Translated material
Normal autocracy
The main question for the post-Putin reform project: is normalization possible without democratization? Let's continue the discussion
Photo: Evgeny Pavlenko / Kommersant
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In the first part of this article, we argued that the main competitor to post-Putin democratization is not a return to Putinism, but the promise of a “normal autocracy”: less aggressive, more rational, attractive to a broad coalition of elites, society and external partners. The coalition in support of it is broader than the coalition in support of democratization. And it is this scenario, and not Putinism, that those who defend democratic normalization will have to argue with.
But is such a “normal autocracy” possible in Russia? The main objection is that the Russian political environment does not provide a credible means of tying the hands of a new leader. Without such constraints, modernized autocracy risks being a brief respite between two versions of personalism. What kind of power limiters can work in Russian conditions not as a declaration, but as real mechanisms - this is what the second part is devoted to.
There is a problem with such a project, but it does not lie in the very possibility of building a “normal” autocracy. Comparative experience shows that authoritarian and semi-democratic regimes do not necessarily behave like Russia. China, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Malaysia and many other countries are not liberal democracies, but they do not make a militarized foreign policy the main source of domestic legitimacy. Therefore, one cannot automatically derive from the ongoing hostilities a general thesis about the impossibility of authoritarian normalization.
The problem is different: can sufficiently reliable restrictions on power emerge in Russia? Can an autocracy limit its own leader through collective leadership, autonomous economic institutions, secure property rules, more autonomous regions, a professional bureaucracy, and a ban on the use of war as a tool of internal legitimation? In other words, can it become an institutionalized autocracy?
It is here that the argument of Yakovlev and his co-authors requires clarification. It is not persuasive as an assertion that democracy is the only possible way to economic normalization. Most of the economic measures that the authors propose can be carried out from above. The significance of the authors’ position lies elsewhere: in Russian conditions, authoritarian normalization will constantly face the problem of reliable guarantees (obligations). If the ruling party is weak, the courts are dependent, the parliament is decorative, the regions are financially subordinate to the center, and the security apparatus retains the right to determine the boundaries of acceptable policies, then the moderation of the new leader remains a personal quality, and not a property of the system.
A moderate authoritarian leader can promise not to start new military actions, not to carry out a new redistribution of property, not to destroy business, not to suppress regions, not to turn the country into a mobilization economy. But if his power is not limited by real mechanisms of deterrence, all these promises remain political intentions, not stable rules. In other words,
a leader's moderation is not immune to the fact that he or his successor will eventually change course.
Here, however, it is important to avoid a methodological error that often goes unnoticed in discussions about the reliability of policy constraints. When democracy and authoritarianism are compared, democracy is often assessed by its structural logic: elections should, in principle, ensure the succession of power. Authoritarianism is judged by its empirical history: in China, Xi Jinping, in one decade, dismantled the collective leadership that had taken thirty years to develop. This is not a completely symmetrical comparison. If we apply the empirical criterion to democracies, the picture becomes less clear: dozens of democracies over the past hundred years have collapsed into authoritarianism through an elected leader, and this process continues - from Venezuela to El Salvador, and in some sense, the United States in recent years.
So no political system provides complete guarantees. Therefore, the right question is not “how to make power restrictions eternal,” but how to extend the horizon of their reliable operation and reduce the likelihood of failure in the most dangerous scenarios. Thirty years of collective leadership in China is a significant achievement, especially if measured by the same ruler as the failed democratic transitions of recent decades.
This changes the formulation of the main question. In reality, the choice may be between two risky strategies that have different risk profiles and different time horizons for probable failure. The first strategy is the modernization of the existing autocratic model: renunciation of military action, reducing the role of arbitrary force, restoring professional governance, protecting property, partial decentralization and a more predictable foreign policy. The second strategy is an attempt at democratization, which in the long term may provide more durable restrictions on power, but in the coming years will be associated with a high risk of state weakness, social frustration, conflict over property - and, as a result, a demand for a new strong leader.
Proponents of democratic normalization should compare their program not with the current regime or with the “North Korean scenario”, but with a stronger competitor - the project of moderate authoritarian modernization. Such a project may turn out to be more understandable for elites, less frightening for society and more convenient for external actors if it promises the main thing: an end to the war, a reduction in the threat from Russia and the restoration of minimal predictability.
The main question, then, is not whether post-Putin Russia can immediately become a democracy. In the foreseeable future, probably not. And it is not whether a new authoritarian leader can carry out some of the necessary economic reforms. Of course it can. Moreover,
It is the moderate authoritarian normalization that may turn out to be the most likely and coalition-strong scenario for the first post-Putin years.
If this is indeed the most likely scenario, the main practical question is which restraints on power transform a modernized autocracy into an institutionalized one, rather than leaving it as a façade. They can be roughly divided into three types.
The first type is formal constitutional restrictions . These are institutional restrictions spelled out in the constitution and laws: independent courts, an empowered parliament with real control over spending, a ban on participation in wars without the sanction of legislators. On paper, these are the strongest limiters. In practice, in post-Putin Russia they are unlikely to be able to quickly earn their full potential. The Russian judicial and parliamentary systems have been degraded for too long to function professionally in the first years of transition, even if they were restarted. These are restrictions on the horizon of decades, not the nearest political window.
The second type is coalition-elite restrictors. These are agreements and practices within the elite: collective leadership instead of personalism, division of functions between the president and a strong government, autonomy of specialized institutions (Central Bank, antimonopoly authority, budgetary authorities), elite pact fixing mutual obligations. These are restrictions that are compatible with the authoritarian form and are therefore more realistic over a short horizon. They do not require immediate high public trust in institutions, which does not yet exist. Historically, such mechanisms have produced relatively stable results, such as the Chinese experience of the 1980s–2010s. But they require a working balance within the elite, and such a balance always depends on the specific configuration of power and can change.
The third type is external and infrastructural constraints. This is a form of the country’s embeddedness in global institutions and markets: long-term international obligations, dependence on external capital markets, access to technology, transparency of budget and macroeconomic statistics, openness of borders and information flows. These restrictions work not because someone inside the country reliably enforces the rules, but because violating these rules costs the regime itself dearly. For Russia, such mechanisms may be especially important in the early years because they depend less on the state of domestic institutions. Their effectiveness will directly depend on the strategy of Europe and the United States - how quickly they will return to normal cooperation with Russia.
The question is not which of these types is “better.” The question is what combination can extend the horizon of reliable operation of the system. Relying only on formal constitutional restrictions with weak institutions leads to declarations without content. Relying only on coalition-elites means relying on specific people and a specific balance that changes over time. Relying only on external ones creates vulnerability to changes in the international situation. For a modernized autocracy to become institutionalized rather than a new version of Putinism, its design must include all three types simultaneously.
The publications of Andrei Yakovlev and his co-authors open an important conversation, but it must be continued. The economic part of their program is well thought out. With politics it is more difficult: should normalization begin with democratization, or would a more realistic immediate task be the modernization of autocracy - with such limiters of power that at least reduce the risk of a new personalism, a new militarization and a new foreign policy catastrophe?
The coalition for “order without Putin” will almost certainly be broader than the coalition for democracy. So if normalization advocates want to be politically persuasive, they need to answer more than just the question of why Russia should become a democracy. They need to answer a more practical question: why is moderate authoritarian renewal not enough? Or, if it does turn out to be the most realistic first step, what constraints should make it not a temporary respite, but the beginning of a safer trajectory?
Irina Busygina*, Mikhail Filippov