Introduction: modernising sistema 1. What is sistema? 2. Putin's sistema: svoi on top 3. The inner workings of sistema: from blat to otkat 4. Sistema's material culture: from vertushka to Vertu 5. 'Telephone justice' in the global age: from commands to signals 6. 'Werewolves in epaulets': from doublethink to doubledeed 7. From dealership to leadership: sistema and informal governance Conclusion.

Can Russia Modernise?: Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance

Andrew Wilson. Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. xviii, 332 p. Illustrations. Figures. Notes. Index. $40.00, cloth.Andrew Wilson's Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post Soviet World presents an exhaustive overview of various forms of chicanery and deceit that characterize politics throughout much of the post-Soviet region. Aside from meticulously exploring the "virtuality" of political developments in this part of the world, the author also challenges the basic foundations of extant post-Soviet research which applies a more traditional approach of treating political conflict as the reflection of competing societal interests. Critiquing this literature, Wilson argues that much of the public political manoeuvring in countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is mere theatre designed to confuse and deceive the electorate rather than to represent the interests and political preferences of real social actors. Throughout the book, Wilson presents a remarkably thorough effort to document the various schemes, tactics, technologies and projects that marked the past fifteen years of political developments in the region. While many of the political subterfuges detailed in the book are known to specialists in the region, Wilson's book is the first to systematically document these tactics and to elevate political technologists and other charlatans to a leading role in the region's political theatre.Wilson's often dense analysis is presented in eleven well-organized and carefully linked parts. Following a brief introduction which presents his main thesis, Wilson begins his exploration of virtual politics by demonstrating how factors specific to the Soviet experience provided fertile soil for the growth of modern virtual politics in the region. In Chapters Two and Three, Wilson details the bases of contemporary virtual politics and introduces political technologists as the primary playwrights in his virtual theatre. The bulk of the remaining text provides a tour of various strategies and tactics designed to distract the public, revamp the ruling elite's image, and neutralize real sources of resistance through nefarious tactics designed to discredit, divide and even (re)invent the opposition. Wilson concludes with a brief discussion of the limits of virtuality and the implications of virtuality for democratization efforts in the region.If Wilson's dire assessments are indeed valid, the study raises a number of important challenges for researchers and policy makers working with the region. First, how might one determine the scope of the virtual political world? Within his expansive discussion, which details the carefully scripted schemes of the region's political actors, Wilson includes a smattering of caveats indicating that not everything in the post-Soviet world is indeed "virtual." However, the absence of a serious examination of voting behaviour (an admittedly tall order given the author's main goals for the work) detracts from the ability to effectively determine the borders and scope of the virtual world. Having given pride of place to the virtual world and redirected attention to the extent and depth of political manipulation, scholars must now reintroduce the voter into this equation to help determine when virtuality rules the day and when social interests and actors can navigate through fog and achieve real political outcomes. …

Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World

Do authoritarian leaders take preemptive actions to deter their citizens from joining cross-national waves of popular mobilizations against authoritarian rulers? Are they more likely to engage in such behavior when these uprisings appear to be more threatening—in particular, when they take place in neighboring countries and in regimes that resemble their own? We provide answers to these questions by comparing the responses of the Russian and Chinese leadership to two such waves: the color revolutions and the Arab uprisings. We conclude that, despite differences in the ostensible threats posed by these two waves, they nonetheless prompted the leaders of both of these countries to introduce similar preemptive measures in order to “diffusion-proof” their rule from the color revolutions and the Arab upheavals. These findings have some important implications for our understanding of authoritarian politics and diffusion processes. One is to reinforce the emphasis in many recent studies on the strategic foundations of authoritarian resilience. That recognized, however, we would add that the authoritarian toolkit needs to be expanded to include policies that preempt international, as well as domestic threats. The other is to provide further confirmation, in this case derived from the behavior of authoritarian rulers, of how scholars have understood the drivers of cross-national diffusion. At the same time, however, we counsel students of diffusion to pay more attention to the role of resisters, as well as to adopters. In this sense, the geographical reach of diffusion is much broader than many analysts have recognized.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1537592713002107

Diffusion-Proofing: Russian and Chinese Responses to Waves of Popular Mobilizations against Authoritarian Rulers

The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia is a research volume. There are perhaps just a few works of its kind. Most works on this topic are scholarly, in...

The politics of protest in hybrid regimes: managing dissent in post-communist Russia

Since the collapse of Communism, Russia and some other post-Soviet states have attempted to pursue socioeconomic reforms while relying upon the political institutions of neopatrimonialism. This politico-economic order was established to serve the interests of ruling groups and establish the major features of states, political regimes, and market economies. It provided numerous negative incentives for governing the economy and the state due to the unconstrained rent-seeking behavior of major actors. Policy reform programs revealed these institutions to be incompatible with the priorities of modernization, and efforts to resolve these contradictions through a number of partial and compromise solutions often worsened the situation vis-a-vis preservation of the status quo. The ruling groups lack incentives for institutional changes, which could undermine their political and economic dominance, and are caught in a vicious circle: reforms often result in minor returns or cause unintended and undesired c...

/pdf/the-vicious-circle-of-post-soviet-neopatrimonialism-in-3a1xgwskyz.pdf

The vicious circle of post-Soviet neopatrimonialism in Russia

This article investigates how hybrid regimes supply governance by examining a series of dilemmas (involving elections, the mass media, and state institutions) that their rulers face. The authors demonstrate how regime responses to these dilemmas – typically efforts to maintain control while avoiding outright repression and societal backlash – have negative outcomes, including a weakening of formal institutions, proliferation of “substitutions” (e.g., substitutes for institutions), and increasing centralization and personalization of control. Efforts by Russian leaders to disengage society from the sphere of decision-making entail a significant risk of systemic breakdown in unexpected ways. More specifically, given significantly weakened institutions for interest representation and negotiated compromise, policy-making in the Russian system often amounts to the leadership's best guess (ad hoc manual policy adjustments) as to precisely what society will accept and what it will not, with a significant possibi...

Three dilemmas of hybrid regime governance: Russia from Putin to Putin

/pdf/overmanaged-democracy-in-russia-governance-implications-of-4n8gzjm9rq.pdf

Overmanaged Democracy in Russia: Governance Implications of Hybrid Regimes

Contents I. Russia in the World 1. Russia in World-Systems Perspective 2. Russia's Foreign Policy Outlook 3. Russia's Place in the World of Unintended Consequences, or Murphy's Law and Order 4. Russia and the New "Transitional Europe" 5. The South Caucasus in 2020 II. Political Economy and Economics 7. The "Third Cycle": Is Russia Headed Back to the Future? 8. Russia's Political Economy: The Next Decade 9. The Russian Economy to 2020: The Challenge of Managing Rent Addiction 10. The Russian Economy in Limbo III. Political System 11. Institution Building and "Institutional Traps" in Russian Politics 12. Transition as a Political Institution: Toward 2020 13. Can the Machine Come to Life? Prospects for Russia's Party System in 2020 14. Scenarios for the Evolution of the Russian Political Party System IV. State 15. The Excessive Role of a Weak Russian State 16. Center-Periphery Relations 17. The Continuing Revolution in Russian Military Affairs: Toward 2020 18. The Armed Forces in 2020: Modern or Soviet? V. Regions 19. Russia's Regions and Cities 20. Political Systems in the Russian Regions in 2020 21. 2020: The Last Chance for the North Caucasus? VI. Society and Civil Society 22. Aggressive Immobility of the Russian Society 23. The Inertia of Passive Adaptation 24. Between Nomenklatura and Elites. 25. The Evolution of Civic Activeness VII. Ideology and Culture 26. Russia and the New "Russian World" 27. Runet Space

Russia in 2020: Scenarios for the Future

Russia’s political system must be understood as inherently dynamic, with constant regime change being essential to how the regime operates and survives. This regime change does not proceed monotonically toward ever tighter authoritarianism, but can move in both liberal and repressive directions at different times. While on aggregate the trend has been to greater authoritarianism under Putin, certain liberalizing moves have also been important that are meaningful for how ordinary Russians and elites experience their own regime, and greater repressiveness is not foreordained. We document two forms of endemic regime dynamism in Russia, each involving contingent, improvisational efforts at short-term recalibration in response to crises that are both endogenous and exogenous to the regime: structural improvisation and ideational improvisation.

Russia’s Regime-on-the-Move

The Carnegie Moscow Center and the Carnegie Endowment do not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Carnegie Moscow Center or Carnegie Endowment. Please direct inquiries to:

/pdf/the-end-of-an-era-in-eu-russia-relations-3yjcbnx0d8.pdf

Maria Lipman

Papers

Three dilemmas of hybrid regime governance: Russia from Putin to Putin

Overmanaged Democracy in Russia: Governance Implications of Hybrid Regimes

Russia in 2020: Scenarios for the Future

Russia’s Regime-on-the-Move

The End of an Era in EU-Russia Relations