CDDRL Number 113 WORKING PAPERS May 2009 Over-Managed Democracy: Evaluating Vladimir Putin’s Presidency Sam Stone Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and The Rule of Law Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Additional working papers appear on CDDRL’s website: http://cddrl.stanford.edu. Center on Democracy, Development, and The Rule of Law Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Stanford University Encina Hall Stanford, CA 94305 Phone: 650-724-7197 Fax: 650-724-2996 http://cddrl.stanford.edu/ About the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) CDDRL was founded by a generous grant from the Bill and Flora Hewlett Foundation in October in 2002 as part of the Stanford Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. The Center supports analytic studies, policy relevant research, training and outreach activities to assist developing countries in the design and implementation of policies to foster growth, democracy, and the rule of law. Over-Managed Democracy: Evaluating Vladimir Putin’s Presidency December 2008 Sam Stone When President Vladimir Putin first assumed office, Russian observers could engage in an interesting debate about the future trajectory of Russia’s political system. There were ominous signs, as early as the year 2000, that Putin aspired to weaken checks on presidential power and eliminate sources of political and economic opposition. Yet, at that time, defenders of Putin could posit that some of the Kremlin’s political reforms were not really antidemocratic, but rather policies aimed at restoring order and stability — that is, necessary corrections in response to the tumultuous 1990s. By 2008, however, this debate was over. Among outside politicians, academics, and pundits following Russian affairs, an overwhelming majority concur that the Russian regime under Putin consolidated power beyond the point of ‘true democracy’. The debate now surrounds the causes, severity, and final destination of this autocratic trajectory; only the most stalwart defenders of Putin continue to deny the trend line. Putin did not inherit a consolidated democracy when he became president in 2000, and Russia today remains much freer and more democratic than the Soviet Union. 1 Yet, the actual democratic content of the formal institutions of Russian democracy has eroded considerably in the past eight years. Increasingly not just the substance, but even the form of the current Russian political system, appears authoritarian. Russian democracy is best characterized as “over-managed democracy,” where elites pay lip-service to democratic norms while actually undermining them. Putin has not radically violated the 1993 constitution, cancelled elections or arrested thousands of political opponents – but the constitution has become largely irrelevant, elections are not competitive, and the political opposition has been effectively sidelined. Putin has systematically weakened or destroyed every check on his power, while at the same time strengthening the state’s ability to violate the constitutional rights of citizens. The Kremlin shaped its model of governance over the course of President Putin’s first term in office: faced with a choice between strengthening the democratic elements introduced by former President Boris Yeltsin or tightening state control over the political, economic, and societal sectors, the Kremlin opted for the latter. The Kremlin coined the term ‘managed democracy’ to describe the increasing centralization of power in Moscow, and thus instigated the reforms they argued were crucial to getting Russia back on track as a world superpower. However, given the number and scope of the reforms implemented to increase Kremlin power and control over other branches of government and non-state actors, the term “managed democracy” understates the current state of Russian affairs. In reality, Putin has built an “over-managed democracy,” characterized predominantly by a ‘verticality of power’ that ends at the Kremlin’s door. This paper traces why Putin was able to construct an over-managed democracy, the form over-managed democracy has taken, and the pitfalls of such a form of governance. Section I 1 On the illiberal elements of Russian democracy before Putin, see Michael McFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Cornell University Press, 2001), chapter nine. catalogs the reasons behind Putin’s rise to widespread popularity in Russia – popularity he still holds today; this section concentrates on the consolidation of Putin’s power through ‘informal’ means, or strategies and developments that did not involve legal changes to the Russian system of government. Section II catalogs the legal reforms to Russia’s government that, in general, followed the informal consolidation of power at two levels, by both destroying Russian federalism and undermining the checks on the Presidency within the federal government; this section concludes by examining the 2008 Presidential election, which illustrates the essentially uncompetitive nature of democracy in Russia today. Section III examines the effects of the consolidation of political power on Russian foreign and economic policy, and concludes by evaluating the hopes for democratic liberalization in the near future. Part I: Explaining Putin’s Popularity Boris Yeltsin’s 1999 New Year’s Eve resignation left Russia, and the rest of the world, astonished. Not only did Yeltsin turn over power before he was constitutionally required, but he left it in the hands of Vladimir Putin. Only months before, Putin had been a political nobody; now he was the front-runner in the upcoming presidential election. Compared with heavyweight candidates like Yevgeny Primakov and Gennady Zyuganov, Putin had little experience in the national spotlight. Yeltsin had made him a Deputy Prime Minister only four months before, and Putin had begun the position with an abysmal thirty-one percent approval rating. One leading oligarch, Boris Berezovsky— whose power would soon be crushed by Putin— speculated that if Putin won, he would be a puppet leader easily manipulated by Yeltsin’s cohorts. Eight years later, Berezovsky’s speculation seems laughable. After winning the election, Putin’s popularity rocketed upwards and his approval ratings remained above seventy percent for almost his entire time in office. Today, they reach almost ninety percent. During his second term, Putin enjoyed the most domestic support of any world leader. What propelled Vladimir Putin’s meteoric rise? Some theorize that his popularity stems mainly from economic growth, but this explanation alone is insufficient. Putin’s policies towards Chechnya, the media, the oligarchs, and Russian culture have all played essential roles in helping him legitimize the power he commands today, even after stepping down from the Presidency. Widespread approval enabled Putin’s centralization of power; understanding the origins of his popularity is the first step towards understanding how Russia is ruled today. Chechnya and Terrorism Chechnya was to lift Putin – a figure with little national recognition in the summer of 1999 - to the “peak of the political Olympus.2” The only area of national policy where 2 Lilia Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), p. 39. Putin had made an impact before his designation as Yeltsin’s heir, Chechnya had already become inextricably linked to Putin in the minds of the Russian public during the 2000 Presidential campaign. In the run-up to the election, the western press speculated at length about the prospects for Russian democracy, but this masked the primary concern of most Russians: security. The Moscow apartment bombings dominated national discussion and many Russians were prepared to trade civil liberties for safety. The restoration of order in Chechnya, and the assuaging of the public’s security concerns, was the first step towards Putin’s eventual political dominance. The predominantly Muslim republic of Chechnya has epitomized Russia’s internal divisions for centuries. In 1994, President Boris Yeltsin sent Russian troops into the republic in an attempt to end separatist calls for independence, expecting an easy victory. Russian forces, composed largely of “untrained, unpaid, underfed, under-equipped, badly led conscripts,” quickly found themselves in a quagmire. 3 Many Russian soldiers objected to the invasion of Chechnya, and the Chechen ‘guerillas’ turned out to be better organized and armed than Moscow had supposed. Soon, families in Moscow and St. Petersburg were turning on their TVs every night to footage of body bags being flown back from Grozny. Chechen rebels successfully retook the capital in August 1996, and soon after, the fighting spilled over into neighboring regions when separatists took a hospital hostage in the adjacent region of Stavropol Kray. This proved to be the turning point in the war, and realizing he was clinging to power by a thread, Yeltsin sued for peace. The conflict ended in negotiations, from which Chechnya emerged with de facto independence. The conflict did not die after the 1996 accords. Chechen paramilitaries continued to terrorize neighboring regions and in August 1999, Islamists operating out of Chechnya invaded the neighboring region of Dagestan. Rampant kidnapping became a way of life in Chechnya, and even far away from the Caucasus, the situation remained at the forefront of most Russians’ minds. Chechen militants refused to halt their