When the center can hold

The primacy of politics in shaping Russian democracy

Bibliographic Data

ID6180866
AuthorsRichard D Anderson (Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles Box 951472, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472, USA, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume43
Issue4
Pages397-408
Publication date2010-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCommunist and Post-Communist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0967-067X • E-ISSN: 1873-6920
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1016/j.postcomstud.2010.10.002
OpenAlexW2053888156
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited30

Violations of rights, a weak Duma, political parties dominated by bureaucrats, and corrupt privatization are ordinarily taken as signs or even causes of the failure of democracy in Russia or at best as normal traits of electoral politics in a middle-income state. Yet all of these are natural consequences of introducing democracy in a country with the Russian electorate’s distinctive recent experience of a loss of a third of the state’s territory and half its population. In such a democracy only a centrist, not a liberal, strategy can block a return to authoritarianism, and such a strategy in Russia will subordinate rights to the task of privatization that a Duma weakened by ideological, demographic and geographic impediments to party development cannot conduct. Consequently what are taken as signs or causes of democratic failure in Russia are instead necessary effects of introducing democracy in Russia’s special circumstances

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Ideology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub