When the center can hold: The primacy of politics in shaping Russian democracy

• Published in: Communist and post-communist studies Vol. 43; no. 4; pp. 397 - 408
• Main Author: Anderson, Richard D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2010; University of California Press; University of California Press, Journals & Digital Publishing Division
• Subjects: Authoritarianism; Authoritarianism (Political Ideology); Bureaucracy; Centrism; Constitution; Constitutions; Corruption; Democracy; Democratization; Elections; Human rights; Legislature; Parties; Political analysis; Political conditions; Political parties; Political power; Politics; Post-communist societies; Presidency; Privatization; Regular Articles; Russia; Russian Federation; Social Conditions; Strategic planning; Transition; Violations; Russia; Democratization; Elections; Parties; Privatization; Presidency; Democracy; Transition; Legislature; Authoritarianism; Constitution; Russia
• ISSN: 0967-067X; 1873-6920
• DOI: 10.1016/j.postcomstud.2010.10.002

Violations of rights, a weak Duma, political parties dominated by bureaucrats, and corrupt privatization are ordinarily taken as signs or even causes of the failure of democracy in Russia or at best as normal traits of electoral politics in a middle-income state. Yet all of these are natural consequences of introducing democracy in a country with the Russian electorate’s distinctive recent experience of a loss of a third of the state’s territory and half its population. In such a democracy only a centrist, not a liberal, strategy can block a return to authoritarianism, and such a strategy in Russia will subordinate rights to the task of privatization that a Duma weakened by ideological, demographic and geographic impediments to party development cannot conduct. Consequently what are taken as signs or causes of democratic failure in Russia are instead necessary effects of introducing democracy in Russia’s special circumstances.