print

Decontestation of the concepts of sovereignty and strategic sovereignty in the official discourses of Russia and the EU (2016-2021)

Kotsur G.V.,

St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia, glebk17@gmail.com

elibrary_id: 983356 | ORCID: 0000-0003-4079-264X | RESEARCHER_ID: U-6214-2017

Article received: 2022.10.15. Accepted: 2023.04.19


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2023.04.03
EDN: BIZGDV

Rubric: Theme of the issue: political science facing new foreign policy challenges

For citation:

Kotsur G.V. Decontestation of the concepts of sovereignty and strategic sovereignty in the official discourses of Russia and the EU (2016-2021). – Polis. Political Studies. 2023. No. 4. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2023.04.03. EDN: BIZGDV

This work was supported by Russian Science Foundation (RSF) grant (project No. 22-28-00682, https://rscf.ru/project/22-28-00682/).

Abstract

The article focuses on the concept of strategic sovereignty that has proliferated in the EU’s official discourse over the last few years. The EU has turned to sovereignty relatively recently; the very identity of the Union previously developed in direct opposition with this national phenomenon. In contrast, sovereignty is the key attribute of state and society in the Russian official discourse; its significance has grown in connection with the recent Ukrainian crisis. The author of the article compares the semantic content of sovereignty in the EU’s and Russian official discourses using the methodology based on the morphological analysis of ideology by M. Freeden with the special focus on decontestation and adjacent concepts. Official discourse in the EU and Russia, including speeches of top politicians and key foreign policy documents, provide an empirical basis for this analysis. The author shows that the EU and Russian concepts have little in common. For the European Union, strategic sovereignty is the ability to make independent decisions, primarily in the economic, digital and security spheres, in order to deal with challenges above the national level. In the Russian semantic system, it is described as the most important social object associated primarily with state security, which must be protected from threats and interference. Despite some semantic intersections, the two concepts differ both in terms of paradigm, and in terms of specific semantic content. 

Keywords

sovereignty, strategic sovereignty, ideology, the European Union, Russia, discourse, neoliberalism, conservatism.

 Full Text

Agnew, J. (2003). Geopolitics: re-visioning world politics. London: Routledge.

Bachmann, V., & Moisio, S. (2020). Towards a constructive critical geopolitics – inspirations from the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38(2), 251-268. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419869016

Bodin, J. (1967). Six books of the Сommonwealth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Foxall, A. (2017). From Evropa to Gayropa: a critical geopolitics of the European Union as seen from Russia. Geopolitics, 24(1), 174-193. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2017.1417848

Freeden, M. (1996). Ideologies and political theory: a conceptual approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Freeden, M, & Fernández-Sebastián, J. (2019). Introduction. European liberal discourses: conceptual affinities and disparities. In: M. Freeden, J. Fernández-Sebastián, & J. Leonhard (Ed.), In Search of European Liberalisms: Concepts, Languages, Ideologies (pp. 1-35). New York, NY: Berghahn Books. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/FreedenIn_intro.pdf

Herborth, B. (2020). Ideology as decontestation. In B. Martill, & S. Schindler (Eds), Theory as Ideology in International Relations. The Politics of Knowledge (pp. 34-50). Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429021008-4

Hermann, C. (2007). Neoliberalism in the European Union. Studies in Political Economy, 79(1), 61-90. https://doi.org/10.1080/19187033.2007.11675092

Prozorov, S. (2005). Russian conservatism in the Putin presidency: the dispersion of a hegemonic discourse. Journal of Political Ideologies, 10(2), 121-143. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569310500097224

Waever, O. (1996). European security identities. Journal of Common Market Studies, 34(1), 103-132, https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1468-5965.1996.TB00562.X

Morozov, V. (2009). Rossiya i Drugie: identichnost' i granitsy politicheskogo soobshchestva [Russia and Others: identity and borders of a political community]. Moscow: New Literary Observer. (In Russ.)

Romanova, T. (2021). The EU’s discourse on sovereignty: content and consequences. Contemporary Europe, 5, 32-44. (In Russ.) http://dx.doi.org/10.15211/soveurope520213244

Saussure, F. de. (1999). Cours de linguistique générale. (Russ. ed.: Saussure, F. de. Kurs obshchei lingvistiki. Yekaterinburg: Ural University Press). 

See also: