Sovereigntism vs. anti-corruption messianism: a salient post-Soviet cleavage of populist mobilization

ABSTRACT This paper explores the commonalities of populist mobilizations in the post-Soviet region. It identifies a salient populist cleavage between two political projects that differ fundamentally about their focal point of political action: externalist sovereigntism and internalist anti-corruption messianism. While sovereigntism takes a defensive stance repelling foreign forces hostile to “the people,” anti-corruption messianism offensively tackles cronyism impeding developmental salvation for “the people.” The paper reconstructs six sovereigntist and anti-corruption projects, which have unfolded across different non-democratic regimes in Russia, Armenia, and Ukraine throughout the past decade. It is argued that the conflict between sovereigntism and anti-corruption messianism relates to a twofold, distinctively post-Soviet constellation: uncertainty over conflictual geopolitical abeyance and the exasperation over social closure due to the prevalence of oligarchical patronalism. In this context, both populist projects constitute powerful strategies of solidarity-forging under conditions in which other channels of political articulation have been either blocked or exhausted.