'..how Russia's political regime consolidated and the country became ‘badly governed' '

'Many of the problems that plague Russia’s political regime affect all post-Communist countries, where politicians with short-term planning horizons lack the motivation to build effective institutions that promote higher quality governance. Instead, they act like “roving bandits,” Gelman says, citing a phrase coined by scholar Mancur Olson. In Russia, there was nothing constraining this bad behavior, whereas the European Union’s influence created a powerful barrier to such banditry in Eastern Europe.

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This might sound like a lot of gloom and doom, but the picture here isn’t as pessimistic as it seems. Russia had democracy in the 1990s and it was consciously forfeited, he says, for the sake of market reforms. But Russian democrats won’t make this sacrifice again, and the next wave of democratization will be more gradual.'


'You might wonder how Russia’s political regime has managed to grow stronger as the country’s economy has weakened, but the short-term connection between economic development and regime stability isn’t all that obvious, says Gelman. In fact, the absence of intra-elite political conflict is a better determinant of authoritarian regime stability. According to a study by Milan Svolik based on data going back to the Second World War, 70 percent of authoritarian regimes collapsed when they lost the loyalty of different segments of the elite. Mass uprisings rarely topple such regimes, and Russia’s ruling elite has made successful efforts to avoid these risks.

Happy elites

You may have heard speculation in Russia about an elite schism brewing, but the concept is actually rooted in transitology, which focuses on the late stages of democratization, where mass unrest pressures elites to split. Despite a couple of protest waves over the past nine years, Russia doesn’t fit this model at all, says Gelman.

The idea here, moreover, isn’t that revolutions overthrow dictators, but that grassroots pressure can fuel “ideological demarcation” that polarizes elites into hardliners bent on fighting and moderates willing to make concessions. And the schism isn’t just ideological: other conflicts within the elite can emerge along the lines of ethnicity, religion, “clique,” military bonds, and so on. When elite schisms break down along these lines, Gelman warns, a new authoritarian regime often replaces the old one. Pointing to research by Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz, Gelman says long-ruling dictators frequently manage to sterilize the political field so thoroughly that another autocrat comes to power, following a battle among elites.

Whoever comes to power after Putin, Gelman says authoritarian leaders are rarely eager to improve the quality of state governance. When Putin first took office, Gelman says, the president genuinely believed that Russia owed much of its troubles in the 1990s to bad governance, and he accordingly prioritized tax reform, “recentralizing the state,” fighting regional protectionism, and so on. When he realized that he could rule the country without improving Russia’s governance, however, Putin apparently “lost his enthusiasm” for the campaign.

Russians scared straight

Typical democratization, says Gelman, is the result of long, drawn-out struggles for civil rights, accompanied by the ebb and flow of protests and repressions. “It’s entirely possible that the demonstrations of 2011-2012 and what happened last summer [in Moscow] were links in this long and difficult road,” he says, but dramatic watershed moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid spread of protests that toppled the Eastern Bloc are rare indeed.

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When people think about mass political repression in contemporary Russia, their minds often turn to memories of Stalinism and the Gulag, when the state needed cheap labor more than anything. Today, though, there’s no need to lock up those who are already frightened. The crackdown in 2012, for example, targeted just a few dozen people but managed to scare thousands into emigration, which is ultimately cheaper for the regime than sticking around and forcing the state to persecute you. “If you left the country and didn’t return, you did the regime a favor,” Gelman says.

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Many of the problems that plague Russia’s political regime affect all post-Communist countries, where politicians with short-term planning horizons lack the motivation to build effective institutions that promote higher quality governance. Instead, they act like “roving bandits,” Gelman says, citing a phrase coined by scholar Mancur Olson. In Russia, there was nothing constraining this bad behavior, whereas the European Union’s influence created a powerful barrier to such banditry in Eastern Europe.

Gelman rejects the idea that Russian elites are positioning their children to rule in their place, citing research by Jason Brownlee who says hereditary succession in modern autocracies “depends not simply on the will to power of geriatric dictators [...] but on the reception of those ambitions by the surrounding extra-familial elite.” In Russia, Gelman says, “we’re seeing authoritarian leaders trying to provide their children and grandchildren with a prosperous future in [foreign] developed countries.” This might even apply to the two noblest children in all the land, says Gelman: “I don’t know what will happen with Putin’s daughters when their dad gets really old and leaves this world for the next, but something tells me that they have little chance of maintaining their current status, let alone consolidating it.”

This might sound like a lot of gloom and doom, but the picture here isn’t as pessimistic as it seems. Russia had democracy in the 1990s and it was consciously forfeited, he says, for the sake of market reforms. But Russian democrats won’t make this sacrifice again, and the next wave of democratization will be more gradual.'

- ‘I don’t know what will happen with Putin’s daughters’ Political scientist Vladimir Gelman explains how Russia's political regime consolidated and the country became ‘badly governed’, January 7, 2020



Context

EU ministers break ground on European ‘Magnitsky Act’ - '..to address serious human rights violations..'

'Russia is waging a political war campaign of active measures intended to divide, distract, and dismay European states.'

'..Putin’s Russia .. feudalism..' - '..The Byzantine choice was fundamental in the evolution of Russian society and state compared to Western Europe..'


..Russia would continue its centuries-long attractive-repulsive relationship with the West..'