Superpresidentialism and the Military: The Russian Variant

Abstract

This article explains the evolution of the presidential‐military nexus in post‐Soviet Russia. Why has the role of presidents become the overriding factor in Russian civil‐military relations? What explains the differences between the relationships Russia's two post‐Soviet presidents, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, developed with the armed forces? I argue that following the 1993 crisis between the president and the legislature, and even more so after the 1996 presidential elections, the Russian polity has gradually become a superpresidential authoritarian system and the type of executive‐military relations that has evolved is consistent with this designation. Rather than establishing civilian oversight of the armed forces shared between the legislative and the executive branches, Yeltsin and Putin created a state in which civilian control has become synonymous with presidential control.

The evolution of war: theory and controversy

“…Given the ancestral importance of personal leadership for many coalitional endeavors, it is unsurprising that one of the most remarkable challenges faced by developing countries is that of building trust in institutions and the 'rule of law'. Democratic transitions the world over are frustrated by regression to authoritarianism or 'superpresidentialism', and often dominated by cults of personality that privilege personal relationships over trust in state-level institutions (Ishiyama and Kennedy 2001;Barany 2008). Although institutional trust is challenging to develop for many reasons, the ultimate reality is that state-level institutions are an evolutionary novelty to the mind's eye.…”