Hello good people,
I’m curious, how may we best describe the current s/State of Russia.
To whit, an Oligarchy, a Plutocracy, Kleptocracy or maybe a good old fashioned benign dictatorship.
What is the current, proper description of Russian Government?
Bonus question for five points: ‘Does Putin have an End game in Ukraine?’
Peter
May be a question for Great Debates, up to you mods.
I think it’s pretty similar to a US-type oligarchy but interestingly in the Victorian sense i.e. proto/early capitalism.
The fact of it being a relatively new democracy is absolutely key - it’ll take several decades to adjust.
This is going to be moved to Great Debates soon, but my take would be “autocracy”. It’s certainly not totalitarian, and the word “dictatorship” to me is a bit vague since it covers (at least in my understanding) a very wide range of systems, of which autocracy would be a subset. To me, the defining characteristic of an autocracy is that the constitutional mechanism of decision-making with various organs of the state remains in place and continues to function more than just nominally, but the autocrat exercises enormous influence on the other branches of government.
Given the events of the last few months, it seems pretty clear to me that Oligarchy is not a valid description of what is occurring in Russia right now. None of the oligarchs are better off now, and the majority are doing far worse. What they get from the occupation of Crimea and the trouble in the rest of Ukraine is microscopic compared to what the sanctions are doing to their personal wealth. And their positions are far more tenuous than they were previously- Putin could nationalize any or all of their companies and have them tossed in jail with little to no political repercussions. If he blamed them for the current economic state and used their seized wealth for pubic works it might even improve his approval rating.
What it should be considered is still up for debate, but I think someone has a lot of work cut out for them if they want to put Oligopoly or Oligarchy back on the table.
The US isn’t an oligarchy.
No, Alex Jones isn’t a reliable source in this matter.
The term that probably best describes it is a “managed democracy.” That’s a situation where democratic institutions do exist and function in a more-or-less free and fair manner but one party manages to dominate them, usually through control of the media, patronage, and crony capitalism. See also Malaysia or Mexico under the PRI.
During the Yeltsin years, the elected government was so ineffective that the people who were busy scooping huge sectors of the Soviet economy into their pockets during privatization were able to run the country as a de facto oligarchy. But Putin has managed to make the oligarchs largely subservient to government, and now it’s more of a symbiotic relationship with the ruling party making sure the government creates conditions favorable to the former oligarch’s continued enrichment in exchange for them helping create conditions favorable to the party’s continued electoral success.
Of course, part of Putin’s continued political success is simply the fact that the economy has massively improved since he took power, which is in turn largely dependent on high energy prices over the past decade. If recent trends continue there, we might soon find out if a genuine democratic handover of power is possible.
It pretty much is.
If you haven’t quite grasped it yet, having a vote once in a while and being told to trust in a couple of bits of old paper and some Wayne’s World superhero guys from 250 years ago doesn’t quite cut it in the face of 21st century capitalism:
Further - and as a simple example - Goldman Sachs started directing economic policy openly in 2007.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html
Who is Alex Jones?
Russia sounds most like a “kleptocracy”. it is a common enough accusation and the similarities to a mafia-style “mob” rule are striking.
I tend to agree with Schnitte. Are there any real centers of power, within the government or Russian society at large, that are not dominated by Putin at this point?
I have looked into Putin’s soul, but reached very different conclusions than Dubya did.
I think the simplest explanation is that Vladimir Putin is both an extremely ambitious man and an extremely patriotic Russian. WHich means:
He wants Russia to be the most important and powerful country in the world again.
He believes Russia has both a right and a DUTY to dominate the world.
He believes he should be in absolute control of Russia.
For such a man, the Yeltsin years must ave been Hell. In those years, Russia was weak, poor, and worst of all, IRRELEVANT to the rest of the world. Nobody feared Russia under Yeltsin. Almost everyone fears Russia to SOME degree now.
This is better suited to Great Debates than General Questions.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
[QUOTE=BOOM!]
It pretty much is.
[/QUOTE]
Then every country is an oligarchy, so it’s really just another way of saying ‘government’.
He’s the guy who makes the same claims you are. 
[QUOTE=pdunderhill]
To whit, an Oligarchy, a Plutocracy, Kleptocracy or maybe a good old fashioned benign dictatorship.
[/QUOTE]
Well, using BOOM!s definition, it is of course an oligarchy. But I’d say it’s most closely related to a kleptocracy.
Probably to have the whole thing blow over and eventually The West to stop paying attention so Russia can snag the whole thing when no one is looking. I doubt that will happen, though notice that it’s not high on the list of news worthy topics lately, so I think the public is less focused on it. But I think originally Putin thought he could basically annex the whole thing in a coup de main and have it all settled before anyone could do anything about it (or would care enough after the fact). Now that this didn’t happen as quickly or as easily as he originally thought, and now that the sanctions along with the lower price of oil is really hurting Russia I think he’s still stubbornly clinging to his original plan more because he doesn’t want to look weak by backing down, so not sure what his ‘End game’ is at this point.
This doesn’t appear to be quite as nuanced as the conclusions of the professors from North Western and Princeton.
And, of course, if it came from ‘professors from North Western and Princeton’ it MUST be true. Here is one objection I see in a quick google search (it’s a blog article, so grain of salt), but just reading over what you linked too there seems a major whiff of bias to me.
It is a plutocracy.
As for Russia, I would compare it to Mexico during the decades of the PRI hegemony – a quasi-democracy, with one dominant party and the others marginalized but not actually suppressed, with elections often unfairly rigged but still not entirely meaningless.
Russia is a pseudo-democracy / kleptocracy that has been very ill-managed.
Elections in Russia at least as of yet, do not appear to be outright rigged. However, Putin has set up a legal system and political climate in which he has been able to get essentially all opposition media closed down and where he is able to have any significantly powerful political opponents arrested. Prior to Putin oligarchs pulled the strings, now Putin hand picks who gets to be an oligarch and which of them get to go to jail, and they are more like top-level quasi-governmental functionaries who manage the large companies that have sweetheart relationships with the Kremlin.
When you control the media and can have powerful opponents sent to prison at a whim then it is very unlikely you will lose an election, even one that isn’t rigged. Especially not when you had a decade of strong commodity-driven economic growth and when you know how to perfectly play up nationalism in Russia.
Russians are a cynical people, not necessarily predisposed to trusting government. But what Putin has done is staged things so that Russians identify with the government as “them” in a nationalistic fervor, and they direct their natural affinity for cynicism to the boogeyman of the “West.” So instead of being cynical about Putin’s government, the people have largely bought into Putin’s cynical interpretation of world events that portrays Russia as the victim of essentially a conspiracy on the part of the West to “destroy” Russia.
In terms of management, instead of trying to diversify the economy during the good years, or even just structure it so that it is more open to normal business practices, what Putin has done is used the economic boom to enrich his allies and to entrench inefficient and uncompetitive arrangements in the economy that serve the interests of his allies first and foremost. This has made Putin’s Russia one that is essentially a slave to global commodities prices in a way that the powerful Soviet Union never was–and it’s difficult to structure an economy more ineffectively than the Soviets did, but Putin has done just that.
Well put.
Look, in their long history, the Russians have almost ALWAYS been ruled over by a strongman or tyrant of one kind or another. And for the msot part, they LIKE it that way! There were the Mongols, the tsars, the communists, and now Putin.
Their experience with democracy is, what, a few months of Kerensky and a few years of Yeltsin? Not exactly inspiring.
Well, it is because they don’t trust one another, essentially.
Russia is not a kleptocracy or plutocracy or oligarchy because, as of 2015, Putin is firmly in charge. For it to be an oligarchy or plutocracy the business leaders would be running the show, and Putin would be an ineffectual chump powerless to stop them, or a stooge who worked for them. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, Putin is the guy in charge. If Putin gets annoyed with an oligarch he calls up his guys and the oligarch gets pulled out of his mansion and shoved in a dirty prison cell.
So yes, there are rich guys in Russia with a lot of power, but the Russian state is back in control, and Putin controls the Russian state. Putin isn’t a kleptocrat either, he’s not using the apparatus of the Russian state to fill secret offshore bank accounts so he can live in luxury. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of secret offshore bank accounts stuffed with insane amounts of money, but Putin isn’t looting Russia to enrich himself, why would he when he controls Russia? Enriching and strengthening Russia and the Russian state increases his power, he doesn’t need private bank accounts to provide for his needs, he has all of Russia to do that for him.
Putin is an autocratic leader. The fact that he’d probably win a for-real fair election if one were held tomorrow doesn’t mean he’s not a dictator. He’s a dictator because he rules by fiat, not because he’s unpopular. The problem with dictatorship is that sooner or later the dictator’s decisions become increasingly unpopular and they have to resort to increasingly intrusive steps to maintain their rule. If nobody can safely tell you that your latest plan won’t work you’re likely to make stupider and stupider blunders, all to the cheers of your surrounding stooges.