Overmanaged Democracy in Russia: The Ruling Tandem and the Economic Crisis

Nikolay Petrov, Henry Hale, James F. Collins September 30, 2009 Washington, D.C.

Summary

The current political system in Russia is a hybrid of democracy and authoritarianism, or an “overmanaged democracy,” where the elements of authoritarianism dominate democratic ones. The system seems stable on the surface, but is in fact very fragile.

Related Topics

Society and Regions

Economic Crisis

The current political system that has emerged in Russia under Putin is best characterized by the political model of “overmanaged democracy,” a hybrid of democracy and authoritarianism. Nikolai Petrov from the Carnegie Moscow Center and Henry Hale from the George Washington University spoke about the sustainability of overmanaged democracy as a form of governance in Russia. Petrov explained that, although this method of governance provides stability in the short- and medium-term, given the major challenges looming in the economic, social, and regional spheres, overmanaged democracy cannot provide long-term stability for Russia. Its dependence on the charismatic authority of a single popular leader and its vulnerability to shocks and succession crises could lead to a regime breakdown.

Russia is not a democratic nation, Petrov and Hale asserted, yet ruling authorities still cling to the trappings of democracy. The appearance of democracy provides benefits for authoritarian leaders, such as:

Generation of information helps the state identify society’s preferences and potential upcoming problems.
A system that allows citizens to provide feedback to their government, which makes the government more efficient.
Institutional mechanisms for reconciling various and conflicting opinions and interests.
Elections that enable a regime appear legitimate, help identify promising new leaders and assist the state in becoming more effective.
Truly independent media, which exist but are marginalized in a way that manipulates media market forces and takes advantage of inertia in media consumers’ habits. The fact that such media operate relatively independently lessens the feeling in society that freedom of expression is actually being repressed, thereby reducing incentives for those who value such freedom to rebel.

The authoritarian elements of overmanaged democracy dominate the democratic ones. And one of the chief features of this system is the creation of parallel structures of management–“substitutions” for weakened democratic institutions, including 13 councils and 8 commissions–all controlled by the executive branch. These entities serve real purposes for the regime by compensating for the functions that democracy usually reserves for the state and its leaders, but that these substitutions keep under the control of the executive authorities.

Professor Henry Hale noted that “the current stability of the system that we see tends to hinge entirely on leadership popularity and the actual capacity, the talent, of the leadership in actually exercising this manual control of the system in a competent way. And it becomes very vulnerable to succession crises, which become more acute to the extent that leaders are unpopular or incompetence. So far, the Kremlin has managed to do this, but one of our conclusions is that the system looks stable on the surface, but it is actually fairly fragile.”

About the Carnegie Speakers

Nikolay Petrov

Scholar-in-Residence
Society and Regions Program
Moscow Center

Nikolay Petrov was the chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Society and Regions Program. Until 2006, he also worked at the Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he started to work in 1982.

James F. Collins

Director, Russia and Eurasia Program;
Diplomat in Residence

Ambassador Collins was the U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation from 1997 to 2001 and is an expert on the former Soviet Union, its successor states, and the Middle East.

Source: carnegie.ru/2009/09/30/overmanaged-democracy-in-russia-ruling-tandem-and-economic-crisis/arx4