Besides these explanations, the attractiveness of the authoritarian modernization project in Russia is also rooted more deeply: the perceptions of the “uniqueness” and “special path” of the country and obsession with status-seeking among Russian elites, intellectuals, and society at large provide fertile grounds for this approach.80 As one of Putin’s former advisors confessed in an interview, in the early 2000s the major arguments in the Kremlin’s inner circle for the need for authoritarian modernization were related to the claim of strengthening Russia’s international position: “Putin became the author of the ‘Russian miracle’ despite widespread expectations that Russia would leave the global stage and turn into a second-order country like Indonesia.”81 Although international ambitions often contributed to the rise of entrepreneurship and catch-up development among late-modernizing countries,82 in Russia’s case they also coincided with a desire for major revenge vis-à-vis the West given the loss of great power status after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (judged by Putin to be “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”). In other words, economic development and related social changes (the increase in incomes, education, and the like) were perceived by Russia’s rulers merely as means rather than goals of modernization. These tendencies became explicit after 2014, in the wake of Russia’s conflict with the West over Ukraine, which contributed not only to its increasing international isolation but also to a major shift in its domestic agenda. The authoritarian modernization project was not officially curtailed, but its modernization dimension has been reduced to naught amid sluggish economic growth and stagnation of real incomes of Russians. Not only has there been a “tightening of the screws” in the political arena,83 but economic development priorities have also been supplanted by ambitious geopolitical goals and foreign policy tasks. Policy moves ranging from an import ban on many foreign food products, which caused a steep rise in consumer prices and poor-quality import substitutes, to the law on preferential use of Russian computers and software for state orders and in state-owned companies greatly benefited certain interest groups but were not conducive to the country’s development. However, it is too early to discuss whether the myth of authoritarian growth in Russia will be debunked any time soon. Even though these ideas and related policies might no longer be a part of the current agenda, the discreet charm of the authoritarian modernization project is powerful not only because of the endurance of ideas and institutions but also because of the vested interests of those who benefit from this project.
Dilemmas, Challenges, and Constraints
The authoritarian modernization project in contemporary Russia faces several dilemmas, challenges, and constraints. Without attempting to compile an exhaustive catalog, some of the related issues are worth further consideration in light of Russia’s experience. In addition to the classic dilemmas of an authoritarian regime’s response to rising political demands in the wake of modernization (the “king’s dilemma”) and a ruler’s response to inefficiency of the state bureaucracy (the “politician’s dilemma”), one may also consider important challenges that placed unavoidable constraints on this project. They include the challenge of unfulfilled promises (when expectations of progress and rapid catch-up to advanced countries proved to be wrong) and the challenge of mediocrity (despite claims of Russia’s greatness, in fact its socioeconomic profile is close to that of an average “normal country”).84
The “king’s dilemma,” outlined by Samuel Huntington in his analysis of risks of modernization in traditional monarchies,85 remains relevant in post-Communist Russia. Economic growth and development, which lie at the heart of the authoritarian modernization project, have contributed to the rise of mass demand for political freedoms (first and foremost, among the urban middle class) as an unintended consequence. The wave of political protests that swept Russia in 2011–2012 was a typical instance of this demand caused by the economic and political changes of the 1990s and 2000s.86 Thus, the political leadership faced a difficult choice between the continuation of the authoritarian modernization project (increasing the risk of further political disequilibrium) and preservation of their rule at any cost, including the reduction of this project. While hegemonic authoritarian regimes often take the risk of modernization because of their reliance upon a traditional monarchy, dominant party, or military,87 electoral authoritarian regimes are based upon political institutions that mimic and substitute for those of democracies (such as elections, political parties, and legislatures)88 and are therefore more vulnerable to political disequilibrium. The reliance of Russia’s rulers upon sophisticated techniques of political control such as tools of state dominance over the Internet and umbrella GONGOs (government-organized non-government organizations)89 is intended to mitigate these risks, but their impact is limited and may result in unintended and undesired side effects in terms of development. These considerations, alongside the short-time horizon of electoral authoritarian regimes, provide more incentives for curtailing the authoritarian modernization project if rulers perceive major domestic and international threats to their political survival—although these threats may be overestimated.
The asymmetric response of Russia’s rulers to the 2011–2012 mass protests, which included not only tightening of the screws in domestic politics but also launching a major international conflict with the West over Ukraine, was in a way, also addressed to the king’s dilemma. Then Vladimir Putin suddenly shifted his priorities from development to geopolitics and sacrificed the goals of modernization for the sake of international influence and domestic popularity.90 Although this response provided other risks of disequilibrium than those caused by economic growth and development, from the viewpoint of modernization its consequences were even more devastating than attempts to preserve the political status quo (more typical for the king’s dilemma). Policy reforms disappeared from the Russian leadership’s list of priorities, and it is difficult to expect that the agenda of rapid growth and development that was so vigorously advocated in the early 2000s will be revitalized any time soon under the current regime’s conditions.
The “politician’s dilemma” was analyzed by Barbara Geddes in her study of policy reforms in Latin America:91 the top-down modernization efforts of the political leadership encountered resistance from major interest groups and the notorious inefficiency of the bureaucracy. The essence of reforms can be buried or perverted or alternatively, they can be implemented only through a partial solution where rulers offer some special conditions for their conduct, known as “pockets of efficiency.”92 This dilemma became acute in contemporary Russia, and several failures of major policy reforms clearly demonstrated its salience.93 Russia’s reformers either adjusted their proposals to compromise with bureaucracy and/or interest groups or attempted to bypass standard procedures and find some alternative institutional solutions for conducting certain policies. In both instances, policy successes were rather mixed.
A compromise solution was achieved in the early 2000s in the case of the pension reform policy in Russia, which might have long-term effects for further generations, while its adoption and implementation was able to bring immediate gains and losses to current political and policy actors. The major conflict between two policy coalitions, the liberal “young reformers,” who promoted new ideas of adoption of an accumulative pension system, and the old-style bureaucracy, which insisted on preservation of the previous status quo mainly because of its vested interests, resulted in an imperfect compromise between these two approaches.94 While the interests of all participants were satisfied, the policy outcomes were suboptimal, and opportunities for major changes were missed. In other words, the previous status quo of the inefficient and deficient pension system has been preserved for the sake of maintaining a balance between the demands of state bureaucrats, employees, and employers. Yet the problems of the inefficiency of the pension system continued over time, while the deficit of the Pension Fund steadily increased. In the end, this solution paved the way to the unpopular sudden increase in retirement age for Russians in 2018, which has not been accompanied by structural reforms and has merely reproduced the status quo at the citizens’ expense.95 Policy compromises with bureaucrats and with major interest groups (such as old-style trade unions in the case of labor reform)96 contributed to the weakening of proposed policy changes, and policy outcomes were far from the desires of the proponents of modernization. Meanwhile, attempts to bypass regular procedures may contribute to short-term successful policy implementation, but in the medium term these policy innovations may face major revisions (some of these issues are discussed in chapter 6).