Are post-Soviet leaders doomed to be populist? A comparative analysis of Putin and Nazarbayev

ABSTRACT

The use of populist ideology can be an important element of the survival strategy for authoritarian leaders being an important tool for regime stabilization. The incentives for using populist ideology are shaping in response to a current combination of a threat to incumbent’s rule. As the examples of Putin and Nazarbayev, ruling in neighbouring authoritarian Russia and Kazakhstan, demonstrate, the intensity and scope with which the leader resorts to the use of populism, as well as concrete content of this ideology, can fundamentally differ.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• authoritarian regime
• incumbent
• Russia
• Kazakhstan

Notes

1 The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg in 2018.

2 These were mass protests in Russian large cities after the electoral cycle of 2011–2012.

3 Geddes labels regime personalist when one individual wins initial struggle for power, successfully continuing to draw support from the organization that brought him to power but limiting his supporters’ influence on policy and personnel decisions (Geddes, 1999, p. 122). Hadenius and Teorell stress that these regimes tend to root themselves in society through more developed networks, while these networks are typically structured on a clientelistic basis (Hadenius & Teorell, 2006).

4 ‘Lad’ is an old Russian word for a broad mutually beneficial agreement or consensus.

5 On the level of urbanization (the proportion of urban population in relation to the total population in a country) Russia occupies 78th place (73,9 per cent), while Kazakhstan is at the 140th (53,3 per cent) (http://gtmarket.ru/ratings/urbanization-index/info).

6 For more details see the next section.

7 Transparency International's Perceived Corruption Index for 2017 places Russia in the 135rd place (out of 180 countries).

8 Belykh’s case was connected with another large-scale scandal – the so called ‘Kirovles case’.

9 This component has been noticeable in Russian official rhetoric already since the middle of the 2000s, since the days of Surkov’s ‘sovereign democracy’.