Authoritarian Modernization in Russia

Ideas, Institutions, and Policies

Vladimir Gel'man

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317177067
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Post-Communist Russia is an instance of the phenomenon of authoritarian modernization project, which is perceived as a set of policies intended to achieve a high level of economic development, while political freedoms remain beyond the current modernization agenda or are postponed to a distant future. Why did Russia (unlike many countries of post-Communist Europe) pursue authoritarian modernization after the Soviet collapse? What is the ideational agenda behind this project and why does it dominate Russia's post-Communist political landscape? What are the mechanisms of political governance, which maintain this project and how have they adopted and absorbed various democratic institutions and practices? Why has this project brought such diverse results in various policy arenas, and why have the consequences of certain policies become so controversial? Why, despite so many controversies, shortcomings and flaws, has this project remained attractive in the eyes of a large proportion of the Russian elite and ordinary citizens? This volume intended to place some of these questions on the research agenda and propose several answers, encouraging further discussions about the logic and mechanisms of the authoritarian modernization project in post-Communist Russia and its effects on Russia's politics, economy, and society.

1 Introduction

Why not authoritarian modernization in Russia?

Vladimir Gel’man

The authoritarian modernization project is tempting in many ways in various political and social settings. This project tends to be perceived in the narrow sense, as a set of technical policy measures intended to achieve a high level of socio-economic development through rapid economic growth, while the broad aspects of political modernization (e.g. political freedoms) either remain beyond the current modernization agenda or are postponed to a distant future. It has been fuelled by recent economic advancements in East Asia (especially in China) and endorsed by a number of experts, policymakers, and citizens across the globe. The temptation to improve policy performance with a “free hand”, without the constraints and defects inherent in many liberal democracies, is amplified by the fact that authoritarianism allows the government to be insulated from the impact of political parties and public preferences; thus, it is able to successfully implement those unpopular policies which are so often blocked under democratic regimes.

Post-Communist Russia may be regarded as one instance of this phenomenon; not only are the ideas and policies of authoritarian modernization deeply rooted in Russia’s Soviet and imperial past, but its current agenda also fits certain interests and expectations of both Russia’s elites and society at large. Numerous scholars and experts have discussed the complex process of the post-Communist transformation of Russia, which included simultaneous political regime changes, economic reforms, and state-and nation-building (Offe, 1991), through the lenses of analyses of various dimensions of its modernization (Åslund, 2007; Treisman, 2011; Gaddy and Ickes, 2013; Ledeneva, 2013; Gel’man, 2015a; Hale, 2015). However, most of these studies tend to treat Russia’s political and socio-economic trajectories separately, and pay less attention to their interconnections and contradictions.

Meanwhile, the major paradox of authoritarian modernization is that “success stories” of its policies are quite rare. In the second part of the twentieth century, autocracies demonstrated far more diverse growth rates and developmental trajectories than democracies (Przeworski et al., 2000). As Dani Rodrik pointed out, “For every Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore, there are many like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo” (Rodrik, 2010); the few examples of building effective states and prosperous economies in autocracies are juxtaposed with numerous cases of dictators driving their countries into decay and deterioration. From this perspective, post-Communist Russia is neither Singapore nor Congo; rather, its political and economic trajectories resemble the swings of a pendulum. In terms of political regime, after the major opening and liberalization under Gorbachev in the 1990s, and especially in the 2000s, the government quickly deteriorated into a personalist electoral authoritarian regime (Levitsky and Way, 2010; Gel’man, 2015a; Hale, 2015). In terms of socio-economic development, after the deep and protracted transformation recession of the 1990s, Russia demonstrated impressive growth in the 2000s which resulted not only from the steep rise of global oil prices but also from policy changes launched by the government (Åslund, 2007; Alexeev and Weber, 2013; Gaddy and Ickes, 2013). In terms of state-building, Russia avoided the threat of disintegration in the 1990s and strengthened its coercive capacity in the 2000s, yet remained an inefficient state with a poor quality of governance, which was heavily criticized by observers (Mendras, 2011; Ledeneva, 2013; Gel’man, 2015b). While some authors have argued that these tendencies are natural for a country with the highly problematic legacy of Communism (Beissinger and Kotkin, 2014) and low linkages with the West, but expressed hopes that they may be overcome over time through some decades of growth and development with the preservation of the political status quo (Treisman, 2011; Hale, 2015), others viewed such hopes and possibilities with great scepticism (Gel’man, 2015b). Post-2014, ever since Russia annexed Crimea and launched a major conflict with the West, its geopolitical ambitions, rising economic problems, and questioning if not complete denial of the policy goals of economic growth, development and international integration have provided a context in which the very agenda of authoritarian modernization in Russia seems to be facing a major challenge.

Indeed, why did Russia (unlike many countries of post-Communist Europe ranging from Estonia to Bulgaria) pursue authoritarian modernization after the Soviet collapse? What is the ideational agenda behind this project and why does it dominate Russia’s post-Communist political landscape? What are the mechanisms of political governance which maintain this project and how have they adopted and absorbed various democratic institutions and practices? Why has this project brought such diverse results in various policy arenas, and why have the consequences of certain policies become controversial in one way or another? Finally, why, despite so many controversies, shortcomings, and flaws, has this project remained attractive in the eyes of a large proportion of the Russian elite and ordinary citizens? Comprehensive analysis of many aspects of authoritarian modernization in Russia would require systematic, collective research efforts by the international and interdisciplinary scholarly and expert community. This volume is intended to place some of these questions on the research agenda and propose several tentative answers, thus encouraging further discussions among specialists and experts about the logic and mechanisms of the authoritarian modernization project in post-Communist Russia and its effects on Russia’s politics, economy, and society.

The discreet charm of authoritarian modernization

The concept of modernization (like any major concept in the social sciences) has its own distinct history. After the boom of modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s (Black, 1966; Huntington, 1968), near-universal critique in the 1970s and 1980s led the very term to be used with a big question mark, although more recently modernization discourse has been revived with regard to analysis of the influence of social, economic, political, and cultural changes on the developmental trajectories of states and nations in comparative and historical perspectives (Przeworski et al., 2000; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; North et al., 2009; Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012). This is why in present-day jargon, “modernization” is merely associated with progress and development in various directions (be it human capital, economic prosperity, or political freedoms), as well as with certain policies in various areas which aim towards such progress in one way or another (these policies are often labelled “reforms”). Scholars of different disciplines attempt to discover the causal mechanisms of developmental progress and regress in various countries and the prevalence of “inclusive” economic and/or political institutions (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012) and to understand the logic of why some of them, over time, tend to move towards an “open access order” (North et al., 2009) while others do not.

One of the most contentious issues of modernization, which often arises in discussions, is related to the impact of political regimes and regime changes on modernization – the question of to what extent the success or failure of modernization depends upon democracy and/or authoritarianism. Can socio-economic development be successfully pursued simultaneously with political democratization (“broad”, or democratic modernization) or should economic growth and development precede political opening (“narrow”, or authoritarian modernization)? Discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of both models of modernization dating back to the 1960s (Huntington, 1968) which reemerged within the context of post-Communist changes (Offe, 1991), and the project of “narrow” authoritarian modernization driven by proponents of the Chinese post-Mao developmental trajectory (Polterovich and Popov, 2007; Popov, 2014), are worth scholarly attention in light of developments in theory and of new empirical evidence. From this viewpoint, contemporary Russia may be regarded as a sort of “laboratory” of authoritarian modernization, with its dilemmas, challenges, and constraints. Since the failure of Gorbachev’s reforms, when political opening and inconsistent economic half-measures contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s rulers have tended to limit or deny political freedoms and prioritize economic development in their agenda. While these developments have brought mixed and controversial results, the question of the impact of various factors on the implementation of the authoritarian modernization project remains open, and a reexamination of the post-Communist Russian experience with an emphasis on its ideas, institutions, and policies might shed some light on these issues.

The major arguments for the authoritarian modernization project – in Russia and elsewhere – are both ideational and pragmatic (these lines are complementary rather than diametrically opposed). In terms of ideas, the authoritarian modernization project is based upon normative criticism of the political and social empowerment of citizens in modernizing countries as a source of major instability, conflict, and disorder (Huntington, 1968). A sequence which assumes the gradual construction of a strong and efficient state and long-term economic growth and development, as well as potential postponement of democratization for many decades, is considered a desirable alternative – it may not be “the best of both worlds”, but it at least avoids their worst combinations. In pragmatic terms of conducting policy reforms, an authoritarian modernization is preferred over a democratic one necessarily because the process of democratization creates a risky environment for building efficient states and markets. Competitive elections provoke “political business cycles” which contribute to populist policies; the separation of powers allows veto players to block major decisions and/or dilute their essence; multiparty coalition politics result in adopting compromise policies; the political representation of interest groups stimulates the domination of distributional coalitions that are engaged in rent-seeking and aimed at state capture; and so forth (Gel’man and Starodubtsev, 2016). These pitfalls are so widespread that they result in hope for reform-minded leaders, supported by teams of well-qualified experts, who are capable of modernizing their respective countries without the fear of losing power and/or being trapped by populists and rent-seekers. Again, within the framework of this argument, democratization is considered at best a distant side effect of step-by-step construction of efficient institutions that provide stable long-term economic growth. Given the fact that the average economic growth in democratic and nondemocratic regimes in the second half of the twentieth century was nearly the same (Przeworski et al., 2000), it is no wonder that some experts perceive the authoritarian modernization project as a plausible recipe for a number of countries, including post-Communist ones (Popov, 2014).

Why is the evidence for the recipe of authoritarian modernization so mixed, to put it mildly? In practice, the experience of various states and societies is different in terms of their initial conditions and their international and historical environment. Not many countries combine the advantages of relative economic and technological underdevelopment and strong potential for catching up to advanced states and societies (Gerschenkron, 1962; Black, 1966) with an “embedded autonomy” (Evans, 1995) and a “Weberian” quality of state bureaucracy (Evans and Rauch, 1999) as well as with a relatively high level of human development. This combination cannot emerge spontaneously on its own or be built by design (at least) in the short term. On a related note, few of these countries are able to effectively conduct export-oriented policies while maintaining deep international engagement and enjoying a favourable global economic and political climate.

Also, one should take into account the effects of variety in forms of authoritarianism, given their differences in longevity and performance. While among “hegemonic” autocracies, monarchies and one-party states are better suited to conducting long-term developmental policies, personalist regimes are rarely successful in this respect (Geddes, 2003; Magaloni, 2008). As for electoral authoritarian regimes, which hold meaningful but unfair elections, they combine the worst features of both democracies and autocracies in terms of modernization policies. They suffer from the same defects as democratized polities: political business cycles and distributional coalitions of rent-seekers do not disappear. But they also rely heavily on such mechanisms as a politicized state-controlled economy and the patronage and buying of loyalty of the elites and the masses alike. In addition, these regimes are faced with the risk of leadership change as their central challenge (Geddes, 2003; Hale, 2015). Since such a regime’s survival depends on mass support to a greater degree than both hegemonic autocracies and democracies, large-scale modernization (even in a “narrow” format) is a risky project for electoral authoritarian regimes and their leaders, who tend to avoid long-term developmental goals (Gel’man and Starodubtsev, 2016).

Finally, the ideational considerations of political leaders and their perceptions about the past, present, and future of their respective countries greatly influence their policy agendas in terms of priorities, directions, and choices. Even those leaders who seek authoritarian modernization may opt for different role models and pursue different strategies. And even the good intentions of policy reforms do not always lead to success, given the fact that determining policy directions is not only a technocratic matter of expertise and advice but also a political matter of the balance of interests and incentives among the powerful members of “winning coalitions”, which are built and maintained around rulers. The hidden but stiff competition among various segments of elites often explains why policy reforms may be sacrificed for the sake of the regime’s stability, that is, in order to prevent possible elite breakdown (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Svolik, 2012).

Despite the considerable importance of in-depth analysis of the advantages and pitfalls of the authoritarian modernization project in Russia, in recent years it has rarely been discussed from a comparative perspective, and then mostly with regard to the argument for developmental “sequencing” – first state-building and the rule of law, then democratization (Polterovich and Popov, 2007). While this approach has come under major criticism (Carothers, 2007; Rodrik, 2010), it remains attractive to experts and policymakers, especially in nondemocratic states. To what extent might the recipe of authoritarian modernization be suitable for various states and nations? Is it relevant only in specific circumstances (such as in East Asia in the second half of the twentieth century) or could it be proposed as a more or less universal solution? And will the authoritarian modernization project reduce or increase the risk of falling into the “modernization trap” (Ledeneva, 2013) for those countries which have failed to establish efficient states and the rule of law? Answering these questions through the lens of analysis of the post-Soviet experience of authoritarian modernization in Russia may add some new arguments to this discussion. Yet said experience remains underexplored and, in particular, undertheorized. Although some analyses were recently conducted in the form of case studies (Gel’man, 2014; Kinossian and Morgan, 2014) and/or paired comparisons of present-day Russia with China (Lo and Shevtsova, 2012) or South Korea (Zhuravskaya and Guriev, 2010), the time is now ripe to reconsider the role of the authoritarian modernization project in Russia’s political and economic changes during the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, with an emphasis on the major ideas, institutions, and policies that contributed to this project and its implementation. Discussing these issues is essential not only to understand the logic and peculiarities of post-Communist changes in Russia, but also to place Russia’s trajectories on the global map of varieties of modernization from contemporary and historical comparative perspectives.

The Russian experience of authoritarian modernization, both historical and contemporary, is controversial. On the one hand, Russia was and still is in the second tier of countries in terms of socio-economic and human development (well above the global average level, though), and numerous attempts at modernization in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries were essentially intended to catch up to advanced states and societies. Nevertheless, the poor quality of the state and especially of its bureaucracy, which operates within the framework of neopatrimonial governance, has remained the weakest link in Russian modernization over decades and centuries (Pipes, 1974), and post-Soviet changes did not significantly improve the situation in this area. Apart from the influence of Russia’s imperial past, numerous experts have devoted many pages to discussion of the negative effects of Communist legacies on contemporary developments (Beissinger and Kotkin, 2014), suggesting that the initial conditions of post-Soviet modernization in Russia were not at all promising. On the other hand, the semi-peripheral position of Russia in the global economy and the exceptionally large role of the natural resource sectors in its development, alongside the difficult consequences of Soviet strategic planning, contributed to major “bear traps” for post-Soviet modernization (Gaddy and Ickes, 2013). Certainly, the relative isolation of Russia from the outside world in terms of both linkages and leverages (Levitsky and Way, 2010) and the juxtaposition of Russia to the West in terms of international politics – both during the Cold War and after the annexation of Crimea – were hardly productive for modernization.

As to the regime dimension, two attempts to modernize Russia – after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917 and after the collapse of Communism in 1991 – both failed. The former resulted in civil war, and the latter coincided with the breakdown of the Soviet state. In both cases, these failures paved the way for authoritarian regimes to emerge from the ruins of unfulfilled democratic promises. At the same time, Soviet authoritarian modernization under Stalin caused a huge number of victims and a heavy loss of human potential, while its economic achievements were questionable (Gregory, 2004; Cheremukhin et al., 2013). The post-Stalin rejection of repressions as the major tool of governance in the country brought rather uneven consequences for Soviet socio-economic development, and over time th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: why not authoritarian modernization in Russia?
• 2 Fathers versus sons: generation changes and the ideational agenda of reforms in late-twentieth-century Russia
• 3 The dilemma of the perception of the strong state in Russia and the demand for modernization
• 4 Framing modernization in Russian newspapers: words, not deeds
• 5 Authoritarianism and institutional decay in Russia: disruption of property rights and the rule of law
• 6 The Russian People’s Front and hybrid governance dilemma
• 7 Social network sites and political governance in Russia
• 8 Russia’s post-neoliberal development strategy and high-technology considerations
• 9 How does the government implement unpopular reforms? evidence from education policy in Russia
• 10 Choosing between bureaucracy and the reformers: the Russian pension reform of 2001 as a compromise squared
• 11 Labor reform in Putin’s Russia: could modernization be democratic?
• Index