The Uncertain Future of Russia’s Weak State Authoritarianism

The policies of President Vladimir Putin have undermined Russia’s fledging democratic institutions but have also failed to generate any sort of coherent authoritarianism to take their place. Thus, fifteen years after the collapse of the USSR, the country still lacks any consensus about its basic principles of state legitimacy. To explain this, we must understand the ways in which the Soviet Union’s institutional legacies have short-circuited all three historically effective types of legitimate rule—traditional, rational-legal, and charismatic—resulting in a highly corrupt state that still cannot fully control its borders, monopolize the legal means of violence, or clearly articulate its role in the contemporary world. If energy prices drop suddenly, leadership transition problems prove unmanageable, and/or economic inequalities provoke more widespread and sustained public protest, the growing mood of resentful nationalism could transform Russia from an unsteady and distrusted “strategic partner” of the West into something far more hostile.