Of Dark Arts and Dictators—Why the Russian Constitution Matters: The Constitutional Dark Arts by William Partlett

Abstract Analysis of authoritarian constitutions is a growing but still relatively underdeveloped body of literature. The traditional explanation is that these constitutions are no more than ‘shams’ or ‘fig leaves’. William Partlett’s book Why the Russian Constitution Matters: The Constitutional Dark Arts challenges this, placing the Russian Constitution at the centre of a phenomenon Partlett terms the ‘constitutional dark arts’, a practice combining a hyper-centralisation of power in the elected president with the claim to be upholding rights and democracy. In doing so, it offers both a new constitutional history of Russia and a new generalist paradigm of the ‘constitutional dark arts’ which can be applied in both authoritarian states and democratic states undergoing backsliding and creeping autocratisation. Partlett’s book answers the question of whether the Russian Constitution matters in the affirmative, and will be of interest to scholars of comparative constitutionalism, democratic decline, and Russian and post-Soviet studies more broadly.