A New Turn to Authoritarian Rule in Russia

A New Turn to Authoritarian Rule in Russia?

GRAEME GILL

Many observers have pointed to the increasingly authoritarian nature of President Putin’sregime in Russia. This apparent turn away from democracy has generally been attributedeither to Russian political culture or to the security background of Putin himself and manyof those he has brought to office. However, analysis of the democratization literature suggeststhat the sources of Russia’s authoritarianism may lie in the nature of the initial transition fromSoviet rule, and in particular the way in which elites were able to act with significant indepen-dence from civil society forces because of the weakness of such forces. This weakness enabledsuccessive elites led by Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin to construct apolitical system in which popularly based involvement and participation were severelyrestricted. In this sense, Putin is merely building on what went before, not changing theregime’s basic trajectory.

Key words: Russia; authoritarian rule; democratization; transition; elites; civil society

In the period since the replacement of Boris Yeltsin as president of Russia by Vladimir

Putin at the end of 1999, many observers have pointed to the increasingly

authoritarian nature of the Russian polity.1 Such comments have become particularly

forceful in the wake of Putin’s election victory in March 2004 and the decisions he

announced to alter the political system following the Beslan hostage crisis

of September 2004. Observers have pointed to the consolidation of presidential

power, the marginalization of the legislature, the weakening of civil society, the

muzzling of an independent media and the reduction in the independence of regional

politicians as evidence of creeping authoritarianism.2 This diminution of the

independent sources of power across the system constitutes a closing of the space

for independent political activity and accordingly a strengthening of authoritarian

power. Sometimes this is presented, almost in classical terms, as a fall from the

democracy of the Yeltsin period into the anti-democratic authoritarianism of

Putin,3 but even when this contrast is not as starkly drawn, the authoritarian

characterization of the latter era has been widely accepted.4

Two main lines of explanation have been prominent in the discussion of this

development. The first type of argument is the appeal to Russian culture. Many

observers have been quick to point to a Russian historical tradition of preference

for a strong leader heading a powerful state and standing atop a more passive

society.5 This tradition is seen as being embodied in the long line of powerful tsars

followed by communist rulers who were able to assert their personal dominance

Graeme Gill is Professor of Government and Public Administration, School of Economics and PoliticalScience, The University of Sydney, Australia.

Democratization, Vol.13, No.1, February 2006, pp.58–77ISSN 1351-0347 print=1743-890X onlineDOI: 10.1080=13510340500378258 # 2006 Taylor & Francis

over both political structures and a weakened society as a whole. This line of argu-

ment sees the achievement of democracy in Russia as, at best, problematic, and the

default political position as being authoritarian. As such, the perceived Putin swing

toward authoritarianism is seen as simply a reversion to Russian type.

The revival of this sort of argument, which was prominent in many explanations

of the Soviet system, is a little curious because of the way in which many writers in

the 1990s and early 2000s claimed to find a strengthening of democratic elements in

Russian political culture. Various authors claimed that the strengthening of demo-

cratic values underpinned the advances made toward democracy following the col-

lapse of the Soviet Union, and that this boded well for the future.6 But if

democratic elements were strengthening, how could the perceived turn toward author-

itarianism happen in the first place, and how could it be explained in cultural terms?

What this shows is the slipperiness of cultural arguments. Cultural values, assump-

tions and norms are neither static nor consistent. Those values will change over

time as the society changes; the experience of Soviet industrialization transformed

many aspects of traditional Russian political culture, introducing into it new elements

which may have either replaced traditional elements or sit uncomfortably beside such

elements. This means that not only will the culture be dynamic, but it is also likely to

be characterized internally by tensions and inconsistencies. Authoritarian strands are

likely to coexist with more democratic elements. As a result of such tension, two con-

trasting political developments could both be solidly rooted in the culture of the

society. In such circumstances, while culture may play an important part in

shaping political development its exact role is not easy to isolate, and we should

beware of arguments blandly ascribing to culture the determinative role in shaping

political developments.

The second type of argument refers to Putin’s background in the Soviet security

apparatus, the KGB, and in particular to the way in which members of the former

security structure, the so-called siloviki, have become prominent in his regime.

Various observers have pointed to the way in which leading posts in many of the

regime’s key institutions have come to be dominated by people with backgrounds

in the security apparatus.7 It is assumed that they bring with them to their posts

both a commitment to the sorts of values which do not sit easily with democratic prin-

ciples and a certain sense of esprit de corps and group solidarity. This line of argument

sees authoritarianism as chiefly a result of the nature and personal preferences of Putin

and his supporters.

The emerging prominence of such people in the corridors of power in Russia

cannot be disputed, and the fact that they would carry with them into their new

posts particular sorts of mindsets and assumptions about the correct way of acting

is also widely accepted. Although we should be careful not to be too dogmatic

about this, as the cases of Gorbachev and Khrushchev, reformers who appeared

from the interstices of the Soviet system to impose significant change upon that

system, attest, it is highly likely that such people would have a more authoritarian

than a democratic disposition and outlook. And it is clear that a perceived authoritar-

ian turn has taken place since Putin came to office and while the siloviki were

strengthening their position within leading ranks. Indeed, such has Putin’s position

A NEW TURN TO AUTHORITARIAN RULE IN RUSSIA? 59

been that it is inconceivable that the political changes occurred without his support.

Therefore, on this basis it should not be surprising that an authoritarian turn has

occurred if this is what Putin and his immediate allies have wanted.

However, to point to the role of authoritarian aspects of political culture and of

Putin and his allies as being instrumental in bringing about such a change is only

half the story. What is also important is why there has been so little opposition to

the perceived winding back of democratic gains. The answer to this may be found

in what much of the democratization literature, sardonically often called ‘transitology’,

tells us about successful transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule.

The Democratization Paradigm

There has been significant debate about the relevance to the fall of communism and the

subsequent emergence of post-communist regimes of that body of ‘transitological’

theory emerging from the experiences of Latin America and Southern Europe.8

Critics of the use of this democratization literature in the analysis of the fall of com-

munism and the emergence of new regimes pointed to a host of differences between

the respective sets of case studies. The starting-points of the transition were said to be

markedly different, with the communist regimes much more powerful and deeply

penetrative of the society than were their Latin American and southern European

counterparts. This factor was reflected in the different political economies

(a merging of the political and economic realms under communism, in contrast to

the separation in Latin America and Southern Europe) of the countries in these

regions. Society under communist rule was said to be much more flattened, with

the pursuit of private interests at best marginalized and civil society very weak,

while in Latin America and Southern Europe civil society was more firmly

established and private interest embedded as the basis upon which the economy

functioned. It was also claimed that the level of economic, especially industrial,

development was much higher in the communist states than in those of the other

regions. The communist cases were also said to involve questions of identity

(mostly independence from an imperial overlord but in Russia’s case the search for

a non-communist identity) not present in the other two regions.

As well as different starting-points, there were also said to be differences in mode

of transition. In the communist cases, international factors (especially in the case of

Eastern Europe, the role of Gorbachev) and the role of mass mobilization were seen to

be much more important forces shaping the transition than they were in Latin

America and Southern Europe. Furthermore the strategies of the ‘democrats’

needed to be different. In Latin America and Southern Europe where the state and

its officials were much less strongly embedded in society and the control exercised

by the state was weaker, the democrats could neutralize old-regime functionaries

by coopting them into and reassuring them about the changes. In contrast, in the com-

munist areas the extent of the control that these people exercised meant that their

control had to be broken, and therefore rather than cooptation, the democrats were

required to follow a course of breaking with them. Similarly, given the respective

political economies, in the communist areas political change had to be accompanied

60 DEMOCRATIZATION

by major economic restructuring, something that was not necessary in the other two

regions.

There is clearly something to these charges, but not as much as the critics

suggest.9 The regional case studies are nowhere near as homogeneous as the critics

argue, with both starting-points and modes of transition varying often significantly

between individual countries in each region. For example, a comparison of the

Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romanian and the Bulgarian cases illustrates the

variety within regions, even among countries located contiguously, and some simi-

larities across regions.10 The contrasts between the regions are therefore much less

sharply drawn than the critics suggest. Of course, there were differences in the

detail of individual transitions because their forms were shaped by the particular insti-

tutional and political environments within which they were played out. For example,

different forms of pacting occurred in Spain, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay, and all of

these were different to the Round Tables (which is the form that pacting took) in

Eastern Europe.11 The military was more prominent as an actor in Latin America

and Southern Europe (where the military was often in control of the government)

than in most communist cases,12 while international influences were evident in all

but probably played a more direct role in many of the communist cases.13 Such differ-

ences of detail should be expected in such a large range of countries. But what is

crucial is that the basic process that they experienced was generically the same: the

shift from an authoritarian towards a democratic system with that shift being

shaped in significant measure by elite action and preferences.

It has been a characteristic of much of the literature seeking to explain the so-

called ‘third wave’ of democratization14 that the primary emphasis in the explanation

has been placed on the role and activities of elites.15 The democratic transitions have

been managed, with the interaction between incumbent, ruling elites and the elites

seeking to displace them constituting the main dynamic of this process. In this

view, what is crucial is the capacity of the respective elites to mobilize political

resources, including crucially their own internal unity, to achieve their aims of, in

one case, holding on to power (or if this becomes impossible, extricating themselves

at limited cost) and in the other case, gaining power. In the classic cases of democra-

tization, as this interaction proceeds agreement is reached between the competing

elites, enabling the challengers to move into power. The former incumbents are

either guaranteed immunity from retribution (often a necessary concession to per-

suade them to give up power without a fight), or guaranteed a subordinate place in

the new power structure. It is therefore this relationship between elites that shapes

the whole process of democratization and determines its outcome. This focus upon

elite strategic choice has been apposite because, as the studies show, elites have exer-

cised overwhelmingly important influence over the course of political change. They

have not acted in a vacuum, but have been constrained by a range of factors including

regime type, civil society forces and international conditions,16 but nevertheless their

primacy in shaping the outcome has been generally unquestioned.

Some observers of democratization in the post-communist world have argued that

these cases should be classed as a ‘fourth wave’, in which the dynamic of change is

different to that of the countries in the ‘third wave’. A leading proponent of this view,


Michael McFaul,17 argues that rather than being the result of agreement between

competing elites, the political outcome of transition in the ‘fourth wave’ is shaped

by the balance of power between those elites. Thus, where democrats are supreme,

democracy will ensue; where anti-democrats are more powerful, dictatorship will

emerge; where there is an approximate balance, a partial democracy is likely. The

driver of change here is therefore different to that which he sees in the earlier demo-

cratization literature; rather than elite agreement contained in a pact, it is the result of

relative power shares. While this is a useful point to make, what is important for our

purposes is that the focus of analysis is essentially the same, the elites. What is central

in the ‘fourth wave’ is what was central in the ‘third wave’, the disposition of the

elites.

One of the problems with the way much of the democratization literature has pro-

ceeded (although this is less true of those studying post-communist change) has been

the tendency to focus, perhaps not unnaturally, on those cases of democratization that

have been successful. While such a focus has confirmed the importance of elites, a

study that analyses only the successful cases cannot explain why in some cases a

democratic regime is established and is able to become consolidated and yet in

others such a regime is not the outcome. Only a focus which includes both successful

and unsuccessful cases can hope to do this. When the study is expanded to include

both types of cases,18 the centrality of elites is confirmed, but what is important in

determining the success or otherwise of democratization is the relationship of those

elites with organized forces in civil society. In essence, where elites remain isolated

from civil society, as is the case with military and many bureaucratic elites, the

chances of a democratic outcome are much reduced. They will depend upon the

democratic proclivities of the elites themselves, and if those elites are not connected

with political parties, socially embedded interest groups or similar organizations,

there seems to be little reason for democratic sentiment to be solidly entrenched

within them.

For example, regime change from one type of authoritarian regime to another

tends to involve elites with their roots in hierarchical state structures such as the mili-

tary or the bureaucracy (as in many of the cases of regime change in Latin America in

the 1970s), or in conspiratorial parties which are largely free from civil society control

(as in the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917). In contrast, in those cases when democrati-

zation has been successfully achieved, the challenger elite has generally been closely

linked into civil society, and it has been through this link that pressure for a demo-

cratic outcome has come.

Political parties have been central to many of these cases of successful democra-

tization because they have provided the institutional connection between elites and

civil society more broadly. They have been the means for the institutionalized mobil-

ization of sections of civil society into the struggle for democratic change, the channel

for continuing pressure for such change to be exerted upon the various elites, and a

negotiating partner for the incumbent elites. They have been the institutional mech-

anism for the transformation of popular mobilization into continuing popular

control. This does not assume that such civil society forces are necessarily all com-

mitted philosophically to a democratic political system. It may simply be that they

62 DEMOCRATIZATION

see the opening up of the system and the forms of democracy as the best means for

them to gain access to that political system. But such forces can often provide a guar-

antee against backsliding on the part of the elites because of their demand for more

broadly based involvement in the system. What is crucial here is not that, for

example, party elites are able simply to mobilize popular support and to use their fol-

lowers as a tool against the incumbents in power, but that those elites are actually

responsible in some form to their supporters. If the elite is insulated from its putative

supporters and is able to ignore their wishes at will, democratic pressures upon them

will be blunted and the likelihood of a democratic outcome accordingly reduced.

Elites’ close links with civil society forces do not ensure a democratic outcome,

but they make it more likely that those elites will continue to seek such a result,

rather than compromise democratic aims in the interests of power seizure.

The centrality of the relationship between elites and civil society forces is evident

in examples from all the regions upon which the democratization literature has

focused. In successful cases of transition to democracy, such as Spain, Greece,

Uruguay, Brazil (all 1970s), South Korea, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary,

Lithuania and Poland (all late 1980s/early 1990s), the counter-elites were rooted in

civil society and sustained by civil society organizations, mostly political parties.

In cases of regime change where the outcome was not democratic, such as Chile

(1973), Bolivia (1971), Argentina (1976), Azerbaijan, Belarus, Turkmenistan and

Uzbekistan (all early 1990s), there was no close association between the new

ruling elites and civil society forces.19 This essential component of the dynamic of

democratization, whether elites are embedded in civil society through bodies such

as political parties or independent of it, reflected in wide cross-national and

cross-regional experience, both testifies to the value of the general democratization

literature for an understanding of the post-communist experience, and provides

explanatory purchase for an understanding of the presumed new authoritarianism

in Russia under Vladimir Putin.

The Russian Transition

When Mikhail Gorbachev began the process of liberalization in the Soviet Union in

1985, civil society was very weak. The Soviet regime had left no public space for

autonomous organizations to develop in society, and when such bodies had sought

to become active they had generally been suppressed. The only organizations given

licence to operate in the public domain were bodies that were linked to the regime.

As a result, when Gorbachev’s reforms created some space within which autonomous

organizations could act, these had mostly to be constructed from scratch.20 Neverthe-

less, the result was a flowering of bodies of all types. The so-called ‘informals’21

emerged to provide vehicles for people to become actively involved in a range of

activities and to prosecute their particular interests. Many of these were directed at

purely personal (for example, defence of the rights of invalids or Afghan veterans)

or recreational concerns (for instance, cinema, rock music and chess), but especially

after 1988 many emerged with a distinctly political tenor. Human rights movements,

including Memorial, became particularly prominent and, in the non-Russian


republics, there were national front movements (see below); also important were the

proto-political parties. However, in the Russian Republic these proto-parties

remained weak and disorganized. They were small, with little active membership,

often beset by argument and dispute, they did not speak for social interests and

were generally intent on maintaining their independence both organizationally and

operationally. These bodies were more interested in jostling for position in the deve-

loping political spectrum than they were on combining either to be better able to place

pressure on leading political actors or to create the sort of institutional structure that

would have brought those actors under social control. They received little official

assistance or support from the top and for the most part they lacked direct access

to the central elite players; elites at the federal level retained significant independence

from these representatives of emergent civil society.

The weakness of these proto-parties in practice accorded with Gorbachev’s atti-

tude to popular involvement in the reform process. While Gorbachev came to

believe that the populace at large did have a role to play in the unrolling of

perestroika, that role is better described as mobilization rather than independent

participation. Throughout most of the period from 1986 until 1991, he saw popular

activism in an instrumental sense, something to be directed and targeted against the

enemies of change rather than as a form of activity with intrinsic value in itself.

This is reflected in a range of positions he took on issues, from his initially limited

view of the nature of glasnost, through his treatment of the Congress of People’s

Deputies (see below) to his refusal to face the voters in his quest for the Soviet pre-

sidency in 1990. This means that although Gorbachev was directly instrumental in

opening up the regime much more to broadly based participation than it had been

in the past, in practice such opportunities were always qualified and hedged to

prevent full-blooded, effective popular involvement. Gorbachev was not interested

in setting up mechanisms whereby an emergent civil society could interact systema-

tically with and even exert control over society’s rulers. He was more interested in

mobilizing the populace in order to increase information flow to the centre and to

defeat his opponents. In the face of this sort of attitude, emergent civil society organi-

zations were unable by themselves to construct the sort of system that might have

made elite political leaders responsible to society more broadly.

This does not mean that the mass of the population and the organizations that

were emerging to structure their public activity had no influence on the course of

Gorbachev’s program for change. It is clear that the course of the radicalization of

that program was powered in large part by pressure from below, especially after

mid-1988 when the bounds of popular discussion widened considerably. Not

only was discussion in the pages of the mainstream press and on the airwaves

of the electronic media becoming increasingly free and open, but political

groups were beginning to publish their own newspapers and broadsheets as

public demonstrations and rallies became more common in the streets of the

cities.22 A major actor in this was the national front organizations. Emerging in

many of the republics in 1987–88 and resting on an appeal to national sentiment

that in some republics became increasingly stridently asserted as time went on,

these organizations were able to mobilize significant numbers of people onto the

64 DEMOCRATIZATION

streets. They brought pressure to bear on both the local ruling elites and the central

authorities. Their success was reflected in many of the republican elections in

March 1990, a success that projected them into the heart of the republican (and

sometimes by extension, the federal) political process and gave them a firm insti-

tutional base. From their new positions in the republican governments, national

movements such as the Lithuanian, Estonian and Georgian, were then able to

increase the pressure on the Soviet centre, pressure which played an important

part in the erosion of that centre’s authority and subsequent collapse. In some

cases, such as the Baltic republics, such movements also fostered the development

of effective political parties and paved the way for a democratic outcome; in

others, such as the Caucasian republics, such movements did not promote

broader party development and the initial outcome was authoritarian.

No such powerful national front organization emerged in Russia, in part because

the raison d’etre of these organizations was generally to achieve independence from

what was seen to be Russian rule. The most important organization that was able to

mobilize significant levels of popular support was Democratic Russia.23 This body

emerged in late 1989 to contest the republican elections scheduled for early 1990,

although its official founding did not take place until October 1990. It was formed

from the merger of some 18 social movements and nine political parties and included

people ranging from reform communists to democratic nationalists. This organization

was able to mobilize many supporters onto the streets in demonstrations and into the

voting booths to support their candidates in various elections, including Yeltsin in the

presidential poll in 1991.24 However, it was not able to create a stable mechanism for

ensuring elite accountability despite the fact that it emerged as a potential key link

between opposition politicians in the Inter-Regional Group of Deputies in the Con-

gress of People’s Deputies and popular organizations. It was never clear whether

Democratic Russia aspired to be a broad-based movement or a more disciplined

party which aimed at gaining control in the legislatures,25 with the result that it

never had a structure designed for political competition and for operating within a leg-

islative chamber as opposed to a structure designed for popular mobilization. It

remained a loose alliance of parties and fractions, a structure inimical to its becoming

a means for emergent civil society to control political elites. This was also due, in

part, to the role of Boris Yeltsin.

From 1989 the chief dynamic of change in Russia was the result of a split within

the Soviet political elite. While there had been divisions within that elite from the

time of Gorbachev’s election in March 1985, it was the split initiated by Yeltsin

that was central to the course of future development. That split had become open

at the end of 1987 with the expulsion of candidate member Yeltsin from the Politburo

and his dismissal as leader of the Moscow party organization, but it gained increased

significance with his later election to a number of official posts: deputy to the Soviet

Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1989 and the Russian Congress of People’s

Deputies in March 1990, to the post of Chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet in

May 1990 and as Russian President in June 1991. These positions gave him a

profile and a forum which he could use to rally opposition against the Soviet

centre. Crucial in his rise was the support he received from Democratic Russia.


However Democratic Russia did not act as an effective means of tying Yeltsin and his

closest supporters into civil society more broadly.

In addition to Democratic Russia’s organizational structure noted above, two

other factors were important in this. First, Democratic Russia began to fragment

towards the end of 1991, in the process spawning a large number of very small and

weak political parties. There are many reasons for this fragmentation, including its

organizational form noted above; but also important was Gorbachev’s treatment of

the Congress of People’s Deputies. When this body emerged with a mind (or

minds) of its own rather than one Gorbachev could bend easily to his will, Gorbachev

sought to locate political primacy and power elsewhere, in an enhanced presidency. In

this way, Gorbachev and his allies tried to sideline the legislature. The leaders of that

body used it increasingly as a forum or instrument to attack Gorbachev and those

around him. Thus, rather than develop as a powerful arena within which political

parties could develop institutionally as integral parts of the governing process, the

Congress became a shrill critic at some distance from the heart of that process. The

legislature, therefore, did not stimulate party development in a way that it would

have been likely to do had it been embraced as part of the ruling political structure.

Second, Yeltsin took a stance of consciously eschewing any party affiliation.

Yeltsin publicly interpreted his role as president as being to represent all of the

Russian people rather than only that part of it that supported any party which he

headed. Thus, rather than being a member of a party and both acting to strengthen

that party while himself remaining at least to some degree under its influence, he

refused all party affiliation. Yeltsin declared he would stand above party politics,

and sought to base his position directly on a personalist tie with the populace.

When the USSR collapsed, the underlying structural characteristics of the situ-

ation in the Russian Republic were finely balanced. While the monopoly power of

the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been broken, there had not been a

definitive democratic breakthrough. The political elite had been driven in a more

radical direction by the growing strength of popular sentiment, but no effective mech-

anisms had been set in place to ensure continuing control over elite political actors by

civil society. Not only had the principle of elite accountability not been established,

but the institutions through which this might have been achieved, namely elections

and the legislature, were weakly developed, and the latter remained institutionally

isolated from the populace by the weakness of political parties. The August 1991

attempted putsch changed the ground rules for politics fundamentally and created

the opportunity for the development of a new set of political institutions which

could be more inclusive and could build in greater popular accountability than the

Soviet ones had done. But this sort of outcome would be dependent upon the positions

taken by elite political actors, because those political forces rooted in civil society,

parties and social groups, were neither strong nor united enough to force elite political

actors to mould a system that involved real constraints upon those actors. Unfortu-

nately the leading politician of the period, Boris Yeltsin, and those around him,

were not thus inclined. Instead they sought to build a political system that effectively

demobilized the populace by sidelining those institutions through which popular

control could be exercised.

66 DEMOCRATIZATION

The Hegemonic Presidency26

In a move that had direct implications for the type of presidency he was to establish,

Yeltsin sought to rest upon charismatic notions of authority from the time he became

President of Russia in June 1991. He sought to generate a charismatic tie between

himself and the Russian people, claiming to rule on their behalf and in their interests,

and to be able to interact with them directly rather than being mediated through any

intervening institutions. At base, the attempt to create a charismatic sense of legiti-

macy for the president was anti-institutional27 and antithetical to any attempt to

restrain the president through civil society-based organization. The charismatic

relationship implied that the putative followers, in this case the Russian people,

should sink their capacity for independent judgement into commitment to the

leader, accepting what he said and doing as he instructed. While this situation was

never fully realized by Yeltsin in his relationship with the people, what is important

is that his understanding of that relationship, his perception of himself as the perso-

nification of the nation, effectively denied any notion of the need for society-based

checks upon his authority. The charismatic presidency left no room for notions of

responsibility to the people. Indeed, while encouraging some types of popular mobil-

ization, Yeltsin also acted consistently to structure and restrict access into that system

for autonomous political organizations.

The insulation from popular control that such a notion of the presidency involved

was reinforced institutionally by the growth of the presidential administration.28 From

the time he became president of Russia, Yeltsin was intent on building a personal

apparatus staffed by people who were personally loyal to him. In the early stages,

this involved reliance upon people from his original power base in Sverdlovsk/Ekaterinburg, but even when these were later pushed more to the margins by new-

comers, the key to appointment and promotion remained personal loyalty to the

president or one of his chief aides. In a situation where the president wanted to

expand his power and where neither the bureaucracy nor the legislature was able to

exercise effective power, the scope and power of the presidential administration

expanded rapidly; it expanded so much that by early 1992 there were public fears

that it might even displace the government.29 Although such fears were unfounded,

the presidential administration became an important instrument of presidential

power, in practice unrestrained by either the constitution or any other organ of

state. As the main executor of the president’s will and a principal institution sustain-

ing him, the administration was a major pillar of the presidency and gave him

significant practical autonomy from the other parts of the political system and from

the electorate. Furthermore, it acted as a gatekeeper controlling access to the

president. This was important for the hegemonic nature of the presidency.

Just as personal loyalty underpinned the administration’s relationship to the pre-

sident, so personal relationships loomed large in the question of gaining access to the

president. Access was a function of personal contacts and connections rather than reg-

ularized or routinized procedures; who one knew was important rather than any rou-

tinized structure of access. This undercut the development of such procedures, and

liberated the office from bureaucratic restraints. This situation became even more


apparent with Yeltsin’s heavy reliance upon personal friends and relations, referred to

euphemistically as ‘the family’, during the mid-1990s.30 This was a group of Yeltsin

family members and personal cronies who surrounded the president from the middle

of the decade: much of their initial power was owed to Yeltsin’s poor health. The

basis of their power was their loyalty to the president, and the chief symbol of it

was Yeltsin’s own daughter, Tatiana Diachenko. ‘The family’ exercised significant

influence over the president, controlling access to him and providing it either to

those who were personally known to them or who were introduced by friends.

Their role as a filter reinforced the institutional constraints on access stemming

from the presidential administration, and confirmed the lack of avenues for social

control over the president.

The reliance upon personal channels for access to the president was reflected in

another pillar upon which the Yeltsin presidency rested, especially from the middle

of the decade, the support of big business. Big business, most particularly those busi-

nessmen known colloquially as ‘the oligarchs’, played an important stabilizing role in

Yeltsin’s rule by using their resources to underpin the presidency. There have been

many reports about the provision of money to Yeltsin personally and to members

of his family by wealthy businessmen,31 but the more important form this has

taken has been through the way in which the oligarchs used their resources to

support Yeltsin’s re-election campaign in 1996 and to oppose those parties critical

of the Yeltsin government in the legislative elections of 1995 and 1999. Their role

was important in subordinating the electoral process to the presidency (see below)

and in bolstering the president’s personal position. But crucial to their playing of

this role was the personal access that they gained both to the president and to the

state and its resources more generally. It was the latter, reflected most egregiously

in the ‘loans for shares’ deal of 1995–96, which enabled them to enrich themselves

at the state’s expense and to develop the resources that helped them to channel support

behind the presidential regime. This does not mean that they were the captives of the

president, although their continued financial security relied in part on continuing pre-

sidential good will. However, they were in the sort of relationship with the president

where their mutual interests were met by continuing association. Importantly for the

political structure, this association reaffirmed in practice the principle that underlay

Yeltsin’s hegemonic presidency, the primacy of informal, personal relations over rou-

tinized, official procedures.32

The other pillar upon which the hegemonic presidency rested was manipulation of

the electoral process. Elections were not prevented from taking place at the national

level (although elected officials at lower levels were replaced temporarily by appoin-

tees in 1993 and the election of governors was postponed until 1996) and Yeltsin did

reject pressure to cancel the presidential election in 1996; but when the elections pro-

ceeded they were certainly not fair contests. In 1993Yeltsin brought on an early elec-

tion, set the parameters of debate in the campaign, and established an electoral system

in such a way as to disadvantage his opponents. The final vote tallies may also have

been rigged.33 A heavily biased media in the 1995 legislative election and the 1996

presidential election, and the massive overspending by Yeltsin’s supporters in the

latter, undermined the fairness of both polls. Similarly, in the 1999 legislative election

68 DEMOCRATIZATION

and the 2000 presidential poll, the reporting was heavily in favour of the incumbent,

while the circumstances surrounding the calling of the latter (Yeltsin’s surprise

resignation which propelled Putin into the acting presidency, thereby giving him

the advantage of incumbency, and the bringing forward of the election date,

thereby disadvantaging opposition forces) was a classic case of manipulating the

legal provisions in order to disadvantage opponents. Through such manipulation,

the elections were largely subverted and, especially the presidential polls,

transformed into a type of plebiscitary exercise. Their capacity to bring about a

change in government was destroyed as the integrity of the presidential poll was

violated. Given the subordinate constitutional position occupied by the legislature,

even if opposition parties had been able to consolidate a majority in the State

Duma, their role could only have been an attempted blocking one.

Such manipulation of the electoral process was one factor in the failure of strong

civil society organizations to emerge. Political parties have therefore remained weak,

in part because of actions taken by the president and those around him. Yeltsin’s

previously noted refusal to associate himself with a political party significantly under-

mined the prospects for party building in the new Russia. His decision not to call new

legislative elections in the wake of the failed August 1991 putsch was unhelpful as

well.34 Many called for new elections at this time. They believed that elections in

the immediate post-putsch environment would promote the importance of a new

legislature and would have led to an anti-communist vote. Elections would

promote a wave of support for Yeltsin as the symbolic head of the movement that

led to the collapse of the putsch. It would also have given a stimulus to party

development, perhaps enabling some of those parties that had emerged during the

Soviet period to use an election campaign to build up both an infrastructure and

popular support and to gain representation in a new legislative body. The fillip to

party development that this would have meant could possibly have laid a basis for

the subsequent growth of parties and for a more benign legislature than that which

confronted Yeltsin in the following two years.

The capacity for parties to develop as powerful entities was undermined further by

the conflict between Yeltsin and the legislature in 1993. By rejecting the popular

mandate possessed by the members of the Soviet-era legislature, by refusing to

involve the populace at large in the resolution of the dispute with the Supreme

Soviet through the mechanism of a referendum with a question that would have

resolved the issue35 and instead by closing that body by force, Yeltsin effectively

sought to sideline the main institutional form through which civil society normally

exercises control over its rulers. The effect of this was reinforced by the constitution-

ally inferior position given to the new legislative structure in the Constitution intro-

duced in 1993.36 This position was maintained throughout the rest of the Yeltsin

presidency, with the legislature unable to exercise any effective control over the

President.

The most important party during the 1990s was the Communist Party of the

Russian Federation, the leading lineal descendant of the old ruling Communist

Party of the Soviet Union. However, this party was the body against which much

of the electoral manipulation noted above was chiefly directed. All sorts of barriers


were put in the party’s way in its endeavours to develop as a major political force in

the country, with the result that it was never able to break out of its electoral heartland.

Most of the other party groups remained small and unable to build up substantial

stable representation in the legislative chamber; indeed, many enjoyed only a fleeting

existence. The development of vigorous independent parties was also hindered by the

practice, begun during perestroika,37 of leading figures close to the president estab-

lishing a quasi-official party from the top down. Often called ‘the party of power’,

such bodies included Russia’s Choice led by Yegor Gaidar, Our Home is Russia

founded by Viktor Chernomyrdin and Unity headed by Sergei Shoigu. Such elite cre-

ations helped to crowd out the room for more spontaneous parties founded from

below. As a result the State Duma, like the political spectrum generally, was fragmen-

ted and unable to gain the unity needed if it was to confront the president successfully.

A fragmented and polarized party system such as the one that emerged was not only a

major barrier to democratic stabilization,38 but also prevented exercise of control over

the executive.

The state of the parties was a reflection of the weakness of civil society as a whole.

The problem was not that there was no organized public life in Russia, but that the

multitude of groups and organizations that had emerged to structure public activity

remained isolated from elite political actors. None of those organizations was able

individually to exercise any effective control over elite political actors, and there

were no institutional mechanisms in place which would have enabled combinations

of such organizations to exert such control. As a result, the civil society that

emerged enjoyed little interaction with elite politicians. The inability of the trade

unions to act as an effective defender of workers’ interests and of protest groups to

substantially affect the course of the Chechen conflict is testament to the incapacity

of civil society.

By the end of the 1990s the Russian transition to democracy had well and truly

stalled. Under Gorbachev, the all-powerful party-state had been dismantled but no

powerful civil society organizations had grown up to exert control over political

leaders in Russia. Yeltsin had built on this Gorbachev inheritance to construct a char-

ismatically based hegemonic presidency in which power was concentrated in the pre-

sidential office and justified by appeal to popular support. This was a so-called

‘delegative democracy’39 whereby the leader gained authority through the manipu-

lated, electoral process and then proceeded to rule in a manner little checked by

forces from within civil society. While Yeltsin built directly on the legacy bequeathed

him by Gorbachev, Putin was to take this legacy even further.

Putin Strengthens the Hegemonic Presidency

Since his election to the presidency in March 2000, Vladimir Putin has sought to build

on the bases inherited from his predecessor while at the same time both continuing to

close off avenues of popular control and to bring under his purview those aspects of

the power structure that had escaped the control of Yeltsin. The one area where Putin

has not built upon the Yeltsin model was Yeltsin’s attempt to create a charismatic

relationship with the people. Although there has been some promotion of Putin the

70 DEMOCRATIZATION

individual leader, Putin seems to have consciously eschewed the populist image and

style of his predecessor. He has not sought to project himself as a personalist leader

with direct ties to the populace (although he has engaged in apparently unstructured

talk-back sessions with the populace40), instead emphasizing the importance of the

formal office he occupies. Rather than relying on charisma, he seems more intent

upon projecting an image of legal rational authority based on the strengthening of

state institutions with himself at the head. However, such an image does not necess-

arily imply a president who is any closer to his people or is more responsible to them

than was the case for the charismatic leader. While an emphasis upon legal rationality

implies the importance of laws, unless those laws involve restraints upon the leader,

this type of legitimation does not necessarily reduce the leader’s standing compared

with charismatic legitimation.

Putin did seek to use the same strategy that Yeltsin had with regard to the presi-

dential administration. Part of this has involved the replacement of Yeltsin loyalists

by people with career ties to Putin, many from St Petersburg and from the security

services. Gradually over his first term, Putin replaced those who had occupied high

executive position under Yeltsin as a result of their personal ties to the president,

to one of his family or to cronies.41 But although the personnel have changed, the

principle has remained the same: the key to appointment and promotion is personal

loyalty to the president. Although Putin has not been debilitated by illness in the

way that Yeltsin was, the construction of the presidential apparatus on the basis of

personal loyalty has as effectively insulated Putin from would-be lower level controls

as it did Yeltsin.

The manipulation of elections has also bolstered the Putin presidency. The cir-

cumstances surrounding the 2000 presidential election have already been mentioned.

In the December 2003 legislative election, media bias was at as high a level as it had

been at any time in the past. The pro-president United Russia party42 was given an

enormous boost by the media coverage, never having to explain or defend its positions,

never having to make clear what it stood for. In contrast, its major opponent – the

Communist Party of the Russian Federation – was given almost unrelentingly nega-

tive coverage in the state media and never given a real opportunity to explain what it

stood for.43 Similarly in the lead up to the 2004 presidential poll and during the actual

election, no challenge to Putin was able to gain a fair hearing. This poll was the

closest to a simple plebiscite that post-Soviet Russia has had, with Putin refusing

to participate in campaigning, to release a coherent programme of any kind, or

even to acknowledge his challengers; he received some 71 per cent of the vote,

with his nearest challenger gaining 13.8 per cent.

Under Putin the position of privileged access enjoyed by big business has

remained, although the terms upon which it is enjoyed are different. Under Yeltsin,

the state took no punitive action against leading business circles, with the relationship

being one of loose partnership: the state, through the president, allowed the

businessmen to keep their gains from privatization and continue to prosper

while the businessmen were expected to support the president when he needed it.

The businessmen thereby retained a degree of autonomy. Under Putin, this autonomy

has been reined in. Certainly business retains the ear of the president, but it is now


under conditions defined by the state’s chief executive. This is clear in the injunction

that businessmen may retain their profits from privatization as long as they remain out

of politics,44 and made clear by the series of conferences at the Kremlin when Putin

has called businessmen in to discuss issues with them and make his views known.

Channels between the president and big business remain highly personalized, and

these meetings do not represent in any way a type of routinization of relations

between president and business. Furthermore, those businessmen who have acted

contrary to the way Putin desires have been met with punitive action. Gusinsky

and Berezovsky went into exile abroad and lost control over their assets in Russia,

including their media assets; Khodorkovsky was put in gaol and his oil company

investigated for falsifying its tax returns. While big business may still support

Putin, it does so from a much weaker position than it did under Yeltsin.

The reining in of the independent power of big business was important not only

for the place of big business itself, but for the implications this had for civil

society more generally. By apparently bringing these most powerful of interests to

heel, Putin made it clear that all parts of civil society were to remain subordinate

to the state’s interests. While he did not seek to limit the activities of most civil

society organizations (although the takeover of the All-Russian Centre for the

Study of Public Opinion, VTsIOM, in August 2003 and of the offices of the Soros

Foundation in December 2003 are important exceptions to this), it has been made

clear most graphically by the treatment of Gusinsky, Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky

that independent, effective involvement in political matters was not appropriate. The

sharp reductions in press freedom that accompanied action against these businessmen

was also an important constraint upon the capacity of civil society to even give voice,

let alone wield political influence. Civil society has had at least a partial muzzle

applied to it. This does not mean that civil society has been destroyed. Associative

behaviour in Russia has continued to grow, there is public discussion of issues, and

at the grass-roots organized life continues to develop in complex and positive

ways. However, there is limited effective contact between this sort of activity and

the upper levels of the political process. Civil society lacks the organizational mech-

anisms for asserting significant, continuing influence, let alone control, over political

elites.

Putin has also acted to deal with those areas that were not under Yeltsin’s control.

His emphasis upon strengthening the Russian state, reflected particularly clearly in

the drive to increase taxation revenue, is a reflection of his desire to make that

state work more effectively, and in particular to function better as an instrument of

central rule. Such bureaucratic improvement is an enormous task, but Putin has at

least signalled his desire to attempt to bring this about. Also important in this

regard has been his attempt to bring regional authorities closer under Moscow’s

control.45 His establishment of seven regions, each run by a presidential envoy

with oversight powers, has been one weapon in this struggle. So, too, has a change

in personnel policy, with the provision of government jobs to governors who are

removed, thereby giving them an incentive not to continue to oppose the centre.46

Putin also changed the composition of the Federation Council, the federal upper

house, to remove the governors and replace them with their representatives,

72 DEMOCRATIZATION

thereby reducing the power of the governors in the federal arena.47 Also important in

this has been the drawing of the governors into the new party established for the 2003

elections, United Russia. Many of the governors, perhaps recognizing the strength of

Putin’s position and trying to tie their fortunes to his joined this body and became the

mainstays of it at the local level. This constitutes the effective incorporation of the

regional leaders into the presidential electoral machine. Even Moscow mayor Yurii

Luzhkov, who had played an ostentatiously independent role under Yeltsin, was

included in this machine.

Putin has actually used a ‘party of power’ in an effective way to suborn both the

legislature and these regional elites. In 1999, the party Unity was established just

before the election. This was clearly associated with the then prime minister Putin,

and did sufficiently well in the election that it was able to play a major role in the

State Duma, including gaining leadership of many Duma committees. A combination

of the role played by this party in the legislative chamber and the non-confrontational

approach adopted by Putin effectively neutered the legislature as a critic of the pre-

sident. However, this was taken a step further with the 2003 election when the new

presidential party United Russia swept to an effective majority in the chamber.

This has enabled it to take control of the committee system, and potentially to dom-

inate the course of legislative life.48 This means that the legislature has effectively

been integrated into the presidentially dominated power structure, which thereby

appears much more monolithic than that of Yeltsin.

Importantly, while Putin achieved this through the medium of a political party,

initially Unity and then United Russia, neither party was the sort which promised

to constitute a channel into the political system for more broadly based civil

society forces or enable them to exercise any control over the president. Unity was

created from above, shortly before the 1999 election, and lacked both a mass member-

ship base and an organizational structure reaching into society at large. United Russia

was formed principally from the merger of Luzhkov’s political machine Fatherland-

All Russia and Unity, and incorporated most of the regional governors. Thus it, too,

lacked a mass base, resting instead on elite political actors at both central and regional

levels. Neither party was in a position to project grass-roots or democratic sentiment

into the upper levels of the political process. In any case, Putin was not a member of

either party and therefore was not subject to any party discipline. Both parties clearly

acted as instruments of the president and means for him to consolidate presidential

control and direction in the legislature. Furthermore by gaining positions of, initially,

electoral primacy and then electoral dominance, these ‘Kremlin parties’ have effec-

tively blocked the development of parties with a firm basis in the broader electorate.

The collapse of the liberal parties (Yabloko and the Union of Rightist Forces) in the

2003 election was a graphic illustration of this.

Conclusion

Thus Putin has clearly strengthened the position of the presidency compared with

what it was under Yeltsin, and he has done so principally by using the same basic

strategy as his predecessor, the closing-off of independent channels of participation


in the polity. The tighter control that Putin has sought to create clearly is related to the

personal perceptions of the president and those around him. It may be that Yeltsin,

who came up through a system which gave him a sense of a right to power and a con-

fidence in its use, was more willing to allow greater latitude to other forces to exercise

a role in political life than was Putin, who was propelled into the top political job with

no such preparation but whose career in the security service engendered in him a sus-

picion of independent activity. But while such characteristics of the leader may be

influential in shaping the form authoritarianism takes, the dominance of the authori-

tarian paradigm owes much more to the circumstances of the original transition itself,

and in particular the autonomy of political elites from civil society forces. Such forces

were always going to start from a weak position given the Soviet legacy and the

absence in Russia of a vigorous nationalist movement to provide an umbrella under

which other sorts of civil society forces could develop. Successive elites led by

Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin, despite their democratic rhetoric, took advantage of

this weakness both to act independently themselves and to design a system in

which future access was restricted. In this sense, the increasingly authoritarian

nature of Russia under Putin is not a radical departure from earlier development,

but a logical (although not inevitable) continuation of the dynamic stemming from

the collapse of communism and the form it took in Russia.

The weakness of institutional channels between political elite and civil society

more broadly was thus a direct result of the circumstances of the Russian transition

and the scope this gave for political elites to build a system which undercut further

the development of such channels. The political trajectory towards Putin’s authoritar-

ianism was thus set by the course of developments under Gorbachev, but this trajec-

tory was not inevitable. Had Yeltsin and his supporters sought to construct a more

open and inclusive system and thereby encouraged the growth of effective insti-

tutional channels of control between elites and populace, the legacy inherited by

Putin could have been very different. Similarly, had Putin acted in a different

fashion, the outlook today could be very different. Furthermore, as the cases of

Georgia and Ukraine show, an authoritarian trajectory may be derailed through

broad-based popular mobilization, although whether this will result in a stable demo-

cratic outcome depends upon the development of strong institutions that will enable

popular control to continue to be exercised. In this regard, the sustained demon-

strations by pensioner groups in Russia in early 2005, demonstrations which have

clearly caused some worry in the Kremlin, may be the beginning of popular mobiliz-

ation against the regime’s authoritarian trajectory. But the lesson from the democra-

tization literature is clear: such mobilization can only be successful in changing that

trajectory if it spawns an institutional means for expressing the sort of popular control

over the political elite that the Yeltsin and Putin regimes have sought to avoid.

NOTES

1. Some of the terms used to describe the nature of Russia under Putin include ‘managed pluralism’ and‘managed democracy’; respectively, Harley Balzer, ‘Managed Pluralism: Vladimir Putin’s EmergingRegime’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2003), pp. 189–227 and Timothy J. Colton and

74 DEMOCRATIZATION

Michael McFaul, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy. The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003). The essence of both formulations is that someparticipation is allowed, but both the identity of those who can participate and the forms of participationare tightly restricted.

2. For perhaps the earliest example, see Michael McFaul, ‘Russia under Putin: One Step Forward, TwoSteps Backwards’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2000), pp. 19–33.

3. For example, this is implicit in McFaul (note 2), p. 19.4. Although there are differences over what the regime is to be called and the degree to which it is

authoritarian.5. For one such culturalist discussion, see Vladimir Brovkin, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Continuities

of Soviet Political Culture in Contemporary Russia’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 43, No. 2(1996), pp. 21–8.

6. For example, see Alexander Lukin, Political Culture of Russian ‘Democrats’ (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000) and Nicolai N. Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy. An Interpretationof Political Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

7. For example, see Olga Kryshtanovskaia, ‘Liudi Putina’, Vedomosti, 30 June 2003, OlgaKryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, ‘Putin’s Militocracy’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 4(2003), pp. 289–306, Gail W. Lapidus, ‘The War in Chechnya as a Paradigm of Russian State-BuildingUnder Putin’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2004), p. 14 and Pavel K. Baev, ‘The Evolution ofPutin’s Regime: Inner Circles and Outer Walls’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 51, No. 6 (2004),pp. 4–8.

8. For the first major exchange on this issue, see Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, ‘Thinking About Post-communist Transitions: How Different Are They?’, Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 2 (1993), pp. 333–7;Philippe C. Schmitter with Terry Lynn Karl, ‘The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists andConsolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?’, Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 1(1994), pp. 173–85; Valerie Bunce, ‘Should Transitologists Be Grounded?’, Slavic Review, Vol. 43,No. 1 (1995), pp. 111–27; Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe C. Schmitter, ‘From an Iron Curtain to aPaper Curtain: Grounding Transitologists or Students of Postcommunism?’, Slavic Review, Vol. 54,No. 4 (1995), pp. 965–78; and Valerie Bunce, ‘Paper Curtains and Paper Tigers’, Slavic Review,Vol. 54, No. 4 (1995), pp. 979–87. Also see Valerie Bunce, ‘Can We Compare Democratization inthe East Versus the South’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1995), pp. 87–100; Valerie Bunce,‘Regional Differences in Democratization: The East Versus the South’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 14,No. 3 (1998), pp. 187–211; and Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destructionof Socialism and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For a sophisticatedattempt to use a common framework, see Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Tran-sition and Consolidation. Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore,MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

9. For a more expanded discussion, see Graeme Gill, Democracy and Post-Communism. Political changein the post-communist world (London: Routledge, 2002), esp. pp. 11–14, 197–201.

10. For an analysis that highlights the differences between the experiences of different countries, seeBunce, ‘Regional Differences’ (note 8) and her ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization. Lessons fromthe Postcommunist Experience’, World Politics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (2003), pp. 167–92. The propensityof many analysts to focus purely on a single country is one source of the exaggeration of differencesbetween the regions.

11. On pacting see, Terry Lynn Karl, ‘Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America’, ComparativePolitics, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1990), pp. 1–21. For a discussion of the Round Table talks in EasternEurope, see Helga A. Welsh, ‘Political Transition Processes in Central and Eastern Europe’, Compara-tive Politics, Vol. 26, No. 4 (1994), pp. 383–8.

12. Even in Poland, where the head of state was the military chief, the military did not play an active part inthe transition process. This generalization is less true of the former Yugoslavia.

13. On the role of international factors, see Laurence Whitehead (ed.), The International Dimensions ofDemocratization. Europe and the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

14. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OKand London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

15. This tone was set by the path-breaking Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and LaurenceWhitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore, MD: TheJohns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

16. Much of the earlier literature tended to downplay the importance of such contextual factors and exag-gerate the freedom of action of elites. For a sophisticated discussion of such constraints, see Linz and


Stepan (note 8), esp. Part 1. For a critique of this, see Graeme Gill, The Dynamics of Democratization.Elites, Civil Society and the Transition Process (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000), pp. 71–9.

17. Michael McFaul, ‘The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions inthe Postcommunist World’, World Politics, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2002), pp. 212–44; also MichaelMcFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution. Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2001).

18. See Gill, Democracy and Post-Communism (note 9).19. The absence of this checking mechanism is vital. While Gordon Hahn, in his stimulating study of what

he calls ‘revolution from above’ in Russia, recognizes the importance of elite autonomy from civilsociety, he places primary emphasis on the domination of the process of regime change by ‘many ofthe former regime’s governing institutions and personnel’, that is, on the nature of the elites thatdominate the process. His argument is thus consistent with that focused on the siloviki noted above.But in all cases of democratic regime change including those accepted as paradigmatic cases, suchas Spain, many aspects of the process are dominated by those who held official office under the oldregime. Indeed, this is often crucial to the pacting process which Hahn emphasizes – the need to guar-antee security to incumbent elites. More important than elite identity in ensuring a democratic outcomeis control from below. For Hahn’s argument, see Gordon M. Hahn, Russia’s Revolution from Above.Reform, Transition, and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985–2000 (NewBrunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). The quotation is from p. 498. On the importance ofcivil society control, see Gill, Dynamics (note 16).

20. To borrow the terminology of an influential study of early party development, M. Steven Fish,Democracy from Scratch. Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Prin-ceton University Press, 1995).

21. On the ‘informals’, see Spravochnik po neformal’nym obshchestvennym organizatsiiam i presse(Moscow, SMOT Informatsionnoe agenstvo, 1989, Informatsionnyi biulleten’ no. 16) andNeformal’naia Rossiia. O neformal’nykh politizirovannykh dvizheniiakh i gruppakh v RSFSR (opytspravochnika) (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1990).

22. On this burgeoning wave of public discussion and debate, see Judith Devlin, The Rise of the RussianDemocrats. The Causes and Consequences of the Elite Revolution (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995).

23. For a contemporary study of the components of Democratic Russia, see Argumenty i fakty 46, 1990.24. See Michael E. Urban, ‘Boris El’tsin, Democratic Russia and the Campaign for the Russian Presi-

dency’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (1992), pp. 187–207.25. For one discussion of the debate within Democratic Russia over the question of whether to become a

party rather than remain a movement, see Geir Flikke, ‘From External Success to Internal Collapse:The Case of Democratic Russia’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 8 (2004), pp. 1217–27.

26. On the presidency, see John P. Willerton, ‘The Presidency: From Yeltsin to Putin’, in Stephen White,Alex Pravda and Zvi Gitelman (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 5 (Durham, NC: Duke Univer-sity Press, 2001), pp. 21–41; Eugene Huskey, Presidential Power in Russia (Armonk, NY:M. E. Sharpe, 1999); and Thomas M. Nichols, The Russian Presidency. Society and Politics in theSecond Russian Republic (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).

27. This is a particularly important aspect of charisma as seen by its chief interpreter, Max Weber. SeeMax Weber, in Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds), Economy and Society. An Outline ofInterpretive Sociology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), Vol. 1, pp. 241–55,1111–58.

28. See Graeme Gill and Roger D. Markwick, Russia’s Stillborn Democracy? From Gorbachev to Yeltsin(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 4; and Eugene Huskey, ‘The State-Legal Administrationand the Politics of Redundancy’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1995), pp. 115–43.

29. See the comments by Justice Minister Nikolai Federov, Izvestiia, 29 January 1992.30. On ‘the family’ and its influence, see Aleksei Mukhin, Korruptsia i gruppy vlianiie. Kniga 1 (Moscow,

SPIK-Tsentr, 1999), pp. 20–37; A. A. Mukhin and P. A. Kozlov, Semeinye tainy ili neofitsial’nyilobbizm v Rossii (Moscow, Tsentr politicheskoi informatsii, 2003); and V. A. Lisichkin andL. A. Shelepin, Rossiia pod vlast’iu plutokratii (Moscow: Algoritm, 2003). For Korzhakov’s accountof his role, see Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Moscow; Interbuk, 1997).

31. For example, Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin. Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia(New York; Harcourt Inc., 2000), pp. 118–19.

32. Such access was also used by people and groups who gained privileges and favours from the regime,such as the ‘red directors’.

33. A subsequent report claimed that the turn-out was artificially inflated (to legitimize the adoption of theconstitution) and large numbers of votes were misallocated between the parties: Izvestiia, 4 May 1994.

76 DEMOCRATIZATION

34. For Yeltsin’s comments on this, which imply that it was a mistake not to have done so, see BorisYeltsin, The View from the Kremlin (London: Harper Collins, 1994), pp. 126, 127.

35. Unlike the referendum of April 1993 whose questions did not ask whether the populace preferred apresidential or a parliamentary system.

36. For an inside account, see Iu. M. Baturin et al., Epokha El’tsina (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), Parts IIand III.

37. The mayors of Moscow and Leningrad/St Petersburg, Yurii Luzhkov and Anatoly Sobchak, used theiroffices to construct party organizations.

38. Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully (eds), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems inLatin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 32–3.

39. For an early application of this notion to Russia, see Paul Kubicek, ‘Delegative Democracy in Russiaand Ukraine’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1994), pp. 423–41.

40. For the transcript of one such episode, see V. Putin: Razgovor s rossiei, Stenogramma priamogo tele- iradioefira (“Priamaia liniia s Prezidentom Rossii”) 18 dekabria 2003 goda (Moscow: Olma-Press,2003).

41. For details, see John P. Willerton, ‘Uncertainties of the Putin Hegemonic Presidency’, in Geir Fikke(ed.), The Uncertainties of Putin’s Democracy (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs,2004), pp. 25–32.

42. On this party, see Nikolai Petrov, ‘The 2003 Duma Elections and the Unified Russia Phenomenon’,Fikke (note 41), pp. 93–107.

43. ‘Russian Federation Elections to the State Duma, 7 December 2003’, OSCE/ODIHR ElectionObservation Mission Report, Warsaw, 27 January 2004, pp. 15–17.

44. On this, see Peter Rutland, ‘Putin and the Oligarchs’, in Dale Herspring (ed.), Putin’s Russia. PastImperfect, Future Uncertain (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), p. 148.

45. See the discussion in Matthew Hyde, ‘Putin’s Federal Reforms and Their Implications for PresidentialPower in Russia’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 53, No. 5 (2001), pp. 719–43; and Nikolai Petrov andDarrell Slider, ‘Putin and the Regions’, in Herspring (note 44), pp. 203–24.

46. For example, former Primorskii krai governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko became head of the StateFisheries Committee while former St Petersburg governor Vladimir Yakovlev became a deputyprime minister.

47. They were given a symbolic advisory role through the establishment of the Presidential State Council.48. Although this does not mean that it has everything its own way; witness the back-down over harsh

proposed restrictions on demonstrations in April 2004.

Manuscript accepted for publication May 2005

Address for correspondence: Graeme Gill, Government and Public Administration, School of Economicsand Political Science, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]


Documents

A New Turn to Authoritarian Rule in Russia