Russian and post-Soviet international lawyers and international relations specialists. But as the essence of this volume suggests, even encyclopedic efforts to capture the complexity and far-ranging consequences of Bandung are but preliminary ultimately attempts to approximate the true nature of a rapidly evolving contemporary frame of reference.
This chapter is an attempt to put early Soviet property rights theory into conversation with prop... more This chapter is an attempt to put early Soviet property rights theory into conversation with property rights theories in various Western legal traditions, and to bracket that discussion within more foundational critiques of legal formalism. This is important not just because of the endurance of various socialist property regimes to this day, but also because unlocking shared ontological, political or ideological commitments in two nominally-opposed theoretical contexts can help us understand the actual normative stakes in these deliberations, and thus, shed light on the deeper institutional contours of property reforms by identifying previously overlooked actors, interests, and pathways of governance. The chapter starts with a heuristic mapping of several theoretical moorings for property rights in the Western legal tradition and attempts to problematize the formalist claim that property law regimes are relatively autonomous/internally constituted. It then examines early Soviet critiques of formalism and their remarkable ‘anti-formalist formalist’ argumentative logic. Following recent research that shows the deep embeddedness of private right as a default assumption in both Soviet and Western legal thinking, the chapter lays out several intuitions regarding the ideological and political functions that are served by the recognition of formal individual property rights regimes in socialist and liberal societies, including: (1) the reification of the individual as a primordial legal actor; (2) promotion of individualism in socialist societies and collectivism in liberal societies as an affective dimension of bipolarity; (3) instrumentalisation of private rights to occlude class conflicts or channel distributional conflicts towards particular institutional forms of dispute settlement. These themes are directly relevant to ongoing policy debates over the role of strong and clear property rights as prerequisites for economic growth not only in the context of various post-socialist ‘transitions’ but also globally.
papers.ssrn.com
Abstract: In the wake of the tragic collapse of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and mor... more Abstract: In the wake of the tragic collapse of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and more than twenty five years after the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl (1986), nuclear safety is again a top policy priority in the US. The United States is the world's largest ...
Review of Central and East …, Jan 1, 2010
Global Jurist, Jan 1, 2009
Recommended Citation John D. Haskell and Boris N. Mamlyuk (2009) Capitalism, Communism ...and Co... more Recommended Citation John D. Haskell and Boris N. Mamlyuk (2009) Capitalism, Communism ...and Colonialism? Revisiting Transitology as the Ideology of Informal Empire, Global Jurist: Vol. 9: Iss. 2 (Topics), Article 7. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/gj/vol9/iss2/art7
Southeastern Environmental Law Journal, Jan 1, 2010
I.# INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... more I.# INTRODUCTION................................................................................. 44# II.#AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE POLLUTER PAYS PRINCIPLE ................ 46# A.#What Is the Polluter Pays Principle?......................................... 46# B.#Background and History of the Polluter Pays ...