Elite interviews: Russia and Islam

Dannreuther, Roland and March , Luke and Braginskaia, Ekaterina (2017). Elite interviews: Russia and Islam. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-851796

This project investigates the causes of Islamic radicalisation within Russia and their consequences for Russia's relevant domestic policies (for example ethnic, regional, immigration policies, and domestic democratisation), as well as its foreign policy response towards the Muslim world in the context of the global 'War on Terror'.
There are four principal research questions:(1) How Russian policy-making and academic elites conceptualise the idea of 'radicalisation' and political violence. (2) How these discourses are translated into state practice and policy. (3) How these state-driven practices feed or undermine underlying processes of radicalisation. (4) How Russia's domestic context of combating radicalisation drives its foreign policy.
The project methodology includes a discourse analysis of academic and journalistic writings and three regional case studies of Russian state policy towards Islam (Moscow, Tatarstan and Dagestan).
Each case study relies on discourse analysis of public and media approaches, content analysis of relevant legal and state policy documents, and semi-structured elite interviews. The project co-ordinators will work with local institutes in Russia and will invite scholars from these institutes to the UK as research fellows. The project findings will be disseminated by four journal articles, policy briefings and a co-authored monograph.

Data description (abstract)

The project had two main dimensions: the first is theoretical and the second is empirical, focusing on three case studies (Moscow, Tatarstan and Dagestan).
The theoretical aspect of the project examines two main sets of questions: First, how the general concepts of extremism and moderation, and the associated concept of radicalization, are understood in the Russian context. How is radicalization linked to identity politics(ethnicity, nationalism and religion) and radical ideological movements? Second, how these concepts - moderation, extremism, and radicalization- applied in discourses and policies towards Muslim communities in Russia? What are the presumed internal and external influences? What are the comparisons and links with elite discourse in other European countries with significant Muslim communities, such as UK and France?

The empirical aspect of the project examines how these general concepts and approaches help to illuminate and explains developments in regions of Russian where there exist sizeable Muslim communities. The three case studies chosen include a) the city of Moscow, where it is estimated that there are 1-2 million Muslims, representing at least 10% of the population; b) Tatarstan, which has an ethnic Tatar Muslim plurality and which is often taken to be the best example of the influence of moderate Islam; c) Dagestan, which is regularly taken to be the region with the greatest potential danger, apart form Chechnya, of Islamic radicalization.

The dataset was originally intended to include transcriptions of elite interviews which would have been in the format of elite interview-audio files. However, as we warned might be the case, it did not prove possible to gain consent to recording the interviews.

Data creators: