Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the book’s definition of the Russian hawks. It provides a brief review of the current literature on Russian conservatism and the gaps in it. It presents the two distinctive features of the book: the historical scope that spans across the 1991 regime change and the sociohistorical analysis of the career of the Russian hawks from ideological fringes to policy prominence. It builds the main argument of the book around the concept of idea network. Finally, it discusses the outline of the book.

This conclusion highlights that the Russian regime, from the mid-1990s onwards, has revived Soviet practices of sponsorship of ideology production. Instead of the Soviet institutionalization of an ideological apparatus, however, the current regime has outsourced it to clubs and think tanks outside the administration or party institutions. This challenges the common narrative that identifies a distinct conservative turning point in the Russian regime from 2012 onward. Instead, the book argues that this shift should be viewed within a broader and more gradual evolution of the relationship between decision-makers and “ideas networks.” The second implication is that regime support for ideology production aimed not at consolidating a unique state ideology but at cultivating and authoritatively controlling a certain degree of ideological pluralism. While an ideological core consolidated over the years in official discourse around key concepts such as strong state power and the multipolarity of the world order, additional ideological content remained fluid. This practice of “managed ideological pluralism” through the promotion or demotion of different idea networks maintained a range of lines and narratives available to justify various policy courses.

Scholars are increasingly taking note of a species of government institutions that fall outside the traditional separation of powers and have come to be known as the “fourth branch”: these institutions are created by constitutional design to engage in independent oversight and investigation of the other branches. Using South Africa as a case study of “fourth branch” institutions, this chapter dives deeply into the South African cases on corruption (such as the Scorpions litigation, set in its political background) before turning to the more general theme of Chapter 9 institutions in South Africa, then surveying the rise of the furth branch in constitutional systems around the world. The chapter concludes by evaluating both the value and the limits of the “deep dive” case study approach to understanding topics in constitutional design.