I thought you might be interested to learn of my own new book, Russia and the Rule of Law.
Essentially, it is a long essay on the evolution and decline of the principle of autocracy in government.
The book
is a history of Russia and its relationship to the West. It tells the
story of the “competition” between those countries which aspire to the rule
of law and those which use force to project status, both internally
and externally. Our system traces its roots back to Magna Carta while
the latter derives from the statecraft and value system of the Mongols.
Between them, they defined the terms of the eight-hundred year struggle between
the principle of government by consent and its opposite: government
by command. It has not stopped yet.
The rule
of law is an ideal of government under which those who make the laws are
appointed, and can be dismissed, by those who are expected to obey them. The
Russian system is the opposite. As Catherine the Great wrote in 1767: “The
Sovereign is absolute; for there is no other authority but that which centres
in his [sic] single Person that can act with Vigour proportionate to the
Extent of such a vast Domain.” That principle is still operative, especially in
Russia today. Size confers status and therefore power over “little
people(s)”.
In
principle, there can be no compromise between autocracy and democracy, only an
agreement to agree to disagree – but that is itself an anti-autocratic idea. To
live and let live we need to understand the differences between Russia and the
rule of law states, of which Britain was the first. Hence this book.
It was published last week, and can be
ordered from Amazon at this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HGGX7PZ7?utm
PS: You
can now follow me on Facebook, at “Russia and the Rule of Law”.
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