Russian Autocracy Redux: Path Dependency and the Late Modern State

Abstract

Path dependency emerged as a theoretical approach in the social sciences (specifically economics) in the 1980s, and has gradually been applied with greater frequency in political science. As a form of historical institutionalism, it shows promise of casting significant light on processes of political stability and change. The present study examines several large-scale defining traits of Russian politics and governance from the perspective of historical path dependence: to date, most applications of path-dependency theory to Russian studies have focused more on economics than politics and governance per se. This essay applies core ideas in path dependency theory to the case of Russia in the early twenty-first century, focusing on significant political traits that emerged during the Putin and Medvedev presidencies. This study proceeds from the view that politics revolves fundamentally around three core axes: identity, interests, and institutions; every aspect of political life, arguably, falls under one or more of these dimensions and all show path-dependent tendencies. The traits of Russian governance that show evidence of pathdependent self-replication include: (1) tendencies toward monocratic manifestations of political power; (2) political authority being conceived and exercised in neo-autocratic modes that deliberately control, marginalize, or patently exclude broad and efficacious participatory democracy; (3) an apparently instinctive trend toward political centralization; and (4) a tendency to vacillate historically between a weak and strong state, with powerful historical impulses toward the latter. By applying core ideas in pathdependency theory to the case of Russian politics in the early twenty-first century, our understanding is deepened.

Russian Autocracy Redux: Path Dependency and the Late Modern State

“…16 My specific focus, rather, is on certain aspects of Russian politics for which a path-dependence approach is useful, specifically, in the areas of the perceived nature and purpose of public authority (vlast), the scope of legitimate state authority, and the content of national identity. According to this approach, the derailing of Russian democracy was neither foreordained by previous failures, nor could it have been definitively predicted on the basis of any extant method of social science.…”

“…67 Perhaps very tellingly, as early as 1997 Giovanni Sartori referred to the 1993 Russian constitution itself as "essentially monocratic" and an "ill-conceived" attempt to institutionalize the underlying principle of an "oscillating diarchy" at the heart of the French-style dual executive system. 68 From this perspective, it should not surprise us that the institutional basis for the monocratic character of Russian politics under Putin had emerged so quickly after the demise of the USSR. One might offer that 'positive feedback' as a response to post-Soviet chaos came in the form of lower political "costs" of reverting to authoritarian form than to remaining on a tenuous democratic path.…”

“…In the Russian case, however, the military's historical and contemporary aloofness from politics appears to be grounded in a similar political cultural trait of disengagement from politics that characterizes the population as a whole. 76 It is especially noteworthy that such disengagement has persisted throughout Russian history, such that even in the clearest circumstance of likely intervention-the October 1993 crisis between Yeltsin and the parliament-the military remained conspicuously aloof. 77 The overall pattern of military involvement in politics in the late modern world, and the Russian military's aversion to doing so even amid such inviting conditions as the 1993 October crisis, suggests that deeper, longer-term causes were at work than the typical shortterm variables-such as immediate economic conditions, or contingent factors, such as specific personalities, that might otherwise account for the feeble resistance to a reassertion of neo-autocratic control by Boris Yeltsin.…”

“…Moreover, it had done so with a far greater degree of sophistication, allowing Moscow to reach the status not only of a regional Great Power but of a global Superpower." 31 This was done on the basis of the Bolshevik program, whose main impact "must be traced on a more fundamental level, namely in the recreation of such self-reinforcing institutions amongst the higher levels of the power establishment that once had guaranteed the sustainability of the Muscovite and imperial autocracy. "…”

“…And why is it that such splashes of popular governance are reckoned by astute Russian analysts as necessarily transitory forms, as mere stages back to a more authentic, perhaps essentially immutable, historical pattern of Russian life?" 7 Whether or not the resurgence of authoritarian rule may cycle back to a more democratic mode remains to be seen; but our understanding of the prospects of it doing so will be considerably helped if we can come to a deeper understanding of why political patterns change, and just as importantly, why they remain the same or revert to the defining traits of long-held conventions of governance.…”