State-Building as Lawfare explores the use of state and non-state legal systems by both politicians and ordinary people in postwar Chechnya. The book addresses two interrelated puzzles: why do local rulers tolerate and even promote non-state legal systems at the expense of state law, and why do some members of repressed ethnic minorities choose to resolve their everyday disputes using state legal systems instead of non-state alternatives? The book documents how the rulers of Chechnya promote and reinvent customary law and Sharia in order to borrow legitimacy from tradition and religion, increase autonomy from the metropole, and accommodate communal authorities and former rebels. At the same time, the book shows how prolonged armed conflict disrupted the traditional social hierarchies and pushed some Chechen women to use state law, spurring state formation from below.

Honorable Mention, 2024 Luebbert Book Prize, Comparative Politics Section, American Political Science Association

Winner, 2024 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Honorable Mention, 2024 Davis Center Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Winner, 2024 Yale Gaddis Smith International Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

‘This is a fascinating, deeply researched, and creative study of legal pluralism in Chechnya. Based on months of ethnographic field work, scores of interviews and informal conversations, and analysis of original surveys, State-Building as Lawfare contributes to our understanding of post-conflict dynamics and the impact of warfare on state and society, and, especially, on gender.’

Matthew Evangelista - Cornell University

‘A marvel of comparative politics scholarship. Blending surveys, courtroom observations, and interviews, Lazarev shows us how officials manipulate state and non-state legal systems and how ordinary people make choices that shape state sovereignty.’

Mark Fathi Massoud - UC Santa Cruz and author of Shari‘a, Inshallah

‘State Building as Lawfare is a tour de force. Contra the conventional wisdom, Lazarev highlights how government officials and members of the population both engage in “forum shopping” between state and non-state justice institutions to advance their interests, resulting in a bottom-up process of state-building that is deeply gendered. Based on exceptional multi-methods fieldwork in Chechnya, a challenging site for rigorous research, Lazarev combines extensive interviews and observations with original surveys and administrative data.’

Melani Cammett - Harvard University

‘Contrary to many conventional accounts that portray Chechnya as a lawless realm, the political scientist Lazarev’s well-researched study draws on extensive field work to describe this region of Russia as a scene of legal pluralism … Despite the intricacies of its subject, the book is highly readable, its academic narrative interspersed with curious legal cases and episodes from the author’s own experience navigating Chechnya.’

Maria Lipman Source: Foreign Affairs

‘A great example of how anthropology may enrich political and legal studies.’

Florian Muehlfried Source: Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale

‘[The book] is a major contribution to the literature on the Chechen conflicts. It is sure to also find an interested audience beyond the field of Eurasian studies among scholars working on institutional and legal competition and state-building in post-conflict environments. They shall be able to relate Lazarev’s insights about Chechnya to examples of state-building on the margins and amidst conflict in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan or Somalia.’

Vassily Klimentov Source: Europe-Asia Studies