Saint Petersburg—Helsinki
September 2021
The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia
CHAPTER
1
The Politics of Bad Governance
A Framework for Analysis
IT IS A GIVEN that the quality of governance makes a difference. It determines the developmental trajectories of states and nations, as well as the everyday lives of its citizens. Why are some countries governed worse than others? In particular, why is contemporary Russia governed so much worse than one would expect, judging by its degree of socioeconomic development? In the comparative perspective, contemporary Russia represents an example of a high-capacity authoritarian state that exhibits the main features of bad governance, such as a lack and/or perversion of the rule of law, near-universal rent-seeking, ubiquitous corruption, poor quality of state regulation, widespread abuse of public funds, and overall ineffectiveness of government. These features have been demonstrated in numerous recent assessments of Russia vis-à-vis many other countries, conducted by various reputable international agencies.1 The evidence presented there is endorsed by investigative journalists,2 policy analysts,3 political activists,4 and filmmakers,5 and the combination of different sources portray a rather gloomy picture of patterns of governance in Russia—this country performs worse than some of its post-Soviet neighbors6 and the other countries that belongs to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group.7 However, one should go beyond these critical assessments and address more fundamental questions about the sources and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond. Why did bad governance emerge and persist in certain countries, and to what extent can the quality of governance be improved over time by certain policies?
Scholars and observers have addressed these issues since ancient times but have not provided comprehensive answers as of yet. Perhaps the first full-fledged vivid exploration of issues of quality of governance appeared in visual arts. In 1338, the city council of Siena, then a medieval oligarchic republic, commissioned two sets of frescoes to decorate the council hall (Sala dei Nove) in its residence, Palazzo Pubblico, from the local artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The following year, Lorenzetti produced the series of frescoes, known as The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, which are still located in Palazzo Pubblico today. These artworks, justly considered masterpieces of early Renaissance secular painting, presented six scenes of contemporary Siena and its neighboring areas, and through images, reflected normative ideas of good and bad governance that are still important almost seven centuries later. Art historians,8 and political theorists such as Quentin Skinner,9 have mostly focused on the set of three frescoes that represent the Allegory of Good Government (Allegoria del Buon Governo). Such a focus is driven not only by the fact that this set has been portrayed extensively and preserved in better shape as a piece of art, but mostly because it represents the major civic virtues, such as Peace, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity, Temperance, and Justice, guided by symbols of Faith, Hope, and Charity. All of these symbols and features were essential for an understanding of good governance in the fourteenth century and have not lost their relevance in the present day. In a sense, they are not much different from a twenty-first century approach to good governance, where, for example, the highly reputable Quality of Government Institute (the QoG Institute) at the University of Gothenburg has placed a major emphasis in its research on “trustworthy, reliable, impartial, un-corrupt and competent government institutions.”10
However, what about the Allegory of Bad Government (Allegoria del Cattivo Governo), which was so vividly presented in the paired set of Lorenzetti’s frescoes and is presented on the cover of this book? One should pay attention to its central character, a devious-looking figure adorned with horns and fangs, and apparently cross-eyed. This figure is identified as Tyranny, who sits enthroned, resting his feet upon a goat (a symbol of luxury) while holding a dagger. Below the tyrant, the captive figure of Justice lies bound and swaddled, while the figures of Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War flank him, and above the tyrant float the figures of Avarice, Pride, and Vainglory. These symbols and features, according to an advice book for the city magistrate of that time, were considered the “leading enemies of human life.”11 Since the frescoes came as a pair, the whole scene demonstrated a mirror opposite of that of the Allegory of Good Government, creating a powerful reminder to the members of the city council of what they should and should not do in governing the city.
A viewer, or a reader of this book, who is familiar with politics in contemporary Russia may find a striking similarity between the image of the tyrant in Lorenzetti’s fresco and the appearance of Russia’s long-standing ruler, Vladimir Putin. Besides the apparent visual resemblance, there are important substantive parallels between the interpretation of the nature of bad governance in fourteenth-century Siena and an understanding of this phenomenon in twenty-first-century political science. The common point is that unconstrained autocratic rule is considered the main source of bad governance both then and now, and numerous vices that result from it—be they related to deceit, fraud, avarice, cruelty, or war—cause harsh and often insuperable obstacles to justice and contribute to numerous pathologies for the development of states and societies. The question of the causes and effects of bad governance has not lost its relevance since the medieval period, and in the twenty-first century, the time is ripe to reconsider these issues from a scholarly perspective.
FIGURE 1. Rule of Law in Russia, 1996–2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)
This is a book about how and why Russia, a highly developed, urbanized, well-educated, and relatively wealthy country, which demonstrated a promising potential for further advancement after the collapse of Communism and a series of complex post-Communist transformations,12 became a country with a trajectory of durable bad governance over the recent decades. Even though calls to improve the quality of governance in Russia have been made many times by political leaders and top officials, during the period of the 2000s and the 2010s there was little (if any) progress in many important dimensions of governance, regarding the rule of law control of corruption and especially, regulatory quality, as figures 1 through 4 demonstrated.13
FIGURE 2
. Control of Corruption in Russia, 1996
–
2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to
+
2.5)
FIGURE 3
. Regulatory Quality in Russia, 1996
–
2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to
+
2.5)
FIGURE 4
. Government Effectiveness in Russia, 1996
–
2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to