Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Narendra Modi in India. When leaders with authoritarian inclinations gain power in longtime democracies these days, they are frequently compared with Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin. In the United States, Donald J. Trump even invited the comparison himself, complimenting the Russian leader during his presidential election campaign as exemplifying strong leadership.

To be sure, while Putin the man is certainly one of a kind, the broader political phenomenon he represents is not. In fact, Putin is not even the true pioneer of ‘Putinism’ within the former USSR. Political systems much like Russia’s today could be found in places like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Azerbaijan as early as the 1990s, when Putin was but an out of work bureaucrat still unable to find a niche in Moscow.

Even within Russia itself at that time, when the country was teeming with competitive political life and shutting it down seemed unimaginable, travellers beyond Moscow could easily find pockets of territory where charismatic strongmen ruled by tactics very similar to those Putin wields today. These were usually not Communist era holdovers. Research, in fact, has found that former communist regional secretaries generally made poor post-Soviet strongmen, roles requiring more innovation and versatility than Russia’s old guard could usually muster.¹

Instead, Putin is both the product of a particular style of politics and its master practitioner, a style growing out of deeply rooted features of society that Russia shares with many countries of the world, especially outside Western Europe and North America – explaining why so many westerners have been so slow to understand it.

These features of society, which I call patronalism in my academic work,² essentially boil down to the centrality of personal connections (as opposed to impersonal procedures or institutional rules) when it comes to getting almost anything done. When large-scale political mobilization happens, it almost always does so through some kind of extended, hierarchically organized chains of actual personal acquaintance.

 

People are moved as part of these chains in all sorts of ways, including acting out of personal loyalty to someone else in the chain (through family, friends, co-workers), owing someone in the chain a favour, being offered a personal material inducement (bribe, patronage), or being subjected to targeted coercion (blackmail or either an implicit or explicit threat to be fired, for example). In such societies, rule of law is typically weak, corruption is usually high, ‘civic’ mobilization on the basis of principle is generally rare or limited, and one’s personal ties tend to take precedence over ideological conviction when push comes to political shove.

Political action in such places tends to follow the same rules. Parties may advocate principled positions on major issues, but their primary functions are as vehicles for patronage distribution or representing the interests of the country’s most powerful political-economic networks, which in any case may strategically work through multiple (even ideologically opposed) parties at the same time. So all-pervasive is this mode of politics – nepotism, corruption, and all – that people reluctantly acquiesce to it as ‘just the way things work.’

This context dramatically impacts the relationship between citizens and their representatives in government. To critics of Putin’s system, the corruption in his parliament is always to be condemned as a cancer on democracy. But place yourself in the shoes of an individual legislator who really wants to do something good for her constituents, such as get a new state of the art hospital built in the regional capital, but (rather accurately) believes that the whole system is corrupt. That legislator could loudly proclaim that she rejects corrupt schemes, refusing to pay off the people who are demanding a kickback to deliver the required financing or a bribe to get the project approved by regulators. But since this would almost surely result in no hospital being built at all (or that hospital being built in another region where the legislator is willing to ‘play ball’), her constituents might not understand her moral stance. They might even condemn her as ineffective and actually immoral, letting her own arrogant ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude get in the way of really helping those she is sworn to help. When everyone expects that this is how things work, therefore, the pressures can be strong to do the same and a moral case can be made that working through the corrupt system is the lesser of evils.

 

This gives rise to a certain paradox which can drive politics in a country like Russia. On one hand, people hate corruption. They do not like the fact that the boss’ relative gets a promotion over their son or that their officials enrich themselves at the public’s expense. At the same time, believing that almost everyone is engaging in such behaviour when they have the chance, they not only initiate some of it themselves (e.g., using a family tie to get their daughter a job or calling in a favour to move up in a queue) but expect their politicians to engage in at least some of this behaviour too. Or, at least, they tend to forgive their representatives who resort to it as a necessary evil for the sake of making progress.

 

There is a reason, therefore, why a large majority of the Russian adult population approves of Putin’s job performance at the same time that, as of the November 2016 Russian Election Studies (RES) survey, only 15 per cent thinks he has reduced ‘corruption among state officials’ during his 16 years in power. In fact, 37 per cent believe the level of state corruption under Putin has not changed and even more (a stunning 39 per cent) say it has gone up! Political corruption, then, is best thought of not simply as a scheme for personal enrichment in societies like Russia’s, but as a tool that can be used for governance, one of multiple ways leaders can work through personalized connections to induce or coerce people to get something done. The fact that leaders also just happen to get very rich in the process certainly predisposes them to use this particular tool, though abuse of the state coercive apparatus and other tools are also frequently available.

The fact that people often believe their leaders have to do some dirty work in order to get something accomplished also helps clear up how Russians feel about democracy. On one hand, ample survey evidence shows that most Russians support rule by a ‘strong hand’, or a strong leader who is restrained by neither parliament nor elections. This is frequently cited as evidence that Russians have an authoritarian political culture. But at the same time, surveys also find that Russians support values like multiparty parties, free and fair elections, and the rule of law. Indeed, the 2016 RES survey finds that over 31 per cent of the population thought that both democracy and a strongman leader were ‘good fits’ for Russia. How can this be?

A study of mine, published in Europe-Asia Studies in 2011, sheds some light. It takes the question about whether Russians support a ‘strong hand’ a step further by asking those who want a strong hand where it should come from: 96 per cent thought the people should be able to choose this strong leader and, of these, 87 per cent thought this should be done ‘from among several candidates with different views by means of free and fair elections.’³

 

In addition, it turns out that most Russians also want to be able to remove a ‘strong hand’ that is not performing adequately. Russians support Putin not because they oppose democracy, but because he governs with a ‘strong’ style that fits what they see as Russia’s social context, a style that includes a willingness to do some dirty work in order to achieve at least some good things for the people. Surely such beliefs about the ideal form of leadership are not unique to Russia but are likely to be widespread anywhere patronalism prevails. Specialists on Latin America even came up with a term for it back in the 1990s: ‘delegative democracy’.

Key to Putin’s appeal from the beginning, therefore, has been precisely leadership style, despite accounts that pin his success to resurgent Russian nationalism or economic performance. He is the man who can act, who is willing to take full advantage of Russia’s extensive networks of interpersonal relations to get something done and present a vigorous Russia to the world despite circumstances that make fundamental change seem essentially impossible.

As President Boris Yeltsin’s third prime minister in less than half a year and by far the least well known when he was appointed, Putin surged to prominence in fall 1999 by launching an ‘anti-terrorist’ operation against the predominantly Muslim region of Chechnya, blaming militants there for a series of apartment building bombings in Moscow and elsewhere. But people were supporting him not because they wanted to beat up the Chechens. Polls at the time find that Putin would also have received Russians’ support had he concluded peace with Chechnya and even let the restive province become independent. What Russians wanted from their leader was not so much nationalism, as strong and decisive leadership – almost entirely irrespective of what direction that leadership might take.

 

They were indeed starved for vigorous leadership. Putin emerged in the national limelight during the final year of a Yeltsin presidency that Russians widely saw as ineffectual at best and disastrous at worst. Yeltsin had not only been seen publicly (apparently) drunk on multiple occasions, but after several heart attacks, was reportedly able to work only very limited hours while greedy ‘oligarchs’ and corrupt associates were believed to be really running the show.

So for someone like Putin to appear – a person who initially seemed to have little personal ambition, was not a drinker, and communicated decisiveness with physical vigour, using gangland slang to declare that he would ‘whack’ the terrorists ‘in the john’ if he had to – was a gust of fresh spring air for many Russians. His popularity surged throughout autumn 1999 as he prosecuted the Chechen War, overturning memories of the military’s disastrous defeat in those same mountains during 1994-96, until ultimately he was a shoe-in to win the presidency in the 2000 election.

All the while he very consistently eschewed ethnic nationalist appeals, strongly and repeatedly affirming that Russia is a multi-ethnic country in which ethnic minorities have an important place, a position for which he has been rewarded by minority voters, and that holds to this day. Putinism, then, is at its core not about nationalism. Similarly, I suspect that the appeal of politicians like Modi or Duterte is also less about ethnic nationalism than it might seem on the surface, just as Erdogan’s is probably less about Islamism than widely supposed.

 

This stylistic more than nationalistic appeal was what Putin needed to transform the Russia of the 1990s, a highly decentralized and multi-ethnic federal country in which dozens upon dozens of both regional and nationwide parties competed for influence, into the Russia of today where a single person almost totally dominates the political scene. While it might seem implausible in India or the Philippines today that political pluralism could all but disappear in a generation, this was equally widely seen as virtually impossible in Russia too as of 1999, with a polity so unruly that no one was believed likely able to squelch it.

But Putin moved stealthily, finding pretexts for eliminating different sources of political pluralism over the course of many years, including some of his own erstwhile supporters, being careful never to move too quickly lest he provoke fears among too many that they would be next to go. Upon winning the presidency in March 2000, he used his popular mandate first to move against Russia’s regional political machines, creating new administrative macro-regions that gradually undercut their authority and rendered them dependent on his political endorsement. By the time he ended direct gubernatorial elections on the pretext of fighting terrorism, most governors were voicing support rather than defending their prerogative to be chosen by their own constituents.

Putin also used his initial electoral mandate to go after the two most prominent ‘oligarchs’ (politicized big businessmen) with major television holdings on charges of corruption, promising others that they would be okay if they stayed out of politics and coordinated their business dealings with the state. The 2003 arrest of Russia’s richest man, oil titan Mikhail Khodorkovsky, demonstrated to all others that resistance was futile. One by one, sources of independent television news were taken over or driven out of business.

 

With big business and regional political machines increasingly in line, and his popular support riding high, Putin ushered his own United Russia Party into dominance in parliament, effectively ending the last vestige of significant influence that other parties had. Putin could now be presented as the only credible political force in the country; all others were losers, inexperienced loudmouths, not worth backing.

And more broadly, all the while Putin was gradually ushering his own close associates into ever more potent positions in the state, economy, and non-governmental world. While making them rich was surely one goal, these were also the people on whom he was to rely later to help him politically, be it to take over an unwanted independent media outlet, to be appointed to run or reform a major institution, or arrange for the financing of pet projects. Clearly, when personal connections trump rules and procedures, Putin needed to have in place people he could trust for such tasks. But even managing his friends was no easy task, as they often struggled among themselves for power and resources (and for Putin’s ear). So Putin has had to carefully coordinate their interests.

 

Importantly, Putin has never entirely eliminated opposition, so there was never any decree banning opposition parties around which opponents of his growing authority could rally. Opposing parties still compete for both the presidency and parliament, and critics can make their appeals heard in virtually all kinds of media other than television. But the deck is stacked steeply against them, and they risk being among the unlucky few who are singled out for personalized punishment from time to time. Indeed, many believe that a few critics have been killed for their opposition over the years. His high popular support helps ensure his political survival because it not only dam-pens the potential for mass protests, but discourages potentially disgruntled allies from breaking with his regime in the name of democracy and rallying support against him – a pattern one observes in the ‘colour revolutions’ that have ousted several otherwise Putin-like leaders in other post-Soviet countries.

How did Putin retain support during this period of political closure if the Russian people do not support authoritarianism itself? To be sure, he certainly reaped the political rewards of strong Russian economic growth during the 2000s, fuelled by high world prices for its oil exports. But even in this period, Putin’s support has never boiled down primarily to the economy just as it has never been mainly about nationalism.

Not only did Putin’s rise not hinge on economic performance, having instead to do with the leadership he exercised in Chechnya, but he retained majority support even after a global financial crisis that saw Russia experience negative growth in 2009. Moveover, he remains as popular as ever today despite the fact that Russia’s economy has been contracting since economic sanctions were imposed to punish Russia for annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014.

 

Strikingly, the RES survey mentioned above finds that only 18 per cent of Russians think the standard of living of Russia’s population was better in November 2016 than it was when Putin was elected president in 2000, with 49 per cent thinking it had gotten worse. They do think Putin has delivered in other areas, however, primarily Russia’s influence in the world, which 62 per cent as of November 2016 think has gone up under Putin. Limited expectations, therefore, are also a key part of Putinism, but Russians still want a leader who is capable of doing at least some important things and trying his best to keep them from getting worse. And they also want someone who is generally not opposed to ideas they share; Russians identify Putin with policy positions they support, including opposition to a return to communism or socialism.

But because Putin’s support hinges first and foremost on his political style, and only secondarily on other issues and characteristics with which he is associated, his imperative is to constantly reproduce a sense of vigour about his rule. His state’s creeping and now almost total control over the most influential media in Russia, television, is thus a central element in his success. His iconic televised demonstrations of physical fitness – riding horses shirtless, piloting aircraft of different sorts, scoring goals at hockey, four-hour-long press conferences without so much as a bathroom break – are not primarily about vanity but are instead deeply political. They are about maintaining confidence in his continued physical capacity to lead, his personal ability to manipulate the complex chains of personal acquaintance necessary to stay in power. As his 60th birthday came and went, the Russian media made extra sure that no one saw him as growing old and decrepit, portraying him instead swimming laps and working out with weights at official state facilities, which by some accounts he does for as much as two hours a day. Not every world leader compared to Putin could handle such a regimen.

 

Even Putin himself, as the paragon of Putinism, appeared to be in trouble as the 2010s dawned, with a slowing economy combining with a sense of ‘Putin fatigue’ that had begun to develop after nearly a decade in power. Letting his close associate Dmitry Medvedev share the limelight as ‘president’ while Putin took a turn at the prime ministership during 2008-12 also created a sense of freshness for the regime but not for Putin himself who, if anything, was made to look a bit behind the times next to the technology-toting Medvedev. When Putin announced in September 2011 that he would reclaim the presidency in the March 2012 elections, switching places with Medvedev, the whole system seemed to start unravelling, culminating in the largest spontaneous street protests Moscow had seen since the 1990s.

Temporarily staving off decline by mobilizing a new base of rural and small-town voters through homophobic and other ‘conservative’ appeals, Putin dramatically restored his image as a dynamic, decisive leader with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Large numbers of Russians had long believed this peninsula had been part of Ukraine only because Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had unjustly and arbitrarily given it away as a ‘gift’ in 1954; so the move struck a chord. But it was hard to see where Putin might go next, once the glow of Crimea fades. Russia’s military intervention in Syria starting in 2015 then injected some new pep into Putin’s political step, showing Russia has returned as a power capable of projecting conventional military strength globally while incurring few losses.

The Putin phenomenon may now be at its apogee. Sustaining it requires constant innovation and energy. But it is hard to see how Putin could top Crimea as a popular political feat. Further territorial annexation within the former Soviet Union is generally not supported by the people and could lead to even more disastrous consequences. Economic problems continue to mount and Putin continues to age, something that his rumoured use of Botox and television documentaries about his workout habits cannot entirely disguise. But Russia’s regime under Putin has been nothing if not resilient, surviving multiple challenges by finding some new way to adapt.

 

Barring a major policymaking blunder, Putin looks all but assured of securing a new six-year term as president in Russia’s next presidential elections, scheduled for March 2018. But beyond that, he will be in his constitutionally final term in office while nearing his 70s. This combination of circumstances could increasingly render him a lame duck, especially if his physical vigour fades and Russia continues to stagnate economically. Succession is well known as the Achilles heel of regimes dominated by a single individual, ending in revolution or other forms of social conflict for many post-Soviet countries, with even worse endings meeting the authoritarians toppled in the 2011 Arab uprisings. Thus while authoritarianism may offer up a veneer of stability, it can be very hard to sustain while failure can bring disaster to rulers and ruled alike.

 

Footnotes:

1. Henry E. Hale, ‘Explaining Machine Politics in Russia’s Regions: Economy, Ethnicity, and Legacy’, Post-Soviet Affairs 19(3), July-September 2003, pp. 228-63.

2. Henry E. Hale, Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015.

3. Henry E. Hale, ‘The Myth of Mass Russian Support for Autocracy: Public Opinion Foundations of a Hybrid Regime’, Europe-Asia Studies 63(8), October 2011, pp.1357-1375.