Vladimir Gel'man

Russia today represents one of the major examples of the phenomenon of "electoral authoritarianism" which is characterized by adopting the trappings of democratic institutions (such as elections, political parties, and a legislature) and enlisting the service of the country's essentially authoritarian rulers. Why and how has the electoral authoritarian regime been consolidated in Russia? What are the mechanisms of its maintenance, and what is its likely future course? This book attempts to answer these basic questions. Vladimir Gel'man examines regime change in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day, systematically presenting theoretical and comparative perspectives of the factors that affected regime changes and the authoritarian drift of the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's national political elites aimed to achieve their goals by creating and enforcing of favorable "rules of the game" for themselves and maintaining informal winning coalitions of cliques around individual rulers. In the 1990s, these moves were only partially successful given the weakness of the Russian state and troubled post-socialist economy. In the 2000s, however, Vladimir Putin rescued the system thanks to the combination of economic growth and the revival of the state capacity he was able to implement by imposing a series of non-democratic reforms. In the 2010s, changing conditions in the country have presented new risks and challenges for the Putin regime that will play themselves out in the years to come.

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military assault on Ukraine, aimed at re-establishing Russian control over the Ukrainian state, economy and society, similar in many ways to the Soviet period. This goal, however, was not achieved, and most likely will not be achieved in the future. Rather, the Russian “special military operation” has resulted in extraordinary disasters and losses for Russia, for Ukraine, and for the entire world. This book examines the origins of the Russian assault on Ukraine and offers an explanation of why it has not achieved its aims. Why did Russian elites and leaders propose, prepare for and implement the assault on Ukraine in such a poorly prepared and heavily destructive way? In seeking to answer these questions, Gel’man focuses on Russia’s domestic agenda and its dynamics after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The personalist nature of the Russian authoritarian political regime, its vulnerability to bad governance, major misperceptions by the Russian elites and leadership, and reliance of the Kremlin upon previous experience of Russian impunity were all key factors that led to Russia’s fateful decision to attack Ukraine and have continued to shape Russia’s mistake-ridden conduct of the war since then. Gel’man also considers what lessons can be learned from Russia’s military assault for understanding the global agenda and for the study of domestic and international politics in the twenty-first century. This book, written by a leading expert on Russian politics, will be of great value to students and scholars in politics and to anyone interested in Russia and in the causes and consequences of the war against Ukraine.

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military assault on Ukraine, aimed at re-establishing Russian control over the Ukrainian state, economy and society, similar in many ways to the Soviet period. This goal, however, was not achieved, and most likely will not be achieved in the future. Rather, the Russian “special military operation” has resulted in extraordinary disasters and losses for Russia, for Ukraine, and for the entire world. This book examines the origins of the Russian assault on Ukraine and offers an explanation of why it has not achieved its aims. Why did Russian elites and leaders propose, prepare for and implement the assault on Ukraine in such a poorly prepared and heavily destructive way? In seeking to answer these questions, Gel’man focuses on Russia’s domestic agenda and its dynamics after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The personalist nature of the Russian authoritarian political regime, its vulnerability to bad governance, major misperceptions by the Russian elites and leadership, and reliance of the Kremlin upon previous experience of Russian impunity were all key factors that led to Russia’s fateful decision to attack Ukraine and have continued to shape Russia’s mistake-ridden conduct of the war since then. Gel’man also considers what lessons can be learned from Russia’s military assault for understanding the global agenda and for the study of domestic and international politics in the twenty-first century. This book, written by a leading expert on Russian politics, will be of great value to students and scholars in politics and to anyone interested in Russia and in the causes and consequences of the war against Ukraine.

In this book, Vladimir Gel’man considers bad governance as a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices quite different from those of good governance. Some countries are governed badly intentionally because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self-interests. Gel’man considers bad governance as a primarily agency-driven rather than structure-induced phenomenon. He addresses the issue of causes and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond from a different scholarly optics, which is based on a more general rationale of state-building, political regime dynamics, and policy-making. He argues that although these days, bad governance is almost universally perceived as an anomaly, at least in developed countries, in fact human history is largely a history of ineffective and corrupt governments, while the rule of law and decent state regulatory quality are relatively recent matters of modern history, when they emerged as side effects of state-building. Indeed, the picture is quite the opposite: bad governance is the norm, while good governance is an exception. The problem is that most rulers, especially if their time horizons are short and the external constraints on their behavior are not especially binding, tend to govern their domains in a predatory way because of the prevalence of short-term over long-term incentives. Contemporary Russia may be considered as a prime example of this phenomenon. Using an analysis of case studies of political and policy changes in Russia after the Soviet collapse, Gel’man discusses the logic of building and maintaining the politico-economic order of bad governance in Russia and paths of its possible transformation in a theoretical and comparative perspective.

In this book, Vladimir Gel’man considers bad governance as a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices quite different from those of good governance. Some countries are governed badly intentionally because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self-interests. Gel’man considers bad governance as a primarily agency-driven rather than structure-induced phenomenon. He addresses the issue of causes and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond from a different scholarly optics, which is based on a more general rationale of state-building, political regime dynamics, and policy-making. He argues that although these days, bad governance is almost universally perceived as an anomaly, at least in developed countries, in fact human history is largely a history of ineffective and corrupt governments, while the rule of law and decent state regulatory quality are relatively recent matters of modern history, when they emerged as side effects of state-building. Indeed, the picture is quite the opposite: bad governance is the norm, while good governance is an exception. The problem is that most rulers, especially if their time horizons are short and the external constraints on their behavior are not especially binding, tend to govern their domains in a predatory way because of the prevalence of short-term over long-term incentives. Contemporary Russia may be considered as a prime example of this phenomenon. Using an analysis of case studies of political and policy changes in Russia after the Soviet collapse, Gel’man discusses the logic of building and maintaining the politico-economic order of bad governance in Russia and paths of its possible transformation in a theoretical and comparative perspective.

The politico-economic reforms launched during the late twentieth century in post-Soviet Russia have led to contradictory and ambiguous results. The new economic environment and mode of governance that emerged have been subjected to serious criticism. What were the causes of these developments? Were they unavoidable for Russia due to specific factors grounded in the countrys previous experiences? Or were they an intended result of actions taken by the leaders of the country during the last few decades? The authors of this book share neither a deterministic approach, which implies that Russia is bound to fail because of the nature of its economic and political evolution, nor a voluntarist approach, which implies that these failures were caused only by the incompetence and/or malicious intentions of its leaders. Instead, this study offers a different framework for the analysis of political and economic developments in present-day Russia. It is based on four isideas, interests, institutions, and illusions.

Reexamining Economic and Political Reforms in Russia, 1985–2000: Generations, Ideas, and Changes analyzes the impact of generational changes and ideational changes on major political and economic reforms conducted in Russia during the late twentieth century. This book examines how the policy agenda was shaped by the ideas of the generations’ representatives for the “sixtiers” and “seventiers.” Representatives of the generation of “sixtiers” conducted reforms from 1985 to 1991 and invested major efforts in political liberalization but did not pay enough attention to economic reforms. On the other hand, the reformers from the generation of “seventiers,” who were in charge of policy making from 1991 to 1998, were genuinely oriented toward market building but rather insensitive to the democratization of the political regime. This book explores how these differences in ideational agendas produced inconsistent and controversial outcomes from both stages of reforms. As a consequence, Russia only partially implemented the idea of market economic reforms, while the process of political reforms resulted in the rise of new authoritarianism.

Reexamining Economic and Political Reforms in Russia, 1985–2000: Generations, Ideas, and Changes analyzes the impact of generational changes and ideational changes on major political and economic reforms conducted in Russia during the late twentieth century. This book examines how the policy agenda was shaped by the ideas of the generations’ representatives for the “sixtiers” and “seventiers.” Representatives of the generation of “sixtiers” conducted reforms from 1985 to 1991 and invested major efforts in political liberalization but did not pay enough attention to economic reforms. On the other hand, the reformers from the generation of “seventiers,” who were in charge of policy making from 1991 to 1998, were genuinely oriented toward market building but rather insensitive to the democratization of the political regime. This book explores how these differences in ideational agendas produced inconsistent and controversial outcomes from both stages of reforms.

By the end of the 2000s, the term "resource curse" had become so widespread that it had turned into a kind of magic keyword, not only in the scholarly language of the social sciences, but also in the discourse of politicians, commentators and analysts all over the world—like the term "modernization" in the early 1960s or "transition" in the early 1990s. In fact, the aggravation of many problems in the global economy and politics, against the background of the rally of oil prices in 2004–2008, became the environment for academic and public debates about the role of natural resources in general, and oil and gas in particular, in the development of various societies. The results of numerous studies do not give a clear answer to questions about the nature and mechanisms of the influence of the oil and gas abundance on the economic, political and social processes in various states and nations. However, the majority of scholars and observers agree that this influence in the most of countries is primarily negative. Resource Curse and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Oil, Gas, and Modernization is an in-depth analysis of the impact of oil and gas abundance on political, economic, and social developments of Russia and other post-Soviet states and nations (such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan). The chapters of the book systematically examine various effects of "resource curse" in different arenas such as state building, regime changes, rule of law, property rights, policy-making, interest representation, and international relations in theoretical, historical, and comparative perspectives. The authors analyze the role of oil and gas dependency in the evolution and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarian drift of post-Soviet countries, building of predatory state and pendulum-like swings of Russia from "state capture" of 1990s to "business capture" of 2000s, uneasy relationships between the state and special interest groups, and numerous problems of "geo-economics" of pipelines in post-Soviet Eurasia.

By the end of the 2000s, the term "resource curse" had become so widespread that it had turned into a kind of magic keyword, not only in the scholarly language of the social sciences, but also in the discourse of politicians, commentators and analysts all over the world-—like the term "modernization" in the early 1960s or "transition" in the early 1990s. In fact, the aggravation of many problems in the global economy and politics, against the background of the rally of oil prices in 2004–2008, became the environment for academic and public debates about the role of natural resources in general, and oil and gas in particular, in the development of various societies. The results of numerous studies do not give a clear answer to questions about the nature and mechanisms of the influence of the oil and gas abundance on the economic, political and social processes in various states and nations. However, the majority of scholars and observers agree that this influence in the most of countries is primarily negative. Resource Curse and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Oil, Gas, and Modernization is an in-depth analysis of the impact of oil and gas abundance on political, economic, and social developments of Russia and other post-Soviet states and nations (such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan). The chapters of the book systematically examine various effects of "resource curse" in different arenas such as state building, regime changes, rule of law, property rights, policy-making, interest representation, and international relations in theoretical, historical, and comparative perspectives. The authors analyze the role of oil and gas dependency in the evolution and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarian drift of post-Soviet countries, building of predatory state and pendulum-like swings of Russia from "state capture" of 1990s to "business capture" of 2000s, uneasy relationships between the state and special interest groups, and numerous problems of "geo-economics" of pipelines in post-Soviet Eurasia.

Focusing on the vastly different outcomes of post-Soviet regime transitions, this study explores why some societies have become more democratic and some have not. Based on in-depth comparative analyses, the book assesses political developments in six of Russia's regions (Saratov, Nizhnii Novgorod, Volgograd, Ryazan', Ul'yanovsk, and Tver' oblasts) since 1988. The authors consider the influence of Soviet governance systems on the emergence of cleavages and new actors in the post-Soviet period. They also analyze the impact of institutional changes on regional regimes and the success or failure of formal institutions as a framework for political competitiveness. Placing their detailed field data within the larger comparative and theoretical context of political transitions, the authors are able to explain the mixed outcomes of post-communist regime change in Russia and other post-Soviet nations. With its innovative model of path-contingent democratization and its new typology of political regimes and regime transitions, this book will be essential reading for all scholars of democracy.