Institutional Solutions for the Post-conflict Development of the Chechen Republic

Abstract

The article reveals the institutional solutions for the Chechen conflict and post-conflict development of the Republic within the Russian Federation. The author conducts a retrospective, event- and normative analysis of the stages of the Chechen conflict, when political actors (federal center and ethnic elites) tested various institutional decisions, each time adopting new “rules of the game”: 1) the period of institutional uncertainty from the “Chechen revolution” of 1991 to the dissolution of the first Parliament by Dzhokhar Dudayev in mid-1993; 2) the period of "temporary sorting model" - the search for a Chechen leader alternative to Dudayev for negotiations with Moscow, ended with the signing of a Peace Treaty with Aslan Maskhadov and then his attempt to create an Islamic state on the territory of Chechnya; 3) the stake on Akhmad Kadyrov as a consistent opponent of Wahhabism, who made a turn towards loyalty to the federal Center. At present, stability in post-conflict Chechnya is determined by the following institutional decisions: the constitutional model of Russian federalism, the republic's subsidized dependence on the Center, the integration of the republic's executive and legislative into a vertically hierarchized state system. But along with formal institutions in Chechnya, there are social practices that depend on the socio-historical context (clannishness, adherence to traditional Islamic values), supported by the influential Head of the Republic Ramzan Kadyrov. The spread of traditional socio-political practices shows the possibility of the formation the new gaps between secular society and the political system of modern Russia and the Chechen Republic.