Robert Dahl and Joseph Schumpeter standardized the usage of the term ‘democracy’ on the basis of procedural definitions. The procedural definition of ‘democracy’ by Robert Dahl has seven attributes. (1) Elected officials. Control over government decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials. (2) Free and fair elections. Elected officials are chosen in frequent and fairly conducted elections, during which coercion is comparatively uncommon. (3) Inclusive suffrage. Practically all adults have the right to vote in the elections of officials. (4) The right to run for office. Practically all adults have the right to run for elective offices in government, although age limits may be higher for holding office than for suffrage. (5) Freedom of expression. Citizens have the right to express their opinions – without the danger of severe punishment – on broadly defined political issues, including criticism of officials; the government; the regime; the socioeconomic order; and the prevailing ideology. (6) Alternative information. Citizens have the right to seek out alternative sources of information. Moreover, alternative sources of information exist and are protected by laws. (7) Associational autonomy. To achieve their various rights, including those listed above, citizens also have the right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including independent political parties and interest groups. Attributes 1 to 4 tell us that a basic aspect of democracy is that elections are inclusive, fair, and competitive. Attributes 5 to 7 refer to political and social freedom, minimally necessary not only during but also between elections, for the elections to be fair and competitive.
According to Schumpeter, democracy is a process by which individuals acquire the power to influence the results of the voting by means of a competitive struggle. To simplify matters Schumpeter restricted the kind of competition to that for leadership, assuming that it would define democracy, create free competition and ensure free voting. The justification for this is that democracy seems to imply an accepted specific method by which to conduct the competitive struggle, and that the electoral method is practically the only one available for communities of any size. As to the level of education as a factor impacting the process of democratization, the opinion prevalent today is that a certain level of schooling is a precondition for the existence of democracy. Lipset relates to this issue and claims that it is almost a pre-condition, but not sufficient to ensure that the regime elected would be democratic: ‘Education presumably broadens men’s outlooks, enables them to understand the need for norms of tolerance, restrains them from adhering to extremist and monistic doctrines, and increases their capacity to make rational electoral choices … If we cannot say that a “high” level of education is a sufficient condition for democracy, the available evidence does suggest that it comes close to being a necessary condition.’Reference Lipset1
How do we know when an authoritarian regime is transformed into a consolidated democracy? Minimal definitions focus on the procedures that enable democratic governance. For example Adam Przeworski (1991) stresses elite support for the regime or contingent consent as a test of consolidation, relegating any regime that does not meet this test to a residual authoritarian category. Maximal definitions focus on behavior or norms.
Joseph Schumpeter’s definition of democracy as ‘the institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of competitive struggle,’Reference Schumpeter2 was refined by Adam Przeworski by adding that this process of electing leaders must occur under certain or fixed rules, but with uncertain outcomes that cannot be reversed: ‘The crucial moment in any passage from authoritarianism to democratic rule is the crossing of the threshold beyond which no one can intervene to reverse the outcomes of the formal political process. Democratization is an act of subjecting all the interests to competition, of institutionalizing uncertainty. The decisive step toward democracy is the devolution of power from a group of people to a set of rules’.Reference Przeworski3
In Russia, the transition from communist rule first began when Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a series of liberalization measures, including freedom of speech, elections, and a new relationship between the Communist party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet state. Gorbachev’s government had especially bad luck at the quirky level of contingency: the costs of the Chernobyl disaster, the Armenian earthquake, and the falling oil prices wrecked the central budget and forced Moscow to run up a ballooning foreign debt. In 1999, the first year following the Soviet collapse that registered positive economic growth, Russia’s gross national product was still roughly only 5% of that of the United States. Only after three years of steady growth, did Russia, in 2002, regain the dismal economic footing it had in the early 1990s.
Putin’s Russia
In August 1999, Yeltsin appointed as prime minister a short, sullen, obscure colonel in the Federal Security Service (FSB) who had headed Russia’s chief spy agency. A month later nighttime terrorist apartment bombings rocked Moscow (and two other cities), killing almost 300 people. This, along with the repeat Russian invasion of Chechnya (Chechen terrorists were popularly held responsible) gave Putin a chance to prove himself on the national stage, even as evidence seemed to link the FSB to the explosions. Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s ideologist, said on Chechen television (8 July 2011) that ‘Putin is a person who was sent to Russia by fate and by the Lord at a difficult time for Russia. He was preordained by fate to preserve our people.’Reference Roxburgh4
Despite the political rights and freedoms that Mikhail Gorbachev extended in the late 1980s, consolidated by Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, and later largely abandoned by Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, Russian citizens remain, in Putin’s words, ‘poor people living in a rich country.’5 Pimenov adds a psychological analysis: ‘The Russian man is a man accustomed to live in a repressive state. Deceive the state, and join him in corrupt deals.’Reference Pimenov6
In Putin’s Russia, access to information is severely limited, opposition parties are permitted to exist largely to shore up the perception of the dominant party’s right to govern; that is, their principal role is to provide external and internal legitimacy. The Soviet Union’s political and ideological control has been replaced by the broad denominator of confidential information and state, military and commercial secrets. Putin’s electoral authoritarianism has, since its inception in the mid-2000s, when it replaced Yeltsin’s managed democracy, restricted freedom of association and of speech, monopolized the media, and employed unfair electoral practices that to some extent have deprived elections of their primary functions of political choice and elite circulation. The nation was granted freedom, including freedom of expression, movement and entrepreneurship, but this freedom can be used only within the variable constraints. In other words, when the typical structures of democratic institutions were created as part of the constitutional arrangement, there appeared a parallel system that demanded certain prerogatives that constrain the rule of law. This parallel system is involved in the political process, influences the courts, seizes property from others, and manipulates election results. This prerogative state represents a special case in which laws apply to the entire public but not to the state itself. Based on information provided by the Russian Federation’s human rights ombudsman and by human rights organizations, Russia does not have a single publication that is truly independent. Media outlets are being financed illegally, and the authorities themselves actively use the mass media, benefiting from the use of illegal techniques against their political opponents, but these semi-independent mass media cannot themselves take on the role of liaison between the state and civil society: they cannot provide the citizens with complete and objective information.
Russia took a distinctly authoritarian turn under President Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2008. The country now lives behind a façade of democracy that barely conceals the political and administrative dominance of a self-interested bureaucratic corporation. This corporation is not immune to factional squabbles and internal games over power and wealth, but its basic instinct for self-preservation has been enough to keep it relatively unified. Putin promoted significant changes in the operation of the political system; one of the important ones was the rise of a political system that emphasizes political stability, where elections are held but results are foreordained, and serious political challenges to executive power are absent. Russian democracy is increasingly a formal democracy with regular competitive elections, but attainment of liberal democracy is becoming a distant prospect. Russia’s political system can be fruitfully understood as an electoral patronal regime in which the most important actors are organized into a single pyramid of authority that dominates the electoral arena. This political machine was not built from scratch by Putin, but was skillfully consolidated using certain premade components that Yeltsin gave him upon transferring the reins of presidential power. But while the regional political machines, the superpresidential constitution, and the oligarchic corporate conglomerates were only loosely cobbled together under Yeltsin, and even then only mobilized fully during certain crucial moments such as the election cycles of 1995–1996 and 1999–2000, Putin fused these elements into a highly coordinated whole, a gigantic political machine with great staying power, surviving even the presidential succession of 2008.
In some ways, Russia differs from common authoritarian states. Authoritarian states are typically ruled by faceless bureaucrats or gloomy generals. Putin, in contrast, has charisma and he is popular. This factor makes Russia sufficiently different from common authoritarian states. During Putin’s early years in power Russia shifted from some combination of democracy and authoritarianism to some combination of authoritarianism and fascism. Fascist systems, like Putin’s, lack meaningful parliaments, judiciaries, parties, and elections; are highly centralized; give pride of place to policemen; have a controlling party; restrict freedom of the press, speech, and assembly; and repress the opposition. Fascist systems always have supreme leaders enjoying cult-like status, exuding vigor, youthfulness, and manliness. And unlike sheer authoritarians, fascist leaders are charismatic individuals who promote a hyper-nationalist vision that promises the population a grand and glorious future – usually echoing past national glories – in exchange for subservience.
Putin, like a feudal king, created a network of vassals, whom he bound to himself with big money. While talking about developing a ‘middle class’, the real achievement of Putin and his circle was to create an unusually large and economically powerful upper class, operating at the highest federal level. This is the realm of Putin’s own henchmen and those of his closest associates. The same ‘classes’ exist at the regional level, but on a lower financial scale and with a more limited range of powers. These are ‘second level’ people – not direct appointees of the top level people, but vassals of vassals. The size of the bureaucracy, whose employees enjoy a much better life than the average Russian, has increased significantly in comparison with Soviet times. There were never more than 660,000 state employees in the whole Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. Putin’s bureaucracy, in 2006, included 1.6 million employees, even though Russia today is half the size of the USSR. The profession of bureaucrat became one of the most popular in the country: a third of Russian youth (48% among students) wanted to join the ranks of state employees. Those who wished to become bureaucrats did not hide the fact that ‘the patriotic factor’ played only a minimal role in their motivations: most important, to their thinking, were the purely material factors (social guarantees, privileges, the stability of the position, salary, and the opportunity to receive bribes and make deals) and ‘the connections’. With the Yukos affair, Putin’s Kremlin has made a public mockery of the very notion of the sanctity of property rights, and thus again made clear to would-be entrepreneurs that playing path-dependent games for influence and patronage is vastly more important than running businesses according to the rules of modern business schools. The new barons that are presently moving in to replace the former oligarchs are different in the rather sinister sense of being totally dependent on Putin. Having neither formal property nor friends in the West, they are similar to the boyars of old Muscovy who found themselves in the end being locked into serving only one grand prince, and to adjust accordingly. The number of major state corporations and companies has increased under Putin. The boards of these companies have begun to include not simply minor officials of the second rank. Now the boardrooms of state companies are simply stuffed with ministers, staff members from the presidential administration, and siloviki. The system of ‘feeding’ (kormlenie) has been restored, as it was called in the time of Ivan the Terrible. ‘Feeding’ because joining the boards of the major Russian companies is not only an opportunity to control their activity, but also an opportunity to obtain an additional income: for instance, in the form of an unlimited company credit card, or various dividends and bonuses. Putin expanded his property by obfuscating the border between his personal property and that of the Kremlin. The most important source of Putin’s domain is his personal control over the major oil and gas companies in Russia. Putin expanded his domain through his proxies – people from Petersburg who became members of boards of directors of leading monopolies in oil, gas, electricity, and railway transportation.
A recent study issued by the Minchenko consulting agency, based on expert surveys, identified a ‘Politburo 2.0’ at the heart of the system consisting of eight individuals, some of whom had nothing directly to do with politics. Russia is ruled by a number of clans linked by business interests, common Soviet-era backgrounds, and in certain cases family relationships. The key elite groups were identified as the ‘force’ (the ‘siloviki’), ‘political’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ factors. Putin’s power system draws its authority by balancing clans, the administrative regime and the constitutional state.
Putin’s administration has deliberately introduced an enemy that may trigger the mobilization mechanism: the Chechen terrorists with alleged links to international Muslim terror networks have replaced the Roman Catholic Church as foes, but the function remains the same. Russians are under threat and must huddle together. Aggressiveness is deepened by xenophobia. In a multinational state xenophobia does not merely negatively affect the psychological atmosphere; it threatens the national sovereignty. Now the enemy may be found within. The mobilization regime may thus be geared up to deal with not only external but also internal enemies. As in Soviet times, when the authorities feel pressed they repeat the old ‘besieged fortress’ refrain and launch a search for enemies at home and abroad. The establishment of the ‘power vertical’ by the Putin regime and its glorification of the Soviet past served to reproduce many of the worst traits of the ‘New Soviet Man’ in Russia; in particular, distrust of others, social apathy and indifference to authority.
Bruce Pitcairn Jackson claimsReference Jackson7 that our interpretation of the political culture and dynamics of what used to be Soviet space was simply wrong. A misunderstanding of political culture and its importance explains our myopia. The post-Soviet world is the legacy of the Czarist and Soviet empires that preceded it and remains a rough fabric sewn piecemeal from the tatters of older imperial culture. There are authors who believe that Russia will never become democratic, because its culture is basically authoritarian. If we want to understand the processes at work over the last two decades, we need a proper awareness of Russia’s one thousand years of history. Russia has never really been ‘like us’, if by that we mean a liberal, market-oriented democracy where the wielders of power are there at the sufferance of the people and can be replaced through a law-governed process. The Russian model, with the exception of brief, recurrent periods of radical experimentation, has always been the opposite: autocracy elevates the wielders of power above the law; they rule by divine right, or ‘by the dictatorship of the people,’ but always by brute force. Russians still strongly adhere to the notion of a uniquely Russian path as a source of identity, but this sense of uniqueness is based more on a negative view of the other than on a positive view of the contents of Russian uniqueness. This view reinforces a degree of Russian isolation from the outside world, a sense of being surrounded by hostile forces, and a rejection of the West.
The Russian economy is still largely based on the export of natural resources, mainly oil and gas. Some researchers are convinced that the driving force behind political change in Russia is oil. Oil, paradoxically, is both a force for prolonged political and economic stasis and Russia’s best hope for escaping it. For political leaders in Moscow, the oil industry inherited from Soviet times still generates enough income to support a comfortable political and economic system in which it is all too tempting to linger. But, only if this industry modernizes will Russia have the revenues to support any sort of transition – and that will happen only if the state and its policies modernize along with it. Countries rich in hydrocarbons tend to have less democratic regimes. Some also see a connection with particular countries between changes over time in world prices and cycles of freedom and repression. Russia is a perfect example. After the oil price plunged in the early 1980s, Gorbachev began his political reforms; when the price soared after 1998, Putin began rolling back democratic freedoms.
Emil Pain in his thesis claimsReference Pain8 that Russia went back to the imperial model. The main resource of imperia was always the land and its natural resources. Resources have been the ultimate goal, and – if possible – the expansion of territory. Reflecting on the century to century repeated reproduction of authoritarian forms of government in Russia, many theorists attributed this phenomenon to the vast territory of Russia and the presence of her enemies, real and imaginary. The larger a country, the longer its borders, the more it feels threatened by numerous enemies. A state living in a psychological atmosphere of a besieged fortress is unable to encourage the sovereignty of the people and civil rights, and nor is it prone to decentralize power. An imperial type of state seems a natural mode of regime built on the export of raw materials.
Constantly rising oil prices had helped to raise living standards, but induced complacency with regard to economic reform. Russia had to change direction. The change in direction was signaled by an article entitled ‘Go, Russia!’ published by Medvedev in an online journal on September 10, 2000. Medvedev condemned Russia as ‘a primitive economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption.’ He promised ‘modernization’ in almost everything: the country would hire the best specialists from around the world; there would be inward investment, modern information technologies and political reforms – whereby parliamentary parties would replace each other in power, ‘as most democratic states.’ Medvedev proposed amending the political-parties law to make it easier for parties to register, yet, clearly with the aim of not jeopardizing the ruling team’s tight grip on power, the same package of proposed amendments also contained provisions designed to further fragment and cripple the opposition by multiplying the number of tiny ‘sofa parties,’ by making it harder for parties to form coalitions, and by keeping tight state controls on party activities. He also suggested the idea of gubernatorial elections that would be direct yet tightly ‘filtered’ so as to exclude independent candidates. However, Putin returned to the presidency and nothing was changed. The economy continues, almost entirely dependent on the export of raw materials. Corruption is, by the government’s own admission, overwhelming and growing – the glue that holds together a mafia-like state, dominated by a clique of Putin’s friends and colleagues, from the KGB, and Petersburg.
For now, high oil prices are keeping this system running. But sustaining it requires a steadily expanding stream of revenue from commodities, especially oil. With money from oil, Putin could crack down on or co-opt independent sources of political power; the Kremlin had less reason to fear the negative economic consequences of seizing a company like Yukos and had ample resources to buy off or repress opponents in the media and civil society. In the coming years, however, oil profits are more likely to shrink than grow. For the past two decades, Russia has coasted on an oil legacy inherited from Soviet days. The assets of that era are now deteriorating. Russia is not running out of oil, but it is running out of cheap oil. Much of the oil still in the ground will be more difficult and costly to find and produce. As expenses increase, profit margins will decline. At the same time, the oil industry will have to spend more of its remaining profits on its own renewal. With the Russian government now needing a $120-per-barrel oil price simply to balance its budget (compared with $27 in 2004), analysts are widely predicting a fiscal crisis.
Putin’s re-election in 2012 gave the final death blow to Russia’s Constitution. That blow is demonstrated first by Russia’s current political crisis, indicating an unstable political climate, which will ultimately lead to the death of democracy in Russia. Second, it indicates that the Constitution is unable to cure this crisis because the structure the Constitution pre-supposes – the separation of powers, a federal structure, and a multi-party framework – has collapsed. Russia’s authoritarianism looks dull and tawdry compared with China’s capitalism with a communist face. While the Chinese experiment and innovate, the Russians stagnate. Russia has lost not only its status as a great power, but also its aura of mystery. Lilia Shevtsova characterizes the present Russian system as ‘[a] system, based on personal rule, the merger of political power with economic assets, and a statist-militarist model of self-perpetuating authority.’Reference Shevtsova9 Henry Hale labels the system ‘… patronal presidentialism, defined by a direct elected presidency invested with great formal powers, where the president wields a high degree of informal power based on a widespread patron-client relationship at the intersection of the state and economy.’Reference Hale10 As market reforms and increasing oil prices have brought substantial prosperity for the citizens (average annual per capita GDP in 2011, at purchasing power parity, was $17,000) a large middle class, based mostly in small and medium-size companies and the service sector, developed beyond the reach of the state-owned behemoths. The demands of this middle class have become crucial. Its representatives understand that they must win the battle against corruption or leave the country, as they have no future in Russia otherwise.
Russia’s Future
Democratic theory and comparative politics present rich examples of how various processes and practices have contributed to the experiences of different countries in progressing away from authoritarian and totalitarian rule. Every state faces unique obstacles at a particular historical juncture. Russia’s example underlines how strong states (featuring centralized economies, etc.) may take a quite long time to develop civil societies, and that often the state will occupy the spaces of civil society more prominently than normally acknowledged civil-society actors. The state must still legitimate itself through a democratic process. It may be challenged by actors within civil society or by state actors with links to segments of civil society. Even in quasi-democratic or quasi-authoritarian states there are spaces for civil society to emerge and contest for power, albeit from a weakened position vis-à-vis the state, as Ernest Gellner observed: ‘The splendid thing about civil society is that even the absent-minded, or those preoccupied with their private concerns, or for any other reason ill-suited to the practice of eternal vigilance, can now look forward to enjoying their liberty. Civil society bestows liberty even on the non-vigilant.’Reference Gellner11
Influenced by would-be modernizing autocrats from Russian history, such as Pyotr Stolypin, the tsarist prime minister, and Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief and short-lived Soviet general secretary, ‘Putinism’ does not represent the transformation of Russia back into the Soviet Union. Putinism has survived because, unlike the Soviet Union, it largely leaves its citizens alone. They are provided with an array of freedoms as consumers and career-minded professionals, from cheap furniture at IKEA to vacations abroad. Many of the trappings of middle-class European life are available, and for those with ambition and talent, Moscow can be a tremendous place to make a career. Choice is everywhere – except when it relates to politics. Anyone unhappy with this arrangement can leave at any time. In effect, Putinism is something much more crafty and postmodern than the lumbering, stifling control enforced by the Soviet state. Why try to turn Russia into Germany, when there is no guarantee that a lifetime is long enough for that mission, and when Germany is but a short trip away? The opinion polls demonstrate that Russia’s middle class prefers to work abroad and to come home to Russia during the holidays to see friends and relatives. Economic and social transformation during Putin’s tenure has created, for the first time, a true middle class, born on the oil-based prosperity of the last decade, and largely comprised of educated urban professionals in Moscow and Russia’s other cities. As this population has grown and become more materially secure, it has come to believe that it would be better off under a more equitable system. Economic success and frequent interaction with the West have bred a new social culture, complete with its own expectations for responsive and transparent governance. Yet for much of Putin’s rule this class was in a state of quiet rebellion, living in a distant, self-created world far from the state and politics in general.
The antigovernment protests that broke out in December 2011 have challenged the very foundations of the regime. For the first time, Putin could not claim that those who opposed him were a marginal force. And although he may have prevailed in the last presidential election, the underlying factors behind the mass opposition to his rule, and a rising middle class that increasingly demands political representation and respect may grow. Guriev points to the paradox in the protests that swept Russia: ‘Ironically, the wave of protests that swept Russia is consistent with the modernization hypothesis that Putin’s government has always used to justify the rollback in Russia: democracy is sustainable only if society is sufficiently well-off and has a solid middle class; until then, centralized rule is needed’.Reference Guriev12
Putin’s announcement in September 2011 that he, not Medvedev, would seek to return as president and the same year’s parliamentary elections, which were marked by widespread evidence of falsification, boost the sense of grievance manifested in mass protests that drew as many as 100,000 people to the center of Moscow. This was not a revolutionary movement. The demonstrators put forward a series of moral demands: about trust, honesty, and transparency in public life and politics. Next to the increasingly violent tone of the opposition, its lack of a platform of objectives also raises concern. Without an election platform to rally around, protesters blindly shout for overthrow of the government and offer no alternatives. But, according to Gelman, ‘The seeds planted in last winter in the protest rallies in Moscow and other cities, will ultimately bear fruits, although not necessarily in the near future.’Reference Gelman13
During the summer of 2005, the Russian political establishment exhibited fears of youth and non-state actors as a result of Ukraine’s peaceful Orange Revolution, the violent uprising in Kyrgyzstan, and President George W. Bush’s praise of people power during his visits to Ukraine and Georgia, and the Putin administration indirectly acknowledged that even a strong state may not be able to counter the popular will. Parties of power are a significant feature of post-Soviet Russian politics, at least for the present. Under the Putin leadership, from 2000 onwards, there was a movement towards ‘authoritarian elections’ in which control of the media and of the state meant that candidates and parties favored by the Kremlin could normally be assured of success, but the unexpected outcome of the December 2011 election suggested that arrangements of this kind were no longer secure; and although the re-election of Vladimir Putin to the presidency was not seriously in doubt, it was clear that he would be under some pressure to govern in a different way. In February 2012, Vladimir Putin published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he declared: ‘Our society is completely different from what it was at the turn of the 20th century. People are becoming more affluent, educated and demanding. The results of our efforts are new demands on the government and the advance of the middle class above the narrow objective of guaranteeing their own prosperity.’Reference Diehl14
Can street rebellion harm Russia’s political system? As James Traub wrote in TwinCities.com, ‘the era in which citizens will accept a return to autocracy, much less clamor for it, is drawing to a close.’Reference Traub15 Indeed, Russia’s system of personalized power is showing signs of decay. Russian society is beginning to resemble a postmodernist society and more and more Russians are quickly becoming a part of the global community, losing the traditional unquestionable fear of authority. Young and middle-aged members of Russian society are among the first in Russia who, while retaining specific national features, manage to combine them with the system of values and traditions of their peers from well-developed countries. Russia’s March 4, 2012 presidential election at least served to remind us of one of the most consequential features of genuinely democratic regimes. Even when elections fail to create accountable governments and even when a change of government means little in the way of changed policies, genuinely competitive elections, with their promise of replacing governing teams, can still infuse a spirit of hope into civil society, as Lilia Shevtsova writes: ‘Russia’s political system might be able to hold on for a while longer, 5–10 years, perhaps, using various means such as the administrative, financial, and security resources that are still in the Kremlin’s hands.’Reference Shevtsova16 Mikhail Gorbachev emphasized the long-term nature of political change: ‘It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible. That’s because we, or so it seems to me, have only come halfway.’Reference Gorbachev17 And indeed, in 1994 and in 2003, up to 60% of the Russian respondents agreed that ‘sooner or later Russia will take the same path as all the civilized countries.’Reference Dubin18
Haim Shinar holds an Israel Open University’s BSc in Natural Sciences and an MA degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. His research is on current political and economic developments in Russia.
