Democratization in Russia and the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

In principle, new democracies should be at greater risk from economic crisis than established ones. And without a popular reservoir of good will for democracy, and in the absence of an electorate that has had extended experience of distinguishing between the government and the political system as a whole, they are at particular risk. The impact of the 2008–9 global financial crisis in post-communist Russia suggests that this may not apply universally. In fact, public support for democratic values has been relatively unaffected by the crisis, in spite of its direct effects on the lives of many ordinary Russians. This may be explained by a history of economic crises and a tradition of ‘getting by’ when such crises erupt; a greater popular preoccupation with who holds public office than with how effectively they govern; and the lack of a competitive party system, including an effective opposition.

Notes

See for example W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961).

Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, José Antonio Cheibub and Fernando Limogni, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

For a review see M. Steven Fish and Jason Wittenberg, ‘Failed Democratization’, in Christian Haerpfer, Patrick Bernhagen and Ronald F. Inglehart (eds.), Democratization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

For a review, see Stephen White, Understanding Russian Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp.321–3.

See, for example, Linda J. Cook, The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed: Welfare Policy and Workers' Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Assessments of this kind remain controversial; for some representative views see, for example, Anders Åslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1995), and the more critical judgements of Lawrence R. Klein and Marshall Pomer (eds.), The New Russia: Transition Goes Awry (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2002), and Marshall I. Goldman, The Piratization of Russia: Russian Reform Goes Awry (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). Simon Pirani, Change in Putin's Russia: Power, Money and People (London: Pluto Press, 2010), is also sceptical.

R.Kh. Simonyan, Bez gneva i pristrastiya. Ekonomicheskie reformy 1990-kh godov i ikh posledstviya dlya Rossii [Without anger and passion: Economic reforms of the 1990s and their consequences for Russia] (Moscow: Ekonomika, 2010), p.184.

See Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, ‘Is Money the Measure of Welfare in Russia?’, Review of Income and Wealth, Vol.42, No.1 (1996), pp.75–90.

US currency was used extensively (and often illegally) during the 1990s in order to mitigate the effects of hyperinflation.

See respectively Izvestiya, 4 Nov. 1997, p.1 (toilet paper); Argumenty i fakty, 1996, No.47, p.1 (brassieres); Guardian, 23 Sept. 1998, p.15 (vodka).

Izvestiya, 2 Aug. 1996, p.2.

White, Understanding Russian Politics, p.142.

Pravda, 4 July 1991, p.3.

The highest levels were in Dagestan (20 per cent), Ingushetia (47 per cent) and Chechnya (53 per cent): ‘Rossiiskii statisticheskii yezhegodnik 2008: Statisticheskii sbornik’ [Russian statistical annual 2008: Statistical collection] (Moscow: Rosstat, 2008), p.134.

Available at <http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat/rosstatsite/main/account/#>, accessed 20 May 2011.

See Stephen Fortescue, ‘Putin in Pikalevo: PR or Watershed?’, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, Vol.23, Nos.1–2 (2009), pp.19–38 and B.I. Maksimov, ‘Yavlenie Rossii v Pikalevo’ [Russia's happening in Pikalevo], Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 2010, No.4, pp.42–53.

Rossiiskii statisticheskii yezhegodnik 2008, pp.169, 177 (pensioners).

The most influential formulation of this approach remains that of James C. Davies, who argued that revolutions were most likely to occur when a population expected living standards to continue to improve but they suffered a sharp reverse: see his ‘Towards a Theory of Revolution’, American Sociological Review, Vol.27, No.1 (1962), pp.5–19.

For reviews, see Michael Lewis-Beck and Mary Stegmaier, ‘Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol.3 (2000), pp.183–219, and the same authors' ‘Economic Models of Voting’, in Russell J. Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Raymond Duch and Randolph T. Stevenson, The Economic Vote: How Political and Economic Institutions Condition Election Results (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981).

The locus classicus is Donald R. Kinder and D. Roderick Kiewiet, ‘Sociotropic Politics: The American Case’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.11, No.2 (1981), pp.129–61.

Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Economics and Elections (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1988).

Stephen White and Ian McAllister, ‘The Putin Phenomenon’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.24, No.4 (2008), pp.604–28.

Levada Centre, 18–21 March 2011, available at <http://www.russiavotes.org/national_issues/national_issues_economics.php?S776173303132=41ed5bddf5ee003a81f3d716f46c0 aa5>, accessed 20 May 2011.

‘Sostoyanie i perspektivy rossiiskoi ekonomiki’ [The condition and prospects of the Russian economy], 9 April 2010, available at <http://www.levada.ru/press/2010040900.html>, accessed 11 April 2010.

‘Krizisnye ozhidaniya rossiyan’ [Russians' crisis expectations], 2 March 2010, available at <http://levada.ru/press/2010030202.html>, accessed 13 March 2010.

Levada Centre figures as reported in <http://www.russiavotes.org/national_issues/financialcrisis_trends.php>, accessed 20 May 2011.

‘Sostoyanie i perspektivy rossiiskoi ekonomiki’, 9 April 2010.

Ibid.

This was a considerable change from 1998, when the largest numbers (56 per cent) had blamed the ‘unsuccessful economic policy of the previous government headed by V. Chernomyrdin’; in 2009 the main cause was thought to be the ‘international financial crisis’ – 46 per cent took this view: M.K. Gorshkov, R. Krumm and N.Ye. Tikhonova (eds.), Rossiiskaya povsednevnost' v usloviyakh krizisa [Russian everyday life in crisis conditions] (Moscow: Al'fa-M, 2009), p.198.

See for example, Nikolai Starikov, Krizis: kak eto delaetsya [The crisis: how it is working out] (St. Petersburg: Lider, 2010). During the 1998 crisis, 27 per cent blamed the ‘subversive policies of the West’; in 2009, 24 per cent did so, about as many as blamed the previous or the incumbent Russian government: Gorshkov et al. (eds.), Rossiiskaya povsednevnost ', p.198.

For a representative selection of views see for instance James L. Gibson, ‘A Mile Wide But an Inch Deep(?): The Structure of Democratic Commitments in the Former USSR’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol.40, No.2 (1996), pp.396–420; Richard Ahl, Harry Eckstein and Philip G. Roeder, Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? Explorations in State–Society Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); M. Steven Fish, Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ellen Carnaghan, Out of Order: Russian Political Values in an Imperfect World (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).

White, Understanding Russian Politics, pp.355–62.

See Daniel Treisman, ‘Presidential Popularity in a Hybrid Regime: Russia under Yeltsin and Putin’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol.55, No.3 (July 2011), pp.590–619.

See available at <http://www.russiavotes.org/president/presidency_performance_trends.php#190>, accessed 20 May 2011.

See Richard Rose and William Mishler, ‘The Impact of Macro-economic Shock on Regime Support in Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol.26, No.1 (2010), pp.38–57.

See, for example, A. Navoi, ‘Rossiiskie krizisy obraztsa 1998 i 2008 godov: naidi 10 otlichii’ [Russian crises of the forms of 1998 and 2008: find ten differences], Voprosy ekonomiki, 2009, No.2, pp. 24–38. This was clearly a good moment to translate Charles Kindleberger's history of world financial crises: Ch. Kindleberger and R. Aliber, Mirovye finansovye krizisy: Manii,paniki i krakhi [World financial crises: manias, panics and crashes] (St. Petersburg: Piter, 2010).

Rose and Mishler, ‘The Impact’, p.48.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Mcallister

Ian McAllister is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University in Canberra. His most recent book is The Australian Voter: Fifty Years of Change (2011).

Stephen White

Stephen White is James Bryce Professor of Politics at the University of Glasgow, and holds concurrent positions at the Johns Hopkins Bologna Center and the Institute of Applied Politics in Moscow. His most recent book is Understanding Russian Politics (2011).