Discourses of Suspicion in Actor Designations: Articulation of Legal Subjects in Foreign Agent Law

Description

This article explores how the discussion and the subsequent reporting of the law in the state media rationalised the Foreign Agent Law in Russia between 2012 and 2022 to various audiences. By referring to the Membership Categorisation Analysis and Bakhtin's consideration for the dialogism of discourse, I look at how identification and homogenisation of respective actors are used to communicate the legitimate view of the ontology of social reality. The preliminary argument rests on the observation that by employing a repertoire of membership identifications and narrative structures, the advocates of the law constructed an ontological view dominated by the hermeneutic of suspicion in international relations and models of appropriate citizenship.

Adopted upon Vladimir Putin's return to power in 2012, Russian Foreign Agent Law subjected the multitude of actors in civil society to rigorous regulation under the pretext of combatting foreign influence on domestic affairs. Unfolding in the past decade the law drew on strategies of external legitimisation through cross-national policy comparison. By referring to the example of similar policies elsewhere, such as the Foreign Agent Registration Act in the USA, the politicians in charge communicated the legitimacy of the newly invented policy. At the same time, the expansion of the law which gradually subjected the entirety of civil society was marked by the amplification of polarising political rhetorics. In this sense, the arguments in favour of the policy constructed the ontological view of international politics as a recurring attempt to subvert the indigenous processes by covert influence.

I argue, that presenting the policy as an import rather than an indigenous measure rationalised the securitisation of civil society and established a precedent for further expansion of the trend to gradually delegitimise organisations deemed dangerous. In this fashion, the discursive strategy of the proponents of the law builds on the popular imageries of modernisation in line with the universal trends, thus refuting the critique from the actors of civil society affected by this measure and international commentators alike. However, by referring to the binary semiotics of ‘Us and Them’ the expansion of the policy was rationalised to the national audiences.

Period	30 Aug 2024
Held at	ESA RN-15 Global, Transnational and Cosmopolitan Sociology