Surrogates of Freedom: Authoritarian Rituals of Power and Citizens’ Notions of Liberty

Contemporary autocracies, almost without exception, retain the rituals of political choice: constitutions, elections, multi-party parliaments, and certain forms of public consultation. These procedures imitate democratic forms while serving very different functions: stabilising personalist rule and managing elite competition. Do the subjects of authoritarian regimes consider themselves unfree, and how do they define liberty? Are they indifferent to the concept, or does it hold a specific meaning for them? What do these perceptions tell us about legitimacy, resilience, and the possible futures of authoritarian states?” About the speaker: Ekaterina Schulmann is a Russian political scientist specializing in legislative processes and decision-making in autocracies. Schulmann was a senior lecturer at RANEPA from 2013 to 2022 and an associate professor at the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences from 2021 to 2022. In 2022-2023 she was a fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy Berlin, and now is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, and an invited lecturer at the Institute for East European Studies of the Freie Universitat, Berlin. She works as a lecturer and political commentator, gives expert commentary to the media, and hosts her own weekly political online program. As of October 2022, her YouTube channel has 1.2 million subscribers.