The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia

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.

In a way, states and nations are similar to students’ communities. Without strong domestic and/or international incentives, they may not strive toward better performance and may not be interested in improving the quality of their governance. Similar to C-students, the rulers of these states and nations govern their countries much worse than they should, and at the same time may receive certain short-term benefits from their mediocre performance at the expense of their fellow citizens and of generations of their successors. I would argue that the persistence of patterns of bad governance is primarily driven by politics because of the combinations of ideas, interests, and incentives of rulers and elites. In other words, I consider bad governance to be an agency-driven phenomenon, and therefore a scholarly focus on the causes and mechanisms of the politics of governance is necessary for addressing the questions of good and bad governance. This focus may help not only to explain the peculiarities of Russia’s underperformance but also to explore how and why practices of bad governance emerged, persisted, and evolved over time in various political and institutional contexts. My book is aimed at such an exploration.

This book resulted from several academic endeavors. First and foremost, I was extraordinarily lucky to work in two universities, two cities, and two countries—at the European University at Saint Petersburg (EUSP) in Russia, and at the University of Helsinki (UH) in Finland. Being part of two different scholarly communities enormously benefited this book project and other research ventures. I would like to thank my colleagues from both EUSP and UH for the great intellectual atmosphere and for our fruitful exchange of ideas. Kaarina Aitamurto, Sari Autio-Sarasmo, Daria Gritsenko, Boris Firsov, Anna-Liisa Heusala, Marina Khmelnitskaya, Ivan Kurilla, Katalin Miklossy, Ella Paneyakh, Katri Pynnöniemi, Mikhail Sokolov, Anna Temkina, Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, Pavel Usanov, and Veljko Vujacic provided me with great food for thought in various ways over the years. Special thanks go to my superiors at the EUSP and the UH, who made it possible for me to be a servant of two masters and move back and forth between Russian and Finnish environments, similarly to a dolphin who jumps back and forth between the fresh waters of the sea and the open air. I am greatly indebted for this unique opportunity to Grigorii Golosov, Markku Kangaspuro, Oleg Kharkhordin, Markku Kivinen, and Vadim Volkov—all of them supported me both in intellectual and in administrative terms. My coauthors of various scholarly pieces, Hilary Appel, Andrey Starodubtsev, Dmitry Travin, and Andrey Zaostrovtsev, greatly contributed to some chapters and paragraphs of this book and offered me invaluable experience of successful academic collaboration. In addition, former students, who later became scholars themselves, helped me to formulate and crystallize some of the elements of my writings—many thanks to Aleksey Gilev, Kirill Kalinin, Anton Shirikov, Andrey Shcherbak, Anna Tarasenko, and Tatiana Tkacheva. Two other former students, Egor Lazarev and Margarita Zavadskaya, were the first readers of the book manuscript, and their friendly yet critical suggestions and recommendations provided many valuable insights. The financial support received from the Academy of Finland and the Department of Political Science at the EUSP enables me to cover many costs related to this book project.

Drafts of various chapters were discussed in academic seminars and workshops held at the EUSP, the UH, Columbia University, the Higher School of Economics at Saint Petersburg, Perm State University, Princeton University, Sciences Po Paris, the University of Dundee, the University of Michigan, Uppsala University, and Yale University. Major conferences of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security (PONARS Eurasia) and ASEEES annual conventions served as key milestones in crafting the building blocks of this book. There is no way to thank all the participants and discussants, whose questions and comments were important. I owe special debts to Mark Beissinger, Irina Busygina, Anna Dekalchuk, Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, Timothy Frye, Sam Greene, Sergei Guriev, Henry Hale, Alexander Libman, Leonid Polishchuk, Kirill Rogov, Cameron Ross, Andrey Semenov, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Maria Snegovaya, Konstantin Sonin, Regina Smyth, Lucan Way, and Susanne Wengle. The efficient administrative support from Anna Gasanova, Tatiana Khruleva, Eeva Korteniemi, Anna Korhonen, and Ira Österberg made this project feasible. Aleksei Pobedonostsev and Sergei Kim provided significant technical assistance with some data and visualization. The friendly, detailed, and nuanced linguistic assistance by Alexei Stephenson was essential for making the manuscript readable. I truly appreciate the great interest and excellent encouragement of Elizabeth Demers from the University of Michigan Press, who endorsed this book project and made it possible—without her it would probably not have happened—and the whole publishing team deserve many warm words for their help. Three anonymous reviewers of the book manuscript made several useful comments and critical points. Last but not least, my wife Oxana supported me over all these journeys, constantly demonstrating many instances of good governance in our family: my outstanding debts to her will probably never be fully paid. Needless to say, none of the above persons and organizations are responsible for any errors and flawed interpretations. All arguments in this book solely reflect my own viewpoints, which may not coincide with their opinions.

The early versions of some parts of this book previously appeared in the form of articles. Elements of chapter 1 are based upon “Political Foundations of Bad Governance in Post-Soviet Eurasia: Towards a Research Agenda” (East European Politics 33, no. 4 [2017], © Taylor & Francis), and elements of chapter 2 use parts of “The Vicious Circle of Post-Soviet Neopatrimonialism in Russia” (Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 5 [2016], © Taylor & Francis). Chapter 4 is based on “Opportunities and Constraints of Authoritarian Modernisation: Russian Policy Reforms of the 2000s” (Europe-Asia Studies 68, no. 1 [2016], © University of Glasgow, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. on behalf of the University of Glasgow), coauthored with Andrey Starodubtsev. Chapter 5 is based on “Politics versus Policy: Technocratic Traps of Russian Policy Reforms” (Russian Politics 3, no. 2 [2018], © Brill). Chapter 6 is based on “Exceptions and Rules: Success Stories and Bad Governance in Russia” (Europe-Asia Studies 73, no. 6 [2021], © University of Glasgow, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. on behalf of the University of Glasgow).

This book deals with many difficult issues of bad governance, analyzing rent-seeking and corruption as cornerstones of a certain politico-economic order, and the reader might become depressed because of the gloomy pictures of these practices and their effects. However, one should not fall into the deadly sin of sloth—the most useless, fruitless, and hopeless of all deadly sins. This is why I wrote this book with something of a “bias for hope”5 that it will make a small contribution to overcoming pathologies of bad governance in Russia and elsewhere. I dedicate this book to the many activists, journalists, scholars, civil servants, and ordinary citizens who resist the politics of bad governance in one way or another and who struggle for good governance in their respective countries and all over the world.

Saint Petersburg—Helsinki

September 2021