State-Building as Lawfare
Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya

This book explores how politicians and individuals use state and non-state legal systems to achieve political goals in Chechnya.

Egor Lazarev (Author)

9781009245951, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 February 2023

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

'State Building as Lawfare is a tour de force. Contra the conventional wisdom, Lazarev highlights how government officials and members of the population both engage in “forum shopping” between state and non-state justice institutions to advance their interests, resulting in a bottom-up process of state-building that is deeply gendered. Based on exceptional multi-methods fieldwork in Chechnya, a challenging site for rigorous research, Lazarev combines extensive interviews and observations with original surveys and administrative data.' Melani Cammett, Harvard University

State-Building as Lawfare explores the use of state and non-state legal systems by both politicians and ordinary people in postwar Chechnya. The book addresses two interrelated puzzles: why do local rulers tolerate and even promote non-state legal systems at the expense of state law, and why do some members of repressed ethnic minorities choose to resolve their everyday disputes using state legal systems instead of non-state alternatives? The book documents how the rulers of Chechnya promote and reinvent customary law and Sharia in order to borrow legitimacy from tradition and religion, increase autonomy from the metropole, and accommodate communal authorities and former rebels. At the same time, the book shows how prolonged armed conflict disrupted the traditional social hierarchies and pushed some Chechen women to use state law, spurring state formation from below.

Introduction
Part I. Theory and Ethnography: 1. State-building as lawfare: the view from above and from below
2. The field: ethnography of legal pluralism in postwar Chechnya
Part II. Lawfare and Political Order: 3. The Chechen way: lawfare under imperial and Soviet rule
4. 'There are no camels in Chechnya!' lawfare during the independence period
5. 'We will use every resource!' jurisdictional politics in postwar Chechnya
Part III. Lawfare and Social Order: 6. Laws in conflict: hybrid legal order in contemporary Chechnya
7. 'People need law:' demand for social order after conflict
8: Chechen women go to court: war and women's lawfare
Conclusion
References.

Subject Areas: Comparative law [LAM], Comparative politics [JPB], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ]