Revisiting Russia’s Managed Democracy: Experiences as a Limited Access Order

The failure of democratization theory to explain the transitions (or lack thereof) in the post-communist world after the dissolution of the Soviet Union opened a whole field of newly created regime-types for academics to theorize and categorize. Numerous theoretical frameworks have long been applied to analyze the Russian “managed democracy”. Conclusions have followed that Moscow has the tendency to utilize economic and political assets for the perpetuation of their ‘soft-authoritarian’ regime. Exploring the shortages in the existing literature, this paper looks at the applications of the explanatory model of authoritarian behavior, developed by North, Wallis, Webb and Weingast in their book “The Shadow of Violence”. Moreover, this newly developed interpretation of the transition period brings a valuable insight in the mechanisms behind the formation and development of authoritarian and hybrid regimes by evaluating its epistemological and conceptual reasoning in non-Western cultures...Show moreThe failure of democratization theory to explain the transitions (or lack thereof) in the post-communist world after the dissolution of the Soviet Union opened a whole field of newly created regime-types for academics to theorize and categorize. Numerous theoretical frameworks have long been applied to analyze the Russian “managed democracy”. Conclusions have followed that Moscow has the tendency to utilize economic and political assets for the perpetuation of their ‘soft-authoritarian’ regime. Exploring the shortages in the existing literature, this paper looks at the applications of the explanatory model of authoritarian behavior, developed by North, Wallis, Webb and Weingast in their book “The Shadow of Violence”. Moreover, this newly developed interpretation of the transition period brings a valuable insight in the mechanisms behind the formation and development of authoritarian and hybrid regimes by evaluating its epistemological and conceptual reasoning in non-Western cultures. While the conventional explanations tend to focus on hybrid regimes as a stable intermediate entities that need to be pushed towards democracy by removing their authoritarian qualities, the conclusions of this paper will focus attention on how authoritarian qualities can be utilized to facilitate a more smooth and non-violent transitions towards democracy. This alternative angle in transitional studies highlights the need for a new approach in policy making when dealing with such regimes.Show less

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Revisiting Russia’s Managed Democracy: Experiences as a Limited Access Order