Maria Snegovaya: Why Russia’s Democracy Never Began

2023-07-31 |

Abstract: Scholars often blame Russia”s recent re-autocratization on mistakes of individual leaders: Yeltsin or Putin. This essay casts doubt on such accounts. It argues instead that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced not a democratic transition but a temporary weakening of the state (incumbent capacity). This is evidenced by a lack of elite rotation and the preservation of the same type of formal and informal institutions that characterized Russia’s political system in the past. Accordingly, subsequent re-autocratization of Russian politics was just a matter of time.

Maria Snegovaya’s article for the Journal of Democracy (Volume 34, Number 3, July 2023; Johns Hopkins University Press) can be accessed here.