The place of Russia’s political regime (2003–2023) on a conceptual map of the world’s autocracies

Abstract

This study places Russia’s political regime into a comparative perspective by developing a conceptual framework that classifies authoritarian regimes along two dimensions, those of regime-specific institutionalization and electoral institutionalization. The resulting conceptual map places Russia’s political regime of 2003–2023 into the category of regimes that, while including an electoral component, score relatively low on the dimension of regime-specific institutionalization. At the same time, the conceptual map allows for tracing the regime’s evolution along the two dimensions. The analysis reveals that over time, the regime has undergone a staged transformation from electoral authoritarianism with relatively strong, albeit mostly informal, constraints on the exercise of executive power to a full-fledged personalist dictatorship. This process was finalized after the 2020 constitutional amendments, and became manifest in Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2022.