Running to stand still: aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

ABSTRACT

The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of ‘mundane’ policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts – involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy – in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality – usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure – creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of “aggressive immobility” – the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state – has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• politics
• public policy
• informality
• institutionalization

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the input of numerous colleagues and readers, whose critiques and insight have been invaluable to the improvement of this article. They include Gregory Asmolov, Marc Berenson, Vladimir Gel’man, Maria Lipman, Graeme Robertson, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Katerina Tertytchnaya, Joshua Tucker, and Adnan Vatansever. Needless to say, the remaining faults in the text are exclusively of my own creation.

Notes

1. Here, see also Chwe (2001): throughout human history, observing how other people observe – watching people watch other people – has been at the core of the rituals through which domination is construed.

2. The use of the term “confusion” is deliberate, following Kurzman (2004):

To the extent that the rules of the game stay relatively constant, we expect the unexpected. But when we sense that the rules of the game are suddenly changed, and we no longer know what to expect, that is confusion. To attempt a more formal definition, confusion is the recognition of deinstitutionalization.

3. For a full timeline, see: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%95%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D1%8D%D0%BA%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD.

4. Acronym that refers to an analysis undertaken by an organization and individual to determine internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats.

5. For some early indications in this direction, concerning the limits to muddling through, see Tertytchnaya and Lankina (2016).

6. For some ideas in comparative perspective, see Berenson (2018).