Included Files
SELECTIVE CAPITALISM AND KLEPTOCRACY
FINDINGS
- Today’s Russia is an authoritarian state where a corrupt and illiberal ruling elite maintains its power through media manipulation and the subversion of the democratic process. The leadership has no discernable desire or incentive to alter its policies, and no other force in society is currently capable of fomenting change. The initial results of the global economic crisis, which has dealt a particularly severe blow to Russia’s unbalanced and mismanaged economy, do not presage any positive shift in the fortunes of the country’s beleaguered liberal opposition.
- An appeal to common interests is unlikely to prove a solid basis for improved relations between Russia and the world’s established democracies. The Kremlin’s actions over the last eight years strongly suggest that it will seek to exploit U.S. and European overtures for rhetorical purposes, even as it spreads domestic propaganda aimed at stoking xenophobic sentiment and pursues a zero-sum foreign policy agenda intended to reduce U.S. and European influence worldwide and carve out a privileged zone of Russian interest in neighboring countries. For U.S. policymakers, the implications are gravest in Iran, where Moscow’s real aim is the maintenance of an uneasy status quo, and Afghanistan, where the Kremlin hopes to make U.S. and NATO supply routes contingent on Russian beneficence.
- The Russian authorities have embarked on a campaign to undercut the integrity of standards- based institutions that focus on democracy and human rights while building up regional institutions that unite authoritarian states around military and security cooperation. Targets for obstruction include the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights with the OSCE, whose election monitoring has exposed the workings of decorative democracy, and the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, whose rulings have highlighted corruption and other official misconduct in Russia. Meanwhile, Russia has favored institutions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brings together China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and pointedly relegates all rights concerns to the sovereign realm of individual regimes.
- Expect things to get worse before they get better. The primary goal of the Russian elite is not to advance an abstract ideal of the national interest or restore some imagined Soviet idyll, but to retain its hold on money and power. Current economic conditions threaten this goal, and the ruling cliques, to the extent that they are capable of concerted action in a crisis situation, will likely respond by tightening the screws at home, stoking anti- Western sentiment, and provoking conflicts they feel they can exploit. But the cornerstone of Russia’s putative restoration under Putin is the improved material well-being of the populace. If this crumbles, popular support may crumble with it, opening the door to change but also to considerable danger.
June 4 2009 EVENT
On June 4, 2009, a high level conference in Washington DC launched the "Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians" study.
IN THE NEWS
MEDIA
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