Power democracy

On April 7, Deputy Irina Yarovaya and Federation Council member Viktor Ozerov submitted two legislative initiatives to the State Duma, both aimed at combating terrorism. In particular, it is proposed to introduce punishment for “failure to report a terrorist crime”, to prohibit the exit of citizens who have been issued an “official warning” by the FSB, and to oblige telecom operators to store any type of messages for three years.

Initially, these projects were developed as a reaction to the explosion of a Russian aircraft in Egypt in November 2015: we consider the traditional cure for all diseases and the remedy for all sorrows to be the tightening of criminal legislation.

As early as March 17, 2016, Vladimir Makarov, deputy head of the Main Directorate for Combating Extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, announced the intention of the ministry to introduce an initiative “on establishing a ban on leaving the country for persons who are reasonably suspected of extremism or have an outstanding conviction for extremist crimes and intend to travel abroad.” However, this idea appeared in the Duma as not a government initiative, but a deputy bill. The introduction of departmental innovations through friendly deputies is a common practice if the ministries do not have the right to initiate legislation or do not want to go through a long procedure of intra-governmental approvals. However, in this case the situation is somewhat more complicated. Let's pay attention to who this friendly deputy, who introduced the project on his own behalf, and with whom exactly he is friends.

Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Irina Yarovaya is one of the most effective legislators. Since the beginning of the convocation, it has submitted 133 initiatives, 66 have become laws over the same period. There was an opinion in the Duma that the projects that Yarovaya introduces and implements come to her from the FSB. But around the fall of 2015, there was a pause in both public and legislative activity of Ms. Yarovaya: she began to appear less frequently in the Duma and in the media, and in February 2016, at the UR congress, she was removed from the General Council.

The package of new anti-terrorist projects is a good excuse to join the harmonious choir of lawmakers again with the unfading fashionable song "Oh, I'll ban it!". Legislative statistics show that all of Yarovaya's successful projects were introduced as part of a large group of comrades—usually members of her committee and party comrades. All previous individual or "binary" (Yarovaya plus one more author) initiatives were either rejected or returned to the initiators.

Today, the main obstacle to unbridled repressive lawmaking is not the protest of civil society and not the deterrent power of institutions, but the competition of the security forces

The toughening of punishment for terrorism, the expansion of this type of crimes and the circle of persons who fall under criminal liability are so “in trend” that such initiatives have every chance of success, no matter who introduces them. Although in this area everything that is possible has already been tightened.

A little more difficult with the restriction on exit. Issues of exit and entry from the country are controlled by the FSB - the Border Guard Service is subordinate to it. Therefore, the public claim of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to regulate this area could not but cause a reaction from the competing agency. However, the amendments introduced do not quite fit into the logic of the political regime: on the one hand, they show a desire to prevent citizens suspicious of terrorist sympathies from joining the ISIS* group banned in Russia, on the other hand, in recent years, disloyal and politically restless were more likely to be squeezed out of the border and restricted entry, which they sought to keep inside the country.

As a result, we get: today the main obstacle to unrestrained repressive lawmaking is not the protest of civil society and not the restraining power of institutions, but the competition of the security forces. Legislative initiatives of this kind are limited not by parliamentary control and not by public indignation, but by the fact that different law enforcement agencies compete for each fragment of prohibitive powers. This is our local parody of the system of checks and balances characteristic of democracies: the separation of powers instead of the separation of branches of power and the apparatus competition of departments instead of public political competition.