The Myth of the Authoritarian Model

How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back

Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008

Summary:  A growing conventional wisdom holds that Vladimir Putin's attack on democracy has brought Russia stability and prosperity -- providing a new model of successful market authoritarianism. But the correlation between autocracy and economic growth is spurious. Autocracy's effects in Russia have in fact been negative. Whatever the gains under Putin, they would have been greater under a democratic regime.

MICHAEL MCFAUL is a Hoover Fellow, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. KATHRYN STONER-WEISS is Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University

Putin emasculated the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, by removing elected governors and heads of regional legislatures from the seats they would have automatically taken in this chamber and replacing them with appointed representatives. Regional elections were rigged to punish leaders who resisted Putin's authority. And in September 2004, in a fatal blow to Russian federalism, Putin announced that he would begin appointing governors -- with the rationale that this would make them more accountable and effective. There have been no regional elections for executive office since February 2005.

Putin has also made real progress in weakening the autonomy of the parliament. Starting with the December 2003 parliamentary elections, he has taken advantage of his control of other political resources (such as NTV and the regional governorships) to give the Kremlin's party, United Russia, a strong majority in the Duma: United Russia and its allies now control two-thirds of the seats in parliament. Putin's own popularity may be United Russia's greatest electoral asset, but constant positive coverage of United Russia leaders (and negative coverage of Communist Party officials) on Russia's national television stations, overwhelming financial support from Russia's oligarchs, and near-unanimous endorsement by Russia's regional leaders have also helped. After the December 2003 elections, for the first time ever the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a critical report on Russia's parliamentary elections, which stressed, "The State Duma elections failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments for democratic elections." In 2007, the Russian government refused to allow the OSCE to field an observer mission large enough to monitor the December parliamentary elections effectively.

Political parties not aligned with the Kremlin have also suffered. The independent liberal parties, Yabloko and the SPS, as well as the largest independent party on the left, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, are all much weaker today and work in a much more constrained political environment than in the 1990s. Other independent parties -- including the Republican Party and the Popular Democratic Union, as well as those of the Other Russia coalition -- have not even been allowed to register for elections. Several independent parties and candidates have been disqualified from participating in local elections for blatantly political reasons. Potential backers of independent parties have been threatened with sanctions. The imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, previously Russia's wealthiest man and owner of the oil company Yukos, sent a powerful message to other businesspeople about the costs of being involved in opposition politics. Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin parties -- including United Russia, the largest party in the Duma, and A Just Russia, a Kremlin invention -- have enjoyed frequent television coverage and access to generous resources.

In his second term, Putin decided that NGOs could become a threat to his power. He therefore promulgated a law that gives the state numerous means to harass, weaken, and even close down NGOs considered too political. To force independent groups to the margins, the Kremlin has generously funded NGOs either invented by or fully loyal to the state. Perhaps most incredible, public assembly is no longer tolerated. In the spring of 2007, Other Russia, a coalition of civil-society groups and political parties led by the chess champion Garry Kasparov, tried to organize public meetings in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Both meetings were disrupted by thousands of police officers and special forces, and hundreds of demonstrators were arrested -- repression on a scale unseen in Russia in 20 years.

In his annual address to the Federation Assembly in April 2007, Putin struck a note of paranoid nationalism when he warned of Western plots to undermine Russian sovereignty. "There is a growing influx of foreign cash used directly to meddle in our domestic affairs," he asserted. "Not everyone likes the stable, gradual rise of our country. Some want to return to the past to rob the people and the state, to plunder natural resources, and deprive our country of its political and economic independence." The Kremlin, accordingly, has tossed out the Peace Corps, closed OSCE missions in Chechnya and then in Moscow, declared persona non grata the AFL-CIO's field representative, raided the offices of the Soros Foundation and the National Democratic Institute, and forced Internews Russia, an NGO dedicated to fostering journalistic professionalism, to close its offices after accusing its director of embezzlement.

While weakening checks on presidential power, Putin and his team have tabled reforms that might have strengthened other branches of the government. The judicial system remains weak, and when major political issues are at stake, the courts serve as yet another tool of presidential power -- as happened during NTV's struggle and during the prosecution of Khodorkovsky. There was even an attempt to disbar one of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Karinna Moskalenko.

BIGGER IS NOT BETTER

Many of Putin's defenders, including some Kremlin officials, have given up the pretense of characterizing Russia as a "managed" or "sovereign" democracy. Instead, they contend that Russia's democratic retreat has enhanced the state's ability to provide for its citizens. The myth of Putinism is that Russians are safer, more secure, and generally living better than in the 1990s -- and that Putin himself deserves the credit. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, the first goal of "Putin's Plan" (the main campaign document of United Russia) was to "provide order."

In fact, although the 1990s was a period of instability, economic collapse, and revolutionary change in political and economic institutions, the state performed roughly as well as it does today, when the country has been relatively "stable" and its economy is growing rapidly. Even in good economic times, autocracy has done no better than democracy at promoting public safety, health, or a secure legal and property-owning environment.