Russia's `Privatized' State as an Impediment to Democratic Consolidation

1 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1947), 2nd edn., p. 269.

2 Quoted in Segodnya, 13 November 1996. For similar warnings about mutiny, see the interview with Aleksandr Lebed on Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 23 November 1996; and Andrei Koliev, `The Army's Patience Is Running Out', Prism: A Monthly on the Post-Soviet States, vol. II, part I, November 1996.

3 Just months after the presidential vote in 1996, only 10% of the Russian population said that they trusted Yeltsin. This poll was conducted by All-Russia Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) and reported by Associated Press, 13 November 1996.

4 Aleksandr Oslon, Konsensusy v obshchestvennom mnenii kak politicheskaya real'nost (Consensus in Public Opinion as Political Reality), no. 120, (Moscow: Fond `Obshchestvennoe mnenie', 27 February 1997).

5 Cited in Segodnya, 18 October 1997.

6 See, for instance, Vladimir Brovkin `The Emperor's New Clothes: Continuity of Soviet Political Culture in Contemporary Russia', and Peter Stavrakis, `Russia After the Elections: Democracy or Parliamentary Byzantium?' in Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 43, no. 2, March-April 1996, pp. 13-28; Tim McDaniel, The Agony of the Russian Idea, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996) and Scott Bruckner & Lilia Shevtsova, `Whither Post-Communist Russia: Toward Stability or Crisis?', Journal of Democracy, vol. 8, no. 1, January 1997, pp. 12-26.

7 For a powerful statement of this phenomenon throughout the post-Communist world, see Joel Hellman, `Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions', World Politics, vol. 50, no. 2 (January 1998), pp. 203-234.

8 The state was long neglected as a central variable in analyses of transitions to democracies in Southern Europe and Latin America. For a recent redress, see Juan Linz & Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

9 This formulation of the state follows Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); and Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988).

10 Stephan Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).

11 See Peter Evans, `The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy, and Structural Change', in Stephan Haggard & Robert Kaufman, eds, The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); and Stephan Haggard & Robert Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

12 On the important distinction between state autonomy and state capacity, see Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State; and Peter Katzenstein, `Introduction: Domestic and International Strategies of Foreign Economic Policy', in Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978). On systems of interest mediation, see Philippe Schmitter, `The Consolidation of Democracy and Representation of Social Groups', American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 35, no. 4/5, March/June 1992, pp. 422-449.

13 On this point more generally, see Jose Maria Maravell, `The Myth of Authoritarian Advantage', and Barbara Geddes, `Challenging the Conventional Wisdom', Journal of Democracy, vol. 5, no. 4 (October 1994), pp. 17-31 and 104-118.

14 See Miles Kahler, `Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives: Explaining Approaches to Stabilization and Adjustment', in Joan Nelson, ed., Economic Crisis and Policy Choice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 33-62.

15 Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Peter Evans, `The State and Economic Transformation: Toward and Analysis of Conditions Underlying Effective Intervention', in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol, eds, Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

16 This said, presidential decree power has been used only rarely to circumvent the legislative process. For an excellent study which challenges many of the myths surrounding Russia's superpresidential system, see Thomas Remington, Steven Smith, & Moshe Haspel, `Decrees, Laws, and Inter-Branch Relations in the Russian Federation', paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC, 20-23 November 1997.

17 Anders Aslund, `Governing by Default', The Moscow Times, 10 November 1996.

18 Supporters of Chubais such as Anders Aslund have categorized these divisions as a struggle between liberals and rent-seekers. Nemtsov has cast the differences as one between those who favor `people's capitalism' and those who want to preserve `oligarchic capitalism'. Supporters of Chernomyrdin argue that the battle is between `radicals' and `centrists.'

19 This is true in all presidential systems. See Arend Lijphart, `Presidentialism and Majoritarian Democracy', in Juan Linz, ed., The Failure of Presidential Democracy, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 91-105.