These two books present diametrically opposing visions of contemporary Russia. Andrei P. Tsygankov argues that Vladimir Putin's leadership is aimed at restoring a strong state that can defend Russia against external aggression while modernizing its economy. In Alena V. Ledeneva's book, state power dissolves into a web of informal, corrupt understandings that she refers to as “the system.” If Ledeneva's interpretation is right, it undermines Tsygankov's position that Putin aims at rebuilding state capacity after the decades of decline and collapse. If Tsygankov is right, Putin is struggling to fight corruption, bureaucratic inertia, and decay while standing up to an aggressive West.

Ledeneva’s book builds on two previous volumes that also dealt with aspects of informal institutions in Russia. This book, however, focuses on the networks of relationships among those at the top of the regime. Ledeneva tries to avoid sensationalism, and in places she qualifies her assertions by pointing out that formal and informal rules exist in a “codependent” and “symbiotic” relationship (p. 244). She notes at the outset that what she calls “the system” is socially constructed. Because both elite and ordinary citizens behave as if formal rules can always be gotten around by money or influence, perceptions become reality. Informality as a way of life perpetuates itself. Moreover, however much ordinary citizens resent “the system,” they themselves make use of it when convenient. In keeping with this logic, Ledeneva makes the important point that the leaders themselves are constrained by informality; each time they employ personal power or relationships to accomplish a policy goal, they undermine the goal of modernizing the country. Much as the leadership claims to think strategically, its capacity for strategic planning is thwarted by the urgency of some immediately pressing problem. Ledeneva is therefore undoubtedly right to assert that Putin has retained power by mobilizing networks of personal loyalty, but that his control over them is imperfect, and that he is, in a curious way, a hostage to them (p. 255).

These insights could have been developed more methodically. The book is full of interesting quotations by insiders and ex-insiders whom Ledeneva interviewed, but it lacks a deeper perspective on how informality has evolved, in what domains it is more prevalent, and the reciprocal dependence of formal and informal power. One wishes Ledeneva had treated “the system” more systematically.

The role of informal institutions has been a difficult one in political science. Scholars recognize how important they are, but they are intrinsically difficult to study. Evidence about subjects such as corruption, clientelism, and factionalism is elusive. Much as black holes cannot be observed directly, but only indirectly by inferring their effect on their surroundings, so too our knowledge of the unwritten understandings by which power is exercised in many societies built by highly imperfect tools—perceptions of ordinary citizens and expert observers; statistical gaps between inflows and outflow of resources; and patterns of career advancement suggesting close personal ties between superiors and subordinates. Based on painstaking data-collection and ingenious network analysis, we have reconstructed network relationships and patron-client dyads among political elites in the Soviet era and in contemporary China. We have a substantial literature on the working of political machines. We have a literature on the effects of institutional variation on corruption. Ledeneva makes little use of these studies, unfortunately, making it difficult to know how different Russia may be in the prevalence of informal institutions from other countries.

Some of the topics discussed by Ledeneva are more closely related to the subject of informal power than others. A chapter on the evolution of intra-elite communications from the old “vertushka,” the telephone network through which the country's top officials communicated in the Soviet era, to the popularity of the “Vertu” (a luxury mobile phone set with global phone service) makes the (unsurprising) point that consumption of exclusive luxurious goods allows wealthy and connected people to show off their wealth and connections. The same, of course, can be said of the consumption of luxury goods by the wealthy and powerful around the world.

Other topics might have been more pertinent instead. Ledeneva explains the difference between informality in the Soviet regime and its present-day equivalent by pointing out that in a planned economy, personal networks tapped into administrative access to allocation of goods and services. People obtained scarce goods and services through exchanges of favors, illicit cash payments, diversion of state resources, and the like. Likewise the party-run “nomenklatura” system, through which appointments to key positions of influence in state and society were made, was both a means of political control and a mechanism to maintain elite status. What has changed? As Ledeneva indicates, the transition has allowed state officials to convert administrative positions into material assets. Access to the state now allows oligarchs to build enormous fortunes, although these are never secure. Ledeneva misses an opportunity, however, to consider what the sources of power are in the post-Soviet Russian state. To what degree do the big state and private energy companies possess autonomous power? How much power does the FSB (federal security service, successor to the KGB) have by virtue of its coercive resources and collection of compromising materials? What are the policy interests of different power centers and how are they reflected in policy-making? This issue brings back the central problem with emphasizing the informal side of state power: how it is related to formal institutions.

Tsygankov’s book presents difficulties of a different sort. Tsygankov makes the point that Russia historically has clung to a conceptual model of a strong state, one capable of defending the country’s sovereignty in the face of international threats. The recurring historical tendency toward autocracy and repression, as well as the pattern of state-led modernization, is attributed by Tsygankov to the challenge of preserving the state’s integrity in the international environment. Even the prevalence of corruption, for Tsygankov, is explained by Russia's “semi-peripheral place in the global economic system” (p. 179). Tsygankov argues that Russia's efforts to build state power often clashed with demands by society for greater political and economic freedom, resulting in periods of system decay and instability. He explains Putin's return to the presidency in 2012 was a decision made “out of fear of internal instability” (p. 136); however, this convenient explanation is offered without evidence.

Tsygankov argues that Western analyses of Russia are influenced excessively by the desire to fit Russia to Western social science models (he warns against allowing the study of Russia to “become just a regional branch of comparative politics” [p. viii]) and, normatively, to turn Russia into a Western-style liberal democracy. In this respect he is echoing a long-standing position in Russian intellectual culture that holds that “one cannot grasp Russia by one's mind; one can only believe in Russia.” There are many problems with this view, however, not least of which is the fact that it is self-serving for those who rule.

There is a kernel of validity to Tsygankov's argument that Putin and many around him hold to the ideal of a strong state. Ledeneva notwithstanding, many of the actions that Putin and his government have taken are directed toward increasing state capacity, not just personal wealth and security. However, the result of these actions is mixed at best. In many ways, the state has grown weaker under Putin. After the oil-fueled recovery of the 1999–2007 period and the 2009–2010 crash, growth has been feeble, inflation stubbornly persistent, and productivity low. Corruption has risen steadily. Tsygankov takes at face value the proposition that Putin is sincerely battling corruption. Much evidence to the contrary exists, however. If the Putin leadership genuinely wanted to strengthen the state, as opposed to their own power and wealth, could they not have done more to an institutional framework conducive to economic growth not fueled by natural resource exports? Even in its own terms, Tsygankov's interpretation of Russia's politics is questionable.

Tsygankov's view that Russia's foreign policy, now and historically, is defensive is equally difficult to accept. Nowhere in the book does he mention Russian imperial incursions into Manchuria. There is no mention of the annexation of Crimea or the continuing support for the separatists in Eastern Ukraine. The only mention of these events is the statement that “Putin intervened in Crimea by sending additional troops to the region” (p. 193), an oddly bloodless description of Russia's actions.

The book is marred by a number of factual and typographical errors (for example, Gorbachev came to power in 1985, not 1986). There are also some dubious generalizations, for example the the Soviet “middle class” “supported accommodation, not confrontation with the outside world” (p. 76) and that it “produced” Gorbachev (p. 23). Impressionistic assertions of this kind are out of place, even in a book intended for undergraduate courses.

Tsygankov's purpose was to provide a short, interpretive history of Russian politics that proceeds from the assumption that Russian rulers have attempted to realize an idealized “strong state” in the face of an aggressive outside world. A more rigorous study would have asked what a strong state is in fact and how it can be distinguished from one that is predatory. A more comparatively-informed perspective would have related Russian conceptions of the strong state ideal to those in countries such as France and Germany, China and Turkey. What relationship between state and society produces a strong state? The social science literature has explored these questions in depth. So has the literature on Russia. Tsygankov cites Richard Pipes' (and Max Weber's) theory of the development of patrimonialism in Russia but does not employ it analytically, nor does he discuss Robert Tucker's arguments about the way the development of state power came at the expense of the power of society. In Russia, the ideal of the strong state is indeed a lasting and powerful one. But it has usually been accompanied by methods that result in the strengthening of state power at the expense of society, and often is used as a rationale for state predation.

Taken together, these two books invite reflection on the importance of methodological standards in political science. They illustrate the need for critical judgment, informed by comparative theory; of seeking evidence to test one's ideas; and of thinking carefully about causal explanation. Although we must try to understand how people in a particular place themselves conceive the formal and informal constraints that govern their behavior, we must recognize that no society is entirely sui generis.