Understanding the political and legal category of "Empire" in legal science

Danilov Igor' ORCID: 0000-0002-6443-3951 PhD in Law Head of the Department of Jurisprudence, Siberian State University of Geosystems and Technologies 630108, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Plakhotny str., 10, room 437 0615222@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The political and legal category "empire" is of fundamental importance for legal, historical, philosophical and interdisciplinary research, since it summarizes the political, cultural, ideological, socio-economic and formal legal aspects of the state organization of society, as well as the foundations of the institutionalization of state power. The semantic content of this category is multifaceted and ambiguous. There is no generally accepted interpretation of the presented concept in science. Analyzing various sources, it is initially possible to identify definitions formulated in explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language. So, according to V. Dahl's definition, "empire is Latin. the state, whose ruler bears the rank of emperor, is an unlimited, supreme ruler" ^{[1, p. 42]}. In Ozhegov's dictionary, the empire is defined as "a monarchical state headed by an emperor; in general, a state consisting of territories deprived of economic and political independence and governed from a single center" ^{[2, p. 245]}. The Soviet encyclopedic dictionary actually duplicates this definition, indicating that "empire (from Latin imperium – power), 1) a monarchical state, the head of which, as a rule, bore the title of emperor. 2) the empire was also called the states that had colonial possessions (for example, the British Empire)" ^{[3, p. 486]}.

Thus, we can draw attention to the fact that the presented definitions are mainly based on the status of the head of state. The fundamental feature is the presence of the attribute of the supreme ruler. The only form of government under which an empire can exist is called monarchical. Ozhegov's definition adds an additional dimension to the interpretation of the term: the lack of economic and political independence of the territories that make up the empire. Thus, the content of another element of the form of the imperial state is established.: unitary state-territorial structure. At the same time, the statement of the presence of a number of "territories" allows us to indirectly conclude that they are heterogeneous and isolated from each other. The criteria of heterogeneity are not defined.

The scientific concept of empire itself, according to established scientific traditions, presupposes a state, which is gradually joined by new territories inhabited by different peoples, characterized by different levels of political, economic and social development, the originality of culture and traditions. The idea of the partial "dissolution" of the identity of peoples in the imperial state, combined with the organization of various political and legal forms of autonomy of the annexed territory as part of a single administrative administration, is well-established in Russian legal science.

The conclusion about the unconditional multinational character of the empire also corresponds to the experience of Russian statehood, namely, the national composition of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. According to published calculations, the majority of the state's population consisted of Russians, including Ukrainians and Belarusians, their number was estimated at 65.5%, Turks and Tatars (10.6%), Poles (6.2%) and other nationalities were also represented ^{[4, p. 35]}.

At the same time, the very idea of empire in its philosophical and political interpretation is based on the combination of legal categories with universal ethical values. Going back to the history of Ancient Rome, the concept of the imperial state presupposes the establishment of certain principles, values and ideals as dominants for the organization of the most just and organic life of peoples under its rule. As noted, from the point of view of the authors – the famous American literary critic Michael Hardt and the Italian political philosopher Antonio Negri – the empire is peace and guarantees of justice for all peoples living in it. The idea of empire is presented "in the form of a global orchestra under the direction of a single conductor as a single authority that preserves social peace and produces ethical truths" ^{[5, p. 362]}. For this reason, any empire is naturally characterized by a process of constant expansion. The expansion of the empire is determined by its objective ability to resolve conflicts between peoples and organize their life together ^{[6, p. 29]}.

The process of incorporation of new lands into the state and the integration of new peoples into a single socio-political space of the empire inevitably boils down to solving the issue of administrative and territorial registration of power in the regions. A stable tradition of the empire is the organization of power based on the recognition of the established administrative structures of the annexed regions, as well as the preservation of the privileged position of local elites. The establishment of a new level of imperial power was most often combined with the recognition of the legitimacy of existing administrative bodies and institutions and the granting of their powers within the framework of a single imperial state. The personal composition of these bodies also remained unchanged and was left to the discretion of local elites.

Examining the bureaucratic apparatus of the empire, one of the leading representatives of historical sociology, Ch. Tilly introduces a new concept of "indirect government" in this regard. This category implies that the empire very often uses intermediaries in the form of the local elites mentioned above. As A. Miller notes, "one of the reasons why the empire uses indirect rule in most of its territory is that it simply does not have a bureaucratic apparatus that could provide what we call direct rule – when not only the person in charge, but also his staff are sent and appointed from the Center" ^{[7, p. 118-134]}.

In addition, the heterogeneity of the regions that make up the empire devalues the administrative and managerial experience of officials. Decisions that are effective and rational in one area may turn out to be destructive in another, since they do not take into account local specifics, peculiarities, lifestyle, traditions, the nature of social ties, etc.

The preservation of the local elite as the basis of the bureaucratic apparatus also contributed to strengthening the stability of state power. C. Tilly notes that "a linguistically, religiously and ideologically homogeneous population created the risk of opposing royal interests with a united front; homogenization increased the cost of the divide-and-rule policy" ^{[8, p. 162]}.

The historical experience of the Russian Empire testifies to the objective nature of the identified features of the integration of new lands into a single political and legal space of the empire. N. I. Krasnyakov identifies the following set of political and legal measures as promising lines of ethnopolitics: "a) in the conditions of annexation, the preservation of "local privileges" and the internal administrative system in national and regional governance was declared; b) the co-optation of the local elite into a general imperial one; c) the definition by a separate codified act of the supreme authority of the contours of the regional management system, taking into account the specifics of the local social structure, traditions in the administrative structure and law; d) the establishment of the supreme committee for the affairs of the annexed territory at the time of the introduction of elements of regional governance; e) the adaptation and incorporation of individual structures- the administrative system of the territory to the general imperial administration; f) the extension of the judicial system of the empire to the region as a whole, while preserving some elements of local customary and private law enforcement practice; g) leveling and eliminating the remnants of the internal management system of the regions and strengthening through the unification of the administrative structure of the state, since it was the only necessary means to establish, maintain and strengthening state unity; h) the possibility of applying nonviolent and violent coercion to certain regions and social groups in circumstances of disloyalty of local elites" ^{[9, pp. 27-28]}.

Thus, summarizing the above, it can be emphasized that the scientific category of "empire" most often correlates precisely with the method of national-territorial government of the state, the nature of the organization of the management structure "center-regions". The obligatory attributes of an imperial state are a large territory, centralized power, and management from a single center. Being a multinational state characterized by significant heterogeneity of the economic, political, socio-cultural level of territories, the uniqueness of their way of life, culture, and traditions, the empire, among other things, is in a state of permanent expansion and the annexation of new lands with a permanent solution to the issue of administrative registration of the contours of new power relations. At the same time, the peculiarity of the empire lies precisely in the way this issue is resolved and in the form of the organization of power in the regions, as well as their relationship with the center. This suggests that the legal projection of the concept of "empire" defines precisely the state-territorial structure of the state, representing its independent form, along with a unitary state and a federation. This approach is often used in legal science when trying to determine the legal nature of the empire as a state and formulate its definition ^{[10, p. 28]}.

At the same time, it should be noted that the presented thesis is not based on the classical provisions of the theory of the state. Russian legal science, which has been developing for many years in the context of the Marxist-Leninist paradigm, ignores the very concept of empire, not using it at all to characterize the form of the state. For this reason, the modern understanding of the "empire" in this context represents significant potential. The main question in this case is which element of the form of the state the empire belongs to. According to I. A. Isaev, this category "cannot be found either in the section on forms of government or in the list of forms of government. While not completely coinciding with any of these categories, the empire, as an ideal type of government, is partially present in each of them: demonstrating its characteristic centralization of power, it can resemble a dictatorship or a monarchy, in terms of territorial structure and governance - a federation or a unitary statehood" ^{[11, p. 22]}.

While generally agreeing with the stated position, it should nevertheless be noted that the impossibility of classifying the empire to any of the elements of the form of the state separately may also indicate that this category belongs to the form of the state as a whole. Similar interpretations are also presented in modern legal doctrine. For example, N. I. Krasnyakov defines empire as a special type of state, and in projection – the form of the state, since the imperial factor influenced both the form of government, the form of the state-territorial structure, and the political regime. In support of this thesis, the model of empire is revealed as a set of features of all three elements.

With regard to the form of government, the special character of monarchical power is noted, which consists in the heterogeneity of the statuses of regional administrations and the configurations of their interaction with the highest bodies of the empire within various territories. The autonomization of national and regional governance with the establishment of different status of regions and a special distribution of subjects of the department and the limits of supreme power in them is highlighted as a specific form of government. At the system level, general, special, special and exclusive governance has been implemented, reflected in the corresponding administrative-territorial division in the form of governorates, governorates, provinces, regions, districts and lands, which serve as the basis for modeling the system of maintaining state unity in various alternatives to their combination while consolidating the autonomist tradition in Russian statehood. The peculiarities of the political regime were manifested in connection with the octroization of constitutional institutions for some regions of Russia and the heterogeneous stratification of the imperial population ^{[9, p. 27]}.

The presented position seems to be the most reasonable, since it allows us to interpret the concept of "empire" as broadly as possible, without reducing it to any one element of the form of the state. The imperial factor is characterized by a significant influence on the entire structure of the state, not limited to the national state structure. Going beyond the limits of legal science, the empire should also be associated with a special cultural construct, ideology, worldview, system of basic values, historical role and civilizational mission. The ambiguity of the concept of empire makes it possible to use this concept in various sciences, implying well-defined, but different qualities and characteristics for each scientific subject area. Establishing the legal properties of the empire and its legal nature, it seems fair to determine that the empire is a special form of state, consisting in the specifics of the form of government, state-territorial structure and political regime.