Is Vladimir Putin a strong leader?

ABSTRACT

A strong leader – i.e. an individual who concentrates great power in his hands and uses it to solve the country’s problems – is often considered a good thing in contemporary politics. Vladimir Putin has always presented himself as precisely this kind of leader. This article considers whether Putin actually is a strong leader who has used his powers to do great things for Russia. The analysis begins by considering whether Putin is a strong leader in terms of the powers that he holds. It then assesses whether Putin has used these powers to solve Russia’s problems in terms of economic development, order, and national standing. Russia here is compared to the other states of the Former Soviet Union, as they all share a common Soviet heritage and have been subject to comparable structural forces. The study utilizes the data (arguably underused in the field) provided by institutions such as the World Bank to examine a large number of socio-economic factors. If Putin really is a strong leader who has transformed Russia, we would expect performance in Russia to be better than in these other countries. The article finds that Russia’s record is average at best and that Putin is an unexceptional leader.

KEYWORDS:

• Vladimir Putin
• strong leader
• presidential performance
• Former Soviet Union
• socio-economic development

Notes

1. For an overview of this trend see Brown (2018, ix–xxiv).

2. Perhaps the classic statement of this was Gevorkian, Timakova, and Kolesnikov (2000).

3. Prominent studies focusing specifically on Putin’s image are Goscilo (2013) and Sperling (2015). Image has also been a feature of the (voluminous) general literature on Putin.

4. Such stunts have been less frequent of late.

5. In Russian the line was “Est’ Putin – est’ Rossiya, net Putina – net Rossii” (Galochka 2014).

6. Searches of the websites of the major Russian polling agencies (FOM, Levada, VTsIOM) returned no positive results.

7. For an argument, however, that authoritarianism is the sine qua non of Putin’s approval rating, see Wilson and Lee (2018).

8. For a discussion of the Constitution by a group of Russian jurists, see Karpovich (2002).

9. Formally, the Russian political system is semi-presidential, but in practice this is largely irrelevant (Fish 2005, 203–204).

10. Gubernatorial elections were reintroduced in 2012, but are tightly controlled. Regime loyalists usually win and even when they do not, the governors remain subordinate to the center (Golosov 2012; Moses 2014).

11. The regular reports on Putin’s “politburo” issued by Minchenko Consulting are probably the most systematic attempt to map the contours of this inner circle (available at http://www.minchenko.ru/analitika/).

12. The protests of 2011–2012 are no more than a partial exception.

13. The amended text of Article 81.3 of the Constitution states that an individual cannot serve as president for more than two terms. (Previously this article had stated that an individual could not serve as president for more than two consecutive terms.) An additional amendment, however, (Article 81.3.1) states that the limit of two terms does not count terms already served by an individual, at the moment that these amendments come into force. This effectively “annuls” the terms already served by Putin (and Medvedev, although in his case it is unlikely to have any practical relevance Konstitutsiya 2020).

14. The amendments also prevent anyone in the future from being president for as long as Putin.

15. See, for example, Gill (2015, 158–159).

16. The data used, in all cases, are the most recent available at the time of writing.

17. Studies that do use such data to make comparisons include Taylor (2011, 2018) and Tiffen (2012).

18. The percentage of Russians living in poverty according to the Russian government’s own (higher) measure fell from 29% in 2000 to 13.2% in 2017 (World Bank Open Data).

19. Indeed, inflation was in double figures for most of Putin’s tenure and was at 15% as recently as 2015 (World Bank Open Data).

20. Made, at times, in the face of considerable political opposition (Miller 2018, 70–73).

21. The salience of these variables varies over time.

22. For arguments that Russia’s poor performance is in fact because of Putin and the neopatrimonial system over which he presides, see, inter alia, Gel’man (2016), Ledeneva (2013), Miller (2018), Robinson (2017), Taylor (2011, 2018), and White (2018).

23. Indeed, for Feklyunina (2019, 166), “Putin is unquestionably the sole decision-maker in matters of foreign policy.”

24. When Russians are asked what the features of a great power are or what Putin’s achievements are in these areas, they cite economic development as well as defense and foreign policy (Willerton 2016, 2017; Taylor 2018, 140–141). Russia’s economic development has already been analyzed and will not be discussed here.

25. The figures are in current US dollars (World Bank Open Data).

26. Indeed, nearly all of these countries recorded increases that were greater, proportionally, that that found in Russia. (Belarus and Ukraine are the only exceptions.)

27. Indeed, four states (Belarus, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova) posted large increases in real terms while reducing spending as a percentage of GDP.

28. Renz (2018, 80) notes that while Russia’s air force performed better in Syria than in Georgia in 2008, its technological level “now matches at best” that of the US Air Force during the 1991 Gulf War.

29. Moscow appeared, at the time of writing, to be attempting something similar – on a lesser scale – in Venezuela, by offering support to the embattled president of that country, Nicolas Maduro.

30. For a list of all Russia-related sanctions up to September 2018, see Gutterman and Grojec (2018).

31. This, according to Sherlock (2019) is increasingly the view of the Russian public.

32. An alternative interpretation is that all of these states had strong or great leaders in the period 2000–2018. This, of course, is entirely unconvincing.

33. The sensible decisions taken regarding financial and monetary stabilization, as discussed earlier, are perhaps a notable exception.

34. This raises the question as to why so many Russians deem Putin a strong leader when the evidence suggests the opposite. It is beyond the scope of this article to answer this fully, but the literature concerning Putin’s popularity provides some guidance. It seems clear that Putin’s reputation rests, in part, on the absolute improvements that have occurred in the spheres of the economy, order, and national standing since the 1990s (Lukin 2009). There is also no doubt, however, that Putin has benefitted from an authoritarian system that has constructed a personality cult around his leadership (Wilson and Lee 2018) and turned support for him into a social norm (Greene and Robertson 2019). Indeed, the influence of the authoritarian system must be decisive, given (as this article has shown) that the image of Putin as a strong leader is essentially a triumph of perception over reality.