competitive elections result in “political business cycles,” which contribute to short-term populist policy solutions and prevent the implementation of long-term developmental plans;30
the separation of powers allows powerful veto players to block major policy decisions and/or dilute their substance;31 moreover, for federal states, the difficult combination of horizontal and vertical separation of powers may contribute to the risks of “joint decision traps”;32
multiparty governments and coalition politics result in adopting compromise policies, which also bring instability because of the fragility of party cooperation;33 and
the representation of interest groups and political parties stimulates the domination of distributional coalitions that are engaged in rent-seeking and aimed at state capture (that is, turning state policies into hostages of private actors) by leveraging their access to governmental posts to reward their allies.34
These pitfalls are unavoidable in various political contexts. Many experts have noted the inefficiency of policy reforms under democracies, ranging from Latin America35 to Eastern Europe,36 where both the interests of political actors and the institutional settings hindered efficient socioeconomic policies or even contributed to their failure. This criticism is so widespread that it has contributed to hopes for reform-minded leaders, supported by teams of well-qualified experts, who would be capable of modernizing their respective countries without the fear of losing power and/or being trapped by populists and rent-seekers. It is no wonder that some authors have suggested implementing major socioeconomic reforms in Russia under conditions of authoritarianism as a response to the “dilemma of simultaneity.”37 Again, within the framework of this argument, democratization is considered at best a distant side effect of step-by-step creation of efficient institutions that provide stable long-term economic growth. Given the fact that the average economic growth in both democratic and nondemocratic regimes in the second half of the twentieth century was nearly the same,38 it is unsurprising that the authoritarian modernization project has been perceived as a plausible recipe for several countries, including post-Communist ones, by some experts,39 despite major criticism from others.40
Why is the evidence for the performance of authoritarian modernization so mixed, to say the least? In fact, the experience of the various states and societies involved is different in terms of their initial conditions and international and historical environment. Not many countries combine the advantages of relative underdevelopment and strong potential for catching up with advanced states and societies41 with an “embedded autonomy” of the state apparatus42 and a “Weberian” quality of bureaucracy,43 as well as with a relatively high level of human development. This combination cannot emerge by default and/or be built by design, at least in the short term. On a related note, few of these countries can effectively conduct export-oriented policies against the background of deep international engagement and a favorable global economic and political climate.
Also, one should consider the effects of varieties of authoritarianism given their differences in longevity and performance. While among hegemonic autocracies, monarchies and one-party states are better suited to conducting long-term developmental policies and improving their quality of governance, but personalist regimes are rarely successful in this respect because of their relatively short life expectancy.44 They suffer from the same defects as democratic polities, that is, political business cycles and distributional coalitions of rent-seekers do not disappear under conditions of electoral authoritarianism. But these regimes also rely heavily on mechanisms such as a politicized state-controlled economy and the patronage and buying of loyalty of the elites and the masses alike.45 All of these instances provide incentives for politicians and bureaucrats that prevent the implementation of major policy changes. In addition, they also face the risk of leadership change as an outcome of electoral conflicts and elite breakdowns, and this key challenge contributes to a short-term planning horizon in electoral authoritarian regimes vis-à-vis their hegemonic counterparts.46 Since the regime’s survival depends on mass support to a greater degree than either in hegemonic autocracies or in democracies, large-scale modernization (even in a narrow format) is a risky project for electoral authoritarian regimes and their leaders who tend to avoid long-term developmental goals.47
Yet another important constraint for authoritarian modernization is the limited set of political tools available to a regime to achieve such a project’s goals. In pursuit of policy reforms, authoritarian leaders can rely on bureaucrats, siloviki, or the hegemonic (or dominant) party, or a combination of these pillars.48 However, these mechanisms are rarely useful for implementing reforms. For efficient use of bureaucracy (one tool of authoritarian modernization that was employed in Russia) the reformers need a decent quality to the state apparatus: a high level of professional qualification among officials, strong incentives for them to achieve the goals set by the reformers, and an embedded state autonomy (the bureaucracy’s insulation from the influence of interest groups).49 Leaders cannot develop these conditions from scratch, they can build these mechanisms only over a long period of time. However, the longevity of authoritarian regimes is usually much shorter than what is necessary to build an efficient state bureaucracy.
Finally, the ideational considerations of political leaders and their perceptions of the past, present, and future of their respective countries greatly influence their policy agendas in terms of priorities, directions, and choices. Even those leaders who aim at authoritarian modernization may opt for different role models and pursue different strategies. And even the good intentions of policy reforms do not always lead to success, given the fact that conducting policy changes is not only a technocratic matter of expertise and advice but also a political matter of the balance of interests and incentives among the powerful members of authoritarian winning coalitions, which are built and maintained around rulers. The hidden but stiff competition among various segments of elites often explains why policy reforms may be sacrificed for the sake of the regime’s stability in order to prevent possible elite breakdown.50
From this perspective, the Russian experience of authoritarian modernization, both historical and contemporary, is rather contradictory. On the one hand, Russia was and still is in the second echelon of countries in terms of socioeconomic and human development, well above the global average level, and numerous attempts at its modernization in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries were essentially intended to catch up to advanced states and societies. Still, the poor quality of the state, and especially of its bureaucracy, which for a long time has operated within the framework of patrimonial governance, has remained the weakest link of Russian modernization over decades and centuries,51 although the rapid changes after the Great Reforms of Alexander II greatly reduced the time lag between Russia and its European neighbors.52 Apart from Russia’s imperial past, numerous experts have devoted many pages to discussing the negative effects of Communist legacies on contemporary developments,53 so the initial conditions of post-Soviet modernization in Russia already do not sound very promising. On the other hand, the semi-peripheral position of Russia in the global economy and the outstandingly high role of natural resource sectors in its development, alongside the difficult consequences of Soviet strategic planning, have contributed to major “bear traps” of post-Soviet modernization.54 Certainly, the relative isolation of Russia from the outside world in terms of both linkages and leverages55 and the juxtaposition of Russia to the West in terms of international politics—both during the Cold War and after the annexation of Crimea—were hardly productive for modernization.