Democracy and Enhanced State Capacity

The real obstacle to creating a functioning and effective Russian state capable of providing basic security for its people is not, of course, the popular election of provincial governors. Rather, it is the challenge of creating foundational political institutions that engender reliable chains of authority and make officials at all levels of government more broadly and systematically accountable. Can an authoritarian, rather than democratic, Russian state accomplish this task?

The Soviet experience indicates that institutionalization even of a brutal and massively coercive kind can indeed work, but it demonstrates as well that inflexible, undemocratic institutions will not necessarily provide stable and effective governance for very long. As firmly institutionalized as it may have appeared to be, the Soviet regime gave way like an intact-looking but dry-rotted piece of wood once Gorbachev ended the CPSU's coercive monopoly over the state and the economy.

Indeed, one could even argue that the Soviet form of authoritarianism was if anything excessively institutionalized. The party and the command economy kept regional actors in line, but the system buckled and ultimately snapped because it could not respond resiliency and creatively to change. It failed, moreover, even on its own materialist terms. For not only did it take a terrible toll on political and civil freedoms, but it also never managed to produce sustainable economic growth or a decent quality of life for the average Russian citizen. As with the Habsburg or Ottoman empires, historians of the future may one day come to regard not the Soviet Union's collapse, but rather its ability to endure for so long despite its own rigidities and defects, as the thing which most cries out for explanation.

A truly competitive, federal democracy in Russia is likely to promote robust governance more effectively than did either the Soviet system or the low-quality democracy that obtained under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Institutions will be key. At the heart of a federal democracy must be a competitive political-party system that becomes institutionalized through the regular occurrence of free and fair elections. Such an arrangement would better accomplish Putin's goals of creating a more governable and secure Russian state than would a further retreat toward authoritarianism. Far from canceling elections in the provinces, Putin should be advocating the creation of more elected offices throughout Russia as a way of building a truly competitive party system.

The notion that political parties are essential to the building of democracy is well known and widely accepted. What is more novel is the idea that parties can also prove crucial in maintaining a cohesive, effective state. Parties serve as conduits through which political persuasion and influence can flow between civil society and the state, and also between political actors in the capital and their provincial counterparts. Parties can promote coherence in policy platforms across even the largest nation-states. In short, parties can solve problems of collective action by knitting the polity together, as well as by aggregating interests into agendas among which voters can choose. Parties create webs of reciprocity between national and local officials, while extending accountability for policy creation and implementation beyond one man or the narrow interests of his cronies.

One of the more striking ironies of the situation in Russia today is that Putin-who is so bothered by the (mis)rule of miniature, provincial-level oligarchies-is trying to run the whole of his very large country through precisely the kinds of undemocratic methods most favored by the miniature oligarchs themselves. Like Yeltsin before him, Putin has assiduously avoided official affiliation with any national political party, preferring instead to rule in a nontransparent fashion through a group of family members and longtime friends.

Whether regional political elites are trying to hang on to benefits extracted from the disorder that reigned immediately after the Soviet system fell apart or are merely following Yeltsin's and Putin's examples, they have worked against the institutionalization of politics, and in particular, against the development of parties. The longer and more effectively the growth of parties is stymied, the more easily can these elites control the pace and scope of political inclusion and protect their rent-seeking activities. Under Yeltsin's low-grade democracy, national parties were of little use or concern to provincial governors when they stood for election. Such feeble parties as Russia had could furnish little or nothing in the way of campaign funding, policy proposals, or practical organizational assistance. To whom would any sensible politician turn as an alternative means of support? The answer was local notables. In return for their financial and political support, governors elected in the absence of competitive political parties have supplied their local patrons with rafts of financial favors.

One of the most valuable services that Russia's regional governments provide to their local business supporters is protection from the rigors of competition. Barriers to market entry through licensing, direct subsidies, the dispensation of marketing rights, and limitations on access to real estate are among the ways in which Russia's regional governments shield their favorite enterprises from new entrants into their markets.