Richard Sakwa

The Dual State in Russia

Russia today is characterized by two competing political orders. The first is the constitutional state, regulated by law and enshrining the normative values of the democratic movement of the late Soviet period and contemporary liberal democracies, populated by political parties, parliament, and representative movements and regulated by electoral and associated laws. The second is the administrative regime, which has emerged as a tutelary order standing outside the normative state although not repudiating its principles. Drawing on the political science literature to develop a dual-state model, this article examines the regime system—its constituent elements and dynamics—to provide a better theorized framework for understanding the dynamics of regime politics.

The Commonwealth of Independent States, 1991-1998: Stagnation and survival

Issues discussed concern the management of Russias Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), focusing on the unstable interaction between the member states with regards to economic policies. Topics addressed include trade between the countries, military and security concerns, and political obstacles to integration.

The Russian elections of December 1993

THE NATIONAL ELECTIONS of 12 December 1993 were the first held under the aegis of the reconstituted Russian Federation, and the first democratic direct national elections to be held in peacetime in Russian history. They were intended to put the final nail in the coffin of communism and set Russia on the path of irreversible democratic development. Held in the wake of the dissolution on 21 September of the old Russian legislature chaired by Ruslan Khasbulatov and the crisis of 3-4 October, in which an apparent uprising was crushed by military force, the elections took place against the background of a deeply divided society and with a large section of the political spectrum neutralised by participation in the October events. Despite this unpropitious background, the elections marked a significant turning point in political development, hastening the realignment of Russian political life, accelerating the development of a multiparty system and making possible a new start in the development of parliamentarianism.

Russia's Identity: Between the ‘Domestic’ and the ‘International’

The paper examines Russia’s engagement with the international system through analysis of the main existing paradigms of global processes. The paper begins with the problematisation of the concept of ‘the international’, with reference to the concept of ‘the political’. Drawing on international relations theory, the paper stresses the interaction of domestic and international processes: the emphasis is on the way that ‘the international’ is perceived in Russian elite discourse. The initial thesis posits that Russia historically has had a problematical relationship with the hegemonic international system of particular eras, and that this continues to this day. In part this is derived from structural factors, notably Russia’s typical tangential position in the dominant system. With very rare exceptions this relationship has been at the minimum strained, degenerating at times into outright hostility. It is also derived from identity factors, in particular Russia’s civilisational self-identification as a putative system creator as well as its implicit claim to equality in hegemonic orders. Thus ‘the international’ in Russian thinking has been both constitutive of its civilisational identity while at the same time the source of systemic conflict. This double-sided appreciation of the international remains predominant in Russian thinking and policy today, and shapes its interactions with the world at large. On the basis of this historical and theoretical model, we then analyse Russia’s engagement with the major paradigms of our era: globalisation, universalism, ‘westernisation’, cosmopolitanism and others.

Putin's Leadership: Character and Consequences

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S LEADERSHIP WAS RIVEN WITH CONTRADICTIONS, and on the basis of these contradictions very different evaluations of his presidency are possible. The contradictions themselves became a source of Putin’s power. They allowed him to act in several different political and discursive spheres at the same time, with a degree of credibility in each, although their genuine authenticity was questioned. Arriving into the presidency in 2000 Putin declared his goal as the ‘dictatorship of law’, and indeed this principle was exercised in the attempt to overcome the legal fragmentation of the country in the federal system; but when it came to pursuing regime goals, it appeared more often than not that the system ruled by law rather than ensuring the rule of law. This is just one example, and there are many more—the revival of the party system, the development of civil society, international integration—where the declared principle was vitiated by contrary practices. The most interesting debates about Putin’s leadership are precisely those that examine whether the tensions were contradictions, and thus amenable to resolution (non-antagonistic), or whether they were antinomies (antagonistic contradictions) that could not be resolved within the framework of the system itself. The first option allowed an evolutionary transcendence of the Putinite order; whereas the second would require some sort of revolutionary rupture. Challenges and contradictions

The 2003-2004 Russian elections and prospects for democracy

This is a detailed analysis of the parliamentary (State Duma) elections of December 2003 and the presidential election of March 2004. For the first, the political programmes of the parties are analysed, followed by an examination of the election process itself, the results, reports of monitors, assessment of fraud, and the impact on the legislature. The results of the presidential elections were predictable, but the results are analysed in detail. The article ends with an overall assessment of these elections and the development of Russian politics.

The death of Europe? Continental fates after Ukraine

The unravelling of the post-Cold War security order in Europe was both cause and consequence of the crisis in Ukraine. The crisis was a symptom of the three-fold failure to achieve the aspirations to create a ‘Europe whole and free’ enunciated by the Charter of Paris in 1990, the drift in the European Unions behaviour from normative to geopolitical concerns, and the failure to institutionalize some form of pan-continental unity. The structural failure to create a framework for normative and geopolitical pluralism on the continent meant that Russia was excluded from the new European order. No mode of reconciliation was found between the Brussels-centred wider Europe and various ideas for greater European continental unification. Russias relations with the EU became increasingly tense in the context of the Eastern Partnership and the Association Agreement with Ukraine. The EU and the Atlantic alliance moved towards a more hermetic and universal form of Atlanticism. Although there remain profound differences between the EU and its trans-Atlantic partner and tensions between member states, the new Atlanticism threatens to subvert the EUs own normative principles. At the same time, Russia moved from a relatively complaisant approach to Atlanticism towards a more critical neo-revisionism, although it does not challenge the legal or normative intellectual foundations of international order. This raises the question of whether we can speak of the ‘death of Europe’ as a project intended to transcend the logic of conflict on the continent.

Russia and Europe: Whose Society?

Abstract Russia’s traditionally ambivalent relationship to ‘Europe’ is now assuming new forms. Although the country since 1991 has formally adopted the panoply of Western democratic norms, their implementation is impeded by both practical and political forms of resistance to the universalism proclaimed by its erstwhile Cold War protagonists. The unstable relationship between Russia and various levels of international society has given rise to a type of ‘cold peace’. Russia does not reject the norms advanced by the main institutions of European international society, but it objects to what it sees as their instrumental application. Thus Russia has emerged as a neo‐revisionist power, concerned not so much with advancing a set of alternative norms as ensuring the equal application of existing principles. Russia certainly does not repudiate engagement with international society, but at present is ready only for a relatively thin version. In this context Russia balks at being a passive norm‐taker but does not present itself as a norm‐innovator, and instead is trying to carve out a new role for itself as a norm‐enforcer.

Left or right? The CPRF and the problem of democratic consolidation in Russia

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is the largest of the successor organizations to the CPSU and, paradoxically, one of the leading conservative parties. The partys organizational development reflects the larger problem of party formation in Russia but has distinctive features of its own. The CPRFs programmatic evolution is symptomatic of the larger issue of post‐communist ideological confusion. Finally, the CPRFs contribution to the consolidation of Russian parliamentarianism in particular and the political system in general is ambivalent.

Modernisation, neo-modernisation, and comparative democratisation in Russia

There has long been a debate over whether development is a prerequisite for democracy, and by the same token, whether democracy is a precondition for development. This debate is part of the larger literature examining problems of ‘transition’, a term which is at best no more than a code word for the processes shaping accelerated and conscious transformation of a society from one type of social order to another. For some three decades, the field of comparative democratisation has focused attention on the mechanics of political transition and the creation of new democracies, accompanied by analysis of the reasons for ‘failed transitions’. While linear versions of modernisation theory have been discredited, the creation of capitalist democracies on the western model has encountered resistance. The two versions of the neo-modernisation paradigm (critical and civilisational) help us to examine the ‘transition’ dynamics of developing societies as well as providing a framework to critique existing theories.