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Abstract

This paper uses poststructuralist influences to examine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and his consolidation of that power away from other elite actors. It does this with a focus on poststructuralist considerations such as discourse, normalisation, and image construction. The paper finds that Putin started out with a very low public profile but was quickly placed in high level positions from Federal Security Service director, to Prime Minister, and finally acting President until his election to that post in March 2000. During his political career, he has used a discourse of ‘the rule of law’ and ‘a dictatorship of law’ to wield executive power that was used to take away political influence, and sometimes liberty, from pre-existing powerholders in Russian politics and reinforce state power and make synonymous with his own. Finally, and most importantly, he used processes of depoliticisation and hypermasculinity to frame and limit the public discourse of politics to a narrowing margin of cultural and non-political considerations and built his image around the idea of a muzhik, the ideal masculine Russian male, who was strong, in-control, and ‘conceivably’ the only person ‘qualified’ to be President. This paper seeks to provide a discussion of these various methods and ways in which Putin’s power has been constructed and maintained over the years, not only to perhaps understand how his popularity and regime are resilient, but also to show that processes such as depoliticisation and hypermasculinity might be possible in Western liberal democratic contexts.

Course: International Relations and Politics - BA (Hons) - C0694

Date Deposited: 2022-02-18

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13832.html