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

Abstract

This article investigates how hybrid regimes supply governance by examining a series of dilemmas (involving elections, the mass media, and state institutions) that their rulers face. The authors demonstrate how regime responses to these dilemmas – typically efforts to maintain control while avoiding outright repression and societal backlash – have negative outcomes, including a weakening of formal institutions, proliferation of “substitutions” (e.g., substitutes for institutions), and increasing centralization and personalization of control. Efforts by Russian leaders to disengage society from the sphere of decision-making entail a significant risk of systemic breakdown in unexpected ways. More specifically, given significantly weakened institutions for interest representation and negotiated compromise, policy-making in the Russian system often amounts to the leadership's best guess (ad hoc manual policy adjustments) as to precisely what society will accept and what it will not, with a significant possibility of miscalculation. Three case studies of the policy-making process are presented: the 2005 cash-for-benefits reform, plans for the development of the Khimki Forest, and changes leading up to and following major public protests in 2011–2012.

Keywords::

• hybrid regimes
• Russia
• elections
• mass media
• state
• governance
• democracy
• authoritarianism
• cash-for-benefits reform
• Khimki Forest
• public protest
• substitution

Acknowledgments

Hale thanks the Woodrow Wilson Institute's International Center for Scholars' Kennan Institute for supporting him under a Title VIII Research Fellowship during 2009, and all authors are grateful for the feedback of many people, including George Breslauer, James Collins, and participants of discussions organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.

Notes

^1. Works documenting Russia's democratic deficiencies are legion, including Baker and Glasser (2005), Fish (2005), Gessen (2012), Gel'man (2013), Hill and Gaddy (2013), Orttung (2013), and Shevtsova (2013). Mendras (2012) examines what she calls Russia's “state weakness,” but not governance as such. One study that explicitly treats governance in Russia but that is not focused on the impact of regime hybridity politics is Colton and Holmes (2006). Studies that do find correlation between hybrid regimes and important aspects of governance include Goldstone et al. (2010, on state failure) and Kenyon and Naoi (2010, on business confidence).

^2. See also the more elaborate definition in Kaufmann (2004, 8):

The set traditions and formal and informal institutions that determine how authority is exercised in a particular country for the common good, thus encompassing: (1) the process of selecting, monitoring, and replacing governments; (2) the capacity to formulate and implement sound policies and deliver public services; and (3) the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.

^3. A key assumption here, supported by the research cited in the previous paragraph but beyond the scope of this particular paper, is that the rulers perceive that the benefits they derive from regularly holding at least partially contested elections is greater than the value they attach to the distance between policy Z and policy X, factoring in the risk they perceive that even fully dictatorial leaders can be overthrown.

^4. We use this as a shorthand to refer to central state authorities and their networks of collaborators.

^5. For overviews of world practice, see Hale (2011a) and Schedler (2006).

^6. The Russian term he invented was reitingokratiya (Shmelev 2007, 55).

^7. Striking evidence of the link between economic growth and presidential popularity in Russia during this same period appears in Treisman (2011).

^8. As of 2008, only 15% thought that corruption had decreased during Putin's first two terms in office, with 40% reporting no change and 38% saying it had increased (Russian Election Studies 2008).

^9. One classic example comes from economist Sen (1999), who argues that no famine has ever occurred in a democracy, even though many democracies have been extremely poor.

^10. Huntington (1991) calls such occurrences “stunning elections” and argues they are not uncommon.

^11. According to the Russian Election Studies (2008, 2012) surveys, television was the primary source of political information for 89% in spring 2008 and 83% in spring 2012.

^12. Sidorenko (2010) reports about one-third of the population used the Internet as of 2010, a share that had expanded to over half of the population in 2012 (Russian Election Studies 2012).

^13. Adjacent programing is considered a strong influence on the choice of news programing to watch in the USA as well.

^14. The percentages do not total to 100 because people can watch more than one news program, especially because the channels typically broadcast their main news programs at different times.

^15. For example, Russia lacks a law on lobbying.

^16. For an interesting examination of why some challenges to authoritarian rulers are electoral, whereas others resort to street protests, see Koesel and Bunce (2012).

^17. Seven prior to the 2010 creation of the North Caucasus Federal District.

^18. Konitzer (2005) shows that even the highly corrupt gubernatorial elections of the 1990s and early 2000s produced a significant modicum of accountability for governors before their constituents.

^19. A Levada Center poll (RFE/RL Newsline, January 27, 2005) found that 41% blamed the federal government, 31% singled out Putin, and 22% named the Duma.

^20. For further details on the origins of this case, see Lipman and Petrov (2010).

^21. On the complexities of this incident, see Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 11, 2010.

^22. Surkov went from the presidential administration to a position in government as deputy prime minister in charge of the apparatus, ultimately leaving this post in the spring of 2013.

^23. In 2013, regions were allowed to opt out of direct elections, but the Kremlin indicated that this was mainly for the North Caucasus, and most other regions appeared at the time of this writing to be planning on direct elections.