The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia
The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia
Vladimir Gel’man
Univeristy of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © 2022 by Vladimir Gel’man
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11621795
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Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface and Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
The Politics of Bad Governance: A Framework for Analysis
CHAPTER 2
Post-Soviet Bad Governance: A Vicious Circle?
CHAPTER 3
Authoritarian Modernization: Illusions and Temptations
CHAPTER 4
Opportunities and Constraints: Policy Reforms in the 2000s
CHAPTER 5
The Technocratic Traps of Policy Reforms
CHAPTER 6
Success Stories amid Bad Governance
CHAPTER 7
The Politics of Bad Governance: Russia in Comparative Perspective
Notes
Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11621795
List of Figures and Tables
FIGURES
FIGURE 1. Rule of Law in Russia, 1996–2018, World Bank
FIGURE 2. Control of Corruption in Russia, 1996–2018, World Bank
FIGURE 3. Regulatory Quality in Russia, 1996–2018, World Bank
FIGURE 4. Government Effectiveness in Russia, 1996–2018, World Bank
FIGURE 5. GDP Per Capita and Rule of Law, 2018, World Bank
FIGURE 6. GDP Per Capita and Control of Corruption, 2018, World Bank
FIGURE 7. GDP Per Capita and Regulatory Quality, 2018, World Bank
FIGURE 8. GDP Per Capita and Government Effectiveness, 2018, World Bank
FIGURE 9. The Genesis and Effects of Bad Governance
TABLES
Table 1. Why Russia Is Not Burkina Faso
Table 2. Antinomies of Features of Good and Bad Governance
Table 3. Factors of Success of Policy Reforms
Table 4. Features and Outcomes of Policy Reforms in Russia in the 2000s
Preface
and
Acknowledgments
Since the classic statement by Samuel P. Huntington, who observed that “the most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government,”1 scholars of comparative politics have focused to a great degree on the politics of governance across the globe. While major historically oriented analyses trace the evolutionary logic of governance from ancient times to the present day,2 and numerous experts develop highly sophisticated datasets with long batteries of indicators addressed to governance-related issues,3 we still know little about the factors behind various patterns of governance and their dynamics in different states and nations. Answering the questions of why governments govern better in some countries than in others is essential for political scientists and policy analysts, politicians, and policymakers, as well as for civil activists and citizens in various countries. Certainly, accomplishing such a daunting task would require long-standing collective multidisciplinary efforts by the international scholarly community, something that lies beyond the scope of a single academic book. However, I believe that there is a need to address these questions based on analyzing the politics of governance in one country, namely post-Communist Russia. According to many accounts and assessments, present-day Russia is governed much worse than it should be and explaining its patterns of governance by putting this country-level analysis into a broader theoretical and comparative perspective may shed some light on the phenomenon of governing states beyond a single case study of a certain outlier. Therefore, I wrote this book with some hope that it might be of interest both for scholars of Russia and for experts in comparative politics of governance.
In this book, I would like to challenge a conventional wisdom that dominates the research of governance and development, namely the assumption that all countries, at least in theory, aim to improve their performance in order to achieve prosperity, and exceptions from this rule can be considered deviations. Such a view is typical for academics who teach their students with the mission of promoting scholarly excellence—we all want to be proud of our A-students with excellent grades, great knowledge, and outstanding skills. However, I grew up in communities of C-students within the late-Soviet educational establishments, where almost nobody cared about gaining knowledge, where the scholarly cheating was nearly ubiquitous, and where the skills of making good informal connections4 paved the way for high grades and better jobs. Those A-students who behaved otherwise (myself included) were regarded as outsiders in these communities, to say the least. Over time, I realized that communities of C-students—in Russia and elsewhere—are the norm, and A-students are almost an exception, rather than the reverse. C-students may convert themselves into A-students (similarly to the conversion from Saul to Paul the apostle) only under serious pressure that may provide strong incentives for improving their performance. Without these incentives, C-students will not pursue academic excellence (even though many of them could perform much better) but rather will prefer some manner of muddling through to minimize their scholarly efforts, showing little care about their future. In the worst-case scenario, they may demonstrate educational decay and deterioration in various political and institutional contexts and even irreversibly turn into F-students. Even though we all prefer A-students to their C-counterparts, understanding the rationale behind poor performance requires additional in-depth analysis of the causes and mechanisms of mediocrity, carelessness, and dishonesty to a larger degree than those of excellence, high motivation, and integrity.