Since 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and dragged itself into a major conflict with the West against the background of its geopolitical ambitions, rising economic problems, and questioning if not complete denial of policy goals of growth, development, and international integration, the agenda of authoritarian modernization in Russia has been dramatically challenged. No one believes that the experience of the golden age of rapid economic growth and great expectations from 1999 to 2008 will return, at least in the foreseeable future. Yet now the time is ripe to reconsider the role of the authoritarian modernization project in Russia’s political and economic changes at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century with an emphasis on the central ideas, institutions, and policies that contributed to this project and its implementation. This focus will help to explain the role of authoritarian modernization in the making of bad governance in Russia. Discussing these issues is essential not only for an understanding of the logic and peculiarities of post-Communist changes in Russia but also for mapping Russia’s trajectories onto the global map of varieties of modernization, both in contemporary and historical comparative perspective.
Indeed, why have Russia and its neighbors in post-Soviet Eurasia pursued authoritarian modernization after the Soviet collapse (unlike some countries of post-Communist Eastern Europe)? What is the ideational agenda behind this project and why does it dominate Russia’s post-Communist political landscape? What are the mechanisms that maintain this project and how have they adopted, absorbed, and affected various institutions and practices of governance in Russia? Why has this project brought diverse results in various policy areas, and why have the consequences of certain policies become rather controversial from the viewpoint of governing the country? And why, despite so many controversies, shortcomings, and flaws, has this project remained attractive in the eyes of a large proportion of Russian elites and Russian citizens? This chapter is intended to address some of these questions and propose several tentative answers, which will be also discussed in the following chapters, aimed at analyzing the impact of the authoritarian modernization project in post-Communist Russia on Russia’s politics of bad governance.
The Discreet Charm
of
Authoritarian Modernization
The concept of modernization (like any major concept in the social sciences) has its own distinct history. Since the boom of modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s,15 through nearly universal criticism in the 1970s and 1980s, there has been a large question mark hanging over the term “modernization.” However, more recently this conceptual framework has been revived with regard to analyzing the influence of social, economic, political, and cultural changes on the developmental trajectories of states and nations in a comparative and historical perspective.16 This is why in present-day scholarly jargon, modernization is merely associated with progress and development in various directions (be it human capital, economic prosperity, and/or political freedoms) as well as with certain policies in various areas aimed toward such progress in one way or another. These policies are often labeled “reforms,” although some critics tend to portray them in a negative light as instances of “neoliberalism.”17 Scholars of different disciplines and academic schools attempt to discover the causal mechanisms of developmental progress and regress in various countries and understand the logic of why some of them over time tend to move toward the “open access order”18 and the prevalence of “inclusive” economic and/or political institutions, while others do not.19
One of the most contentious issues of modernization, which arises in numerous discussions, is related to the impact of political regime dynamics on modernization—to what extent the success and failure of modernization depends upon democracy and/or authoritarianism. Can socioeconomic development be pursued successfully simultaneously with political democratization (“broad,” or democratic modernization) or rather, should economic growth and development precede political opening (“narrow,” or authoritarian modernization)? Yet, from a distant historical perspective, major European modernizations were authoritarian nearly by default,20 and in the second half of the twentieth century this issue came to the forefront in the atmosphere of bipolar rivalry between Communist and capitalist systems during the Cold War. At that time, some proponents of development theories, alongside international organizations such as the World Bank, openly endorsed ideas of authoritarian modernization, mainly for political purposes21 perceiving them as an instrument for countering Communist expansion and opposition to populist economic policies.22 This approach is deeply rooted in scholarly literature23 and is fueled by success stories of various authoritarian reforms, ranging from South Korea in the 1960s–1980s to Chile under Pinochet. The idea of authoritarian policy-making was popular at that time among many international experts in the World Bank and other agencies, as they believed that authoritarianism would be able to implement those unpopular policies that are so often blocked under democratic regimes.
The triumphant perception of global democratization after the end of the Cold War24 was short-lived, and discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of authoritarian modernization, dating back to the 1960s, reemerged within the context of post-Communist changes.25 Support for the project of narrow authoritarian modernization came from the proponents of the Chinese developmental trajectory amid numerous problems of democratic development in various parts of the globe.26 These discussions were also relevant in the Russian domestic context, as sacrificing democratization for the sake of economic reforms became a mainstream of Russian politics and policy-making soon after the Soviet collapse against the background of the “roaring” 1990s.27 This approach was vigorously advocated in 2009 by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in his manifesto on Russian modernization.28 Judging from this perspective, contemporary Russia may be regarded as a laboratory for authoritarian modernization, with its dilemmas, challenges, and constraints. Since the failure of Gorbachev’s reforms, when political opening and inconsistent economic half-measures contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s rulers have tended to limit or curtail political freedoms and prioritize economic development and state-building in their agenda. While this development has brought mixed and controversial results, the question of the impact of various factors on implementing the authoritarian modernization project remains open, and reexamining the post-Communist Russian experience with an emphasis on its ideas, institutions, and policies might shed some light on these issues. In particular, how did the sources and mechanisms of authoritarian modernization in Russia (and elsewhere) affect the rise of bad governance?
The main arguments for the authoritarian modernization project—in Russia and elsewhere—are both ideational and pragmatic (their lines are complementary rather than antinomies). In terms of ideas, the authoritarian modernization project is based upon normative criticism of the political and social empowerment of citizens in modernizing countries as a source of major instability, conflict, and disorder.29 A sequence that implies a gradual construction of a strong and efficient state and long-term economic growth and development, as well as possible postponement of democratization for many decades, is considered a desirable alternative; although it is not a combination of the best of both worlds, it is at least an avoidance of their worst combination. In pragmatic terms of conducting policy reforms, authoritarian modernization is preferred over a democratic one because the process of democratization as such presents a risky environment for building efficient states and markets. In essence, democratic regimes are full of inherent defects that make economic reforms problematic. Among these defects, the following are the most important: