Henry E. Hale

Divided We Stand: Institutional Sources of Ethnofederal State Survival and Collapse

Federal states in which component regions are invested with distinct ethnic content are more likely to collapse when they contain a core ethnic region, a single ethnic region enjoying pronounced superiority in population. Dividing a dominant group into multiple federal regions reduces these dangers. A study of world cases finds that all ethnofederal states that have collapsed have possessed core ethnic regions. Thus, ethnofederalism, so long as it is instituted without a core ethnic region, may represent a viable way of avoiding the most deadly forms of conflict while maintaining state unity in ethnically divided countries.

The Parade of Sovereignties: Testing Theories of Secession in the Soviet Setting

This article asks why some ethnically distinct regions fight fiercely to secede while others struggle to save the same multinational state. It tests competing explanations using a new dataset containing forty-five cases, significantly more than any previous study in the Soviet setting. The empirical results confirm arguments that the most separatist regions tend to be those possessing the most wealth, containing the least assimilated ethnic groups and already enjoying the greatest levels of autonomy. Demonstration effects are also found to be powerful. No support is found for prominent theories pointing to group upward mobility and ‘skill sets’ as being decisive. Group histories of grievous exploitation or national independence are found not to explain patterns of secessionism.

Explaining Machine Politics in Russia's Regions: Economy, Ethnicity, and Legacy

A political scientist and specialist on Russian electoral and ethnic politics provides an explanation of machine politics in Russias regions that accounts for the great variation in the power of these machines. The focus is on distinguishing among the economic and ethnic legacies of the Soviet period, the effects of the transition itself, and the impact of provincial leadership. As evidence, the author presents a historicalinterpretive examination of Russias transition at the level of provincial politics as well as a statistical analysis of factors impacting the strength of regional machine candidates in the 1999 single-member-district Duma elections.

The Putin Vote: Presidential Electorates in a Hybrid Regime

What leads people to vote for incumbent presidents in hybrid regimes—political systems that allow at least some real opposition to compete in elections but that greatiy advantage the authorities? Here, the case of Russia is analyzed through survey research conducted as part of the Russian Election Studies (RES) series. The RES has queried nationally representative samples of Russias population both before and shortly after every post-Soviet presidential election there to date, those in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. Since Vladimir Putin himself ran as head of the United Russia slate in the 2007 parliamentary election, voting in that election is also considered. The analysis reveals that Putin has consistently won votes based on personal appeal, opposition to socialism, and a guardedly pro-western foreign policy orientation, among other things. Economic considerations are also very important, though they operate in a way that is more complex than sometimes assumed. President Dmitrii Medvedev generally benefited from these same factors in his election to the presidency.

Three dilemmas of hybrid regime governance: Russia from Putin to Putin

This article investigates how hybrid regimes supply governance by examining a series of dilemmas (involving elections, the mass media, and state institutions) that their rulers face. The authors demonstrate how regime responses to these dilemmas – typically efforts to maintain control while avoiding outright repression and societal backlash – have negative outcomes, including a weakening of formal institutions, proliferation of “substitutions” (e.g., substitutes for institutions), and increasing centralization and personalization of control. Efforts by Russian leaders to disengage society from the sphere of decision-making entail a significant risk of systemic breakdown in unexpected ways. More specifically, given significantly weakened institutions for interest representation and negotiated compromise, policy-making in the Russian system often amounts to the leaderships best guess (ad hoc manual policy adjustments) as to precisely what society will accept and what it will not, with a significant possibility of miscalculation. Three case studies of the policy-making process are presented: the 2005 cash-for-benefits reform, plans for the development of the Khimki Forest, and changes leading up to and following major public protests in 2011–2012.

Formal Constitutions in Informal Politics: Institutions and Democratization in Post-Soviet Eurasia

How do formal constitutions impact the prospects for democratization in hybrid regimes, where corruption is typically high and rule of law weak? It is often assumed either that they set “rules of the game,” having effects by being followed, or that they do not matter, being overwhelmed by informal politics. In fact, a logic of collective action reveals that constitutions do matter, but as much by shaping informal political arrangements as by being obeyed. Presidentialist constitutions, through an information effect and a focal effect, generate expectations of future informal power that encourage clientelistic networks to coordinate law-disregarding practices around a “single pyramid” of power led by the president. The information and focal effects of divided-executive constitutions, by contrast, create expectations that complicate the coordination of clientelistic networks around a single patron, promoting “competing-pyramid” politics. To isolate the impact of formal constitutional design and rule out other causes, a tightly controlled process-tracing paired comparison is employed using Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan during 2005–10, explaining why Ukraine’s Orange Revolution produced a true democratic opening (even if short lived) while Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution did not.

Eurasian polities as hybrid regimes: The case of Putin's Russia

Most Eurasian countries’ political systems are not accurately described as some version of either democracy or authoritarianism. Nor does it advance social science to study each of these countries’ political systems as being completely unique, sharing no significant commonalities with those of other countries. Instead, it is more fruitful to understand many Eurasian countries as a type of hybrid regime, a system that combines important elements of both democracy and autocracy in some way. One of the most important features of Eurasias hybrid regimes, one that is shared by many hybrid regimes worldwide, is that they combine contested elections with pervasive political clientelism. Political developments in these countries can thus be usefully understood as machine politics, and the development of political systems can be understood as processes of rearranging the components of the machines in different ways. The usefulness of this approach is demonstrated through an in-depth study of the Russian Federation. It is argued that Russian political development under Putin is best understood not as “authoritarianization” but as a process in which Russia transitioned from a system of “competing pyramids” of machine power to a “single-pyramid” system, a system dominated by one large political machine. It turns out that in single-pyramid systems that preserve contested elections, as does Russia, public opinion matters more than in typical authoritarian regimes.

The Myth of Mass Russian Support for Autocracy: The Public Opinion Foundations of a Hybrid Regime

Abstract The article presents new survey research, sensitive to local understandings of key terms, that helps resolve a longstanding debate on whether Russian public opinion generally supports democracy or authoritarianism. The central conclusion is that while Russians differ amongst themselves, they are best understood not as autocratic but as generally supportive of a particular form of democracy that social scientists have called ‘delegative democracy’. This logically consistent preference structure reconciles diverse arguments and findings in the literature, sheds light on Putins puzzling decision to cede the presidency to Medvedev in 2008, and offers insight into the public opinion foundations of ‘hybrid regimes’.

The Makeup and Breakup of Ethnofederal States: Why Russia Survives Where the USSR Fell

Why do some ethnofederal states survive while others collapse? The puzzle is particularly stark in the case of the former Soviet Union: the multiethnic Russian Federation has managed to survive intact the transition from totalitarian rule, whereas the multiethnic USSR disintegrated. The critical distinction between the USSR and Russia lies in the design of ethnofederal institutions. The USSR contained a core ethnic region, the “Russian Republic,” a single region with a far greater population than any other in the union. This core ethnic region facilitated dual sovereignty, exacerbated the security fears of minority-group regions, and promoted the “imagining” of a Russia independent of the larger Soviet state. In place of a single core ethnic region, the Russian Federation contains 57 separate provinces. This feature of institutional design has given Russias central government important capacities to thwart the kind of centrifugal forces that brought down the USSR. This holds important lessons for policy makers crafting federal institutions in other multiethnic countries. Henry E. Hale is an assistant professor of political science at Indiana University (hhale@indiana.edu). His book on the development of a national party system in the Russian Federation will be published by Cambridge University Press. The author is indebted to many who provided helpful advice and support, including Andrew Buck, Mikhail Filippov, Edward Gibson, Yoshiko Herrera, Juliet Johnson, Pauline Jones Luong, Daniel Posner, Olga Shvetsova, Jack Snyder, Ashutosh Varshney, the anonymous reviewers of earlier drafts, and participants in the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security workshop and a seminar at the Russian and East European Center, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Russians and the Putin-Medvedev "Tandemocracy": A Survey-Based Portrait of the 2007-2008 Election Season

During the 2007-2008 election cycle, the victorious United Russia Party and Dmitri Medvedev pledged to continue the status quo, but voters also genuinely hoped that it would be Medvedev rather than Putin at the helm.