In recent years, it has been become abundantly clear that the democratic project in Russia has stalled. In 2004, Freedom House even moved Russia from the “partly free” to “not free” list of states. Russia's democratic shortcomings are legion and well known: corruption, human rights abuses, electoral manipulation, use of the courts to silence regime opponents, and state control over the media. However, there has been little systemic attempt to explain why democracy has not been established in Russia.
M. Steven Fish's book attempts to provide an answer to this question. He refuses to countenance claims that Russia is a (pseudo)democracy, documenting the fraud, abuse of power, restrictions on freedoms, and smothering of the opposition that has become more commonplace and more blatant under the administration of Vladimir Putin. While some of this is familiar ground, when it is put together, the case against the presence of democracy in Russia is damning. While acknowledging that Russia is freer than under Soviet rule, the author nonetheless classifies the current regime as an oligarchy, finding that it fails to meet the minimal conditions of democratic rule laid out by Robert Dahl and other scholars.
Why has this been the case? Fish attempts to answer this question by putting Russia in a broader global and postcommunist context. He first seeks to uncover through regression analysis on a variety of variables which factors best explain (or fail to explain) the presence of democracy worldwide and in the postcommunist region. Those factors that he identifies as plausible general explanations are then examined more in depth in the Russian case. In this respect, he has broken important new ground by situating his case study of Russia within a very broad comparative framework. In so doing, he purposely eschews analysis that relies upon factors “unique” to Russia.
Fish finds that three factors best explain Russia's democratic deficit: the country's reliance on raw-material exports, continued state control over the economy, and the “superpresidential” constitutional framework. He thus dismisses arguments about supposed Russian underdevelopment (Russia underperforms on democracy given its level of development), political culture (which he finds does not seem to matter once economic development is controlled for), alleged problems of the Orthodox religion, ethnic diversity, or the country's postcommunist heritage. On some of these scores one could argue with the analysis. Perhaps, for example, it is not absolute level of development but the lack of a middle class that matters, or maybe one needs to acknowledge that 70-plus years of communist rule in Russia (and, indeed, throughout the 12 post-Soviet successor states with democratic shortcomings) should count differently than the shorter and imposed communist experience in Hungary or Poland. Moreover, instead of considering the universe of virtually all states—some of which have had democratic governance for decades—the author might also have analyzed a subset of cases particular to the “Third Wave” of democratization (e.g., nondemocratic states from 1974 to the present).
That said, Fish's conclusions are important, and no doubt some will be hotly contested. The presence of “resource curse” in Russia should come as little surprise, although heretofore it has not received concerted attention. The perils of superpresidentialism are better known thanks to earlier works by Fish and others, but here he puts the case in comparative context and convincingly shows that a more powerful legislature bodes much better for democratization. It bears repeating that political culture—the cause célèbre of so much analysis in the 1990s—figures little in his analysis. Russians, in other words, are not to blame for their predicament.
The book's most controversial arguments concern the presence of the state in the economy, which in turn gives the regime power to silence opponents (e.g., the takeover of Yukos) and prevent the emergence of groups (e.g., independent trade unions) that might challenge the status quo. Fish argues that the problem is not that Russia has seen too much reform (e.g., “shock therapy” is to blame for the problems) but that it has seen too little. Shock therapy stalled early, and opaque state–business relations, which led to the rise of “oligarchs” under Boris Yeltsin, continue to define the political economy and hinder the rise of an opposition. Although some may be loath to acknowledge the positive effects of rapid marketization, Fish convincingly demonstrates that more reform has been associated with more democracy, that economic reform laggards are undemocratic, and that the notion of a “gradual” reform path was a chimera. This will rankle many who have focused on the costs of market reforms, but on the big question of democracy, the evidence does show that economic reform goes together with democratization. Meanwhile, Fish demonstrates that despite some rhetoric of economic reform, little has been accomplished under Putin, while there has been significant backsliding. Discussing the political economy of Putinism, he contends: “The house that Putin is building bears a striking resemblance to the edifice that ran the Soviet system prior to Gorbachev's rise to power. Its custodians might be even better fed” (p. 263).
Refreshingly, Fish anticipates and addresses some of his critics by noting that two of three of his explanations are proximate causes, and he does not try to explain their root causes (e.g., why economic reform lags in Russia), although his presentation of Russia's course since the Gorbachev years often suggests some underlying causes. Ultimately, the author would note, Russia is not condemned to undemocratic rule, as policy choices (e.g., diversifying the economy, altering the constitution) could make a big difference. The problem is that the current elite has no incentive to undertake such change, and prospects for an “Orange Revolution” in Moscow appear very dim.
This is an important work, and should be read both by Russia specialists and those interested in comparative democratization. It is very well written and its presentation is easy to follow, making it amenable for undergraduate course use as well. With this book, Fish has raised the bar for future work on Russian politics.
