Der russische Föderalismus unter Präsident Putin: Diskurse - Realitäten

Abstract

I have developed a way of a) systematically constructing a list of quotations of a political actor that transports the main elements of his political concepts, but at the same time with a minimum of redundancy (actors discourse as part of the general discourse), starting from discoursive events (Link), moving on to so called "diskurstragende Kategorien" (Link) and using the possibilities of computer-based search methods; b) analysing what exactly the elements of the political concept consist of and how they (more or less logically) relate to each other - using different ways of reconstructing semantics by analysing political discourse. By doing so I approach political discourse from a perspective of "applied" discourse analysis: I concentrate on finding out what the political concepts of the actors are by analysing political discourse. Additionally I combine analyses of the verbal and of the actional component of politics. Thus my approach could also be called "Dispositiv-Analyse" (Jäger/Foucault). The political discourse of federalism in Russia under Putin was established mainly via the actional and verbal interaction of the most relevant actors, that is, Putin - who is trying to change the situation that has developed in the Yeltsin-period - and the governors - who, especially in the year 2000, tested out the "boarders" of politically "acceptable" discourse under Putin. Some of them, as a consequence, are no longer governors of their region. Others have begun to talk about federalism in quite a different way than they used to. Putin has reached discursive hegemony in this field of political discourse (this seems to be of high political relevance in Russia). As a result of this interaction, a new general concept of federalism has evolved in Russia, so that we now really can speak of "the" Russian discourse of federalism.