There are two great experiments in authoritarian development going on in the world today, those represented by Russia and by China. The common Western theory, which I have argued in favor of in the past, is that liberal democracy and market economies are mutually complementary; even though countries can develop rapidly under authoritarian governments, eventually demand for political participation and accountability emerges, and indeed becomes necessary to support an advanced market economy. Yet Russia has been following China by growing rapidly, and yet moving steadily away from Western norms of liberal democracy under President Vladimir Putin over the past few years. The question for international politics is whether the Russian path represents a stable model of development that in future years will attract other imitators, as the Chinese model has already done.
To visit Moscow or St. Petersburg today is to enter a completely different world, not just from the one that existed in Soviet times, but from the chaotic decade of the 1990s as well. Moscow in particular looks like a bustling European city, with Armani and Gucci stores filling the city center, and Volvo dealerships and huge suburban shopping malls lining the roads out of town. Wealth is still very unequally distributed, but a lot of it is filtering down to a middle class, and poverty has been reduced substantially since the 1990s. The wild west image that Moscow developed in those years is gone, along with billionaire oligarchs and their machine gun-toting bodyguards.
The Russians have been engaged in classic nineteenth century state-building over the past decade. They have reestablished the government’s monopoly over the use of force, that sociologist Max Weber said was a key element of being a state. Despite the fact that the Putin administration re-nationalized the oil giant Yukos, jailed its CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and strongarmed both Shell and BP out of lucrative gas and oil fields, foreign direct investment is today pouring into Russia. Executives of multinational companies like Coca Cola or General Motors seem to think that property rights in Russia are good enough—no worse, at least, than in China—for them to take the risk of hundreds of millions of dollars of new fixed investment. While there is no justice for the killers of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, there is a growing rule of law in the commercial sector. While high-profile cases like the Yukos and Shell re-nationalizations are highly politicized, medium and small businesses face a much more predictable legal environment than they once did. The government can collect taxes, balance budgets, and even put away cash reserves for a rainy day from their energy earnings.
Given Russia’s prosperity, its growing sense of internal order, and its ability to assert itself against the United States and Europe in foreign policy, it is perhaps not surprising that President Putin is very popular. Polls put him at over 70 approval ratings, much higher than his counterparts in, say, Washington or Tokyo.
The only problem is that the Russians are not building a 21st century state, that is, one characterized by multiple forms of vertical and horizontal accountability. The Russian political model is a hybrid, significantly less democratic than former Eastern European communist satellites like Hungary or Poland. While President Putin was popularly elected, Russia has a highly managed democracy. The government now controls all of the television channels, and has recentralized control of Russia’s provinces. The Putin administration has created a set of loyal political parties in the Duma or lower house and has been able to eliminate virtually all serious opposition in the legislature. It has harrassed and shut down many non-governmental organizations, particularly those with foreign connections. Despite the fact that dissident organizations like Gary Kasparov’s United Civil Front are utterly marginal in today’s Russian politics, the government won’t let them demonstrate peacefully.
Russia for the moment remains more democratic than China. Unlike the Chinese communist leadership, Putin is popularly elected, and will likely step down next March in favor of an admittedly hand-picked successor. The Russians do not censor the Internet the way the Chinese do, and there are more dissident media outlets in Russia than in China. China currently jails many more dissidents than does Russia. So why is it that the United States and Western Europeans are today far more critical of Russia than China, and much more fearful of its rise?
There are several reasons for this. In the first place, many people assume that today’s Russia does not represent a stable political model, but is a waystation on the road to full authoritarianism and a re-nationalized economy. Russia simply cannot get away from its historical legacy as an imperial power, and indeed an imperial power that never overtly renounced its international ambitions. In 2006, when they shut off Ukraine’s gas pipeline in the middle of one of Europe’s coldest winters, they may simply have been engaging in a crude effort to force Ukraine towards market pricing. But no one in Europe or the US interpreted this move as anything but the testing of a new strategic energy weapon on Moscow’s part.
The second reason people are more distrustful of Russia than China is that the former has more of an overt foreign policy agenda. Today’s Russian elite is very bitter about the 1990s. They see the Yeltsin years of the 1990s not as the flowering of democracy, but as a humiliating period of weakness. They believe that the US and NATO didn’t want democracy, but Russian weakness, and took every econmic and political advantage they could while the country was prostrate. The West didn’t rest content with peeling off former Warsaw Pact allies like Hungary and Poland; according to them, with the Rose and Orange Revolutions, they used democracy as a weapon to intrude into Russia’s historical sphere of influence. Now that Russia is strong again, the West is unhappy; but it is through strength alone and confrontation that they can protect their interests.
Given the strength of suspicions on both sides, it is perhaps understandable that there was considerable talk of returning to a new “Cold War” at the time of the G-8 Summit in early June (when President Putin talked of re-aiming nuclear missiles at Europe). There are, however, a number of reasons for being cautious in predicting that Russia is trying to reconstitute itself into the old USSR. Russians are today reconnecting with their pre-Bolshevik past: they flock to Tsarist palaces and stand in line to visit icons in newly reconstructed Orthodox churches. They are still in the midst of a long conversation about their nature of their national identity. Some are going along with Samuel Huntington’s idea that Russia represents a separate civilization from that of the West, or of the Asian countries to their East, but others are much more reluctant to give up on Russia’s European roots. Younger Russians who are better educated and growing up immersed in a Western consumer culture may today vote for Putin out of gratitude for stability, but what will they demand of politics in fifteen to twenty years, when stability can be taken for granted? There is nostaligia for the former USSR among older people, but little, it would seem, among the young. Above all, contemporary Russians want to be rich and secure; they may dream of restoring international glory, but are they willing to pay for it?
What the West needs to do is watch Russia’s actual behavior, and not project onto it the West’s own hopes and fears as occurred over the past fifteen years. Many Westerners are angry with Putin and the Russia he is creating in part because they are jilted lovers: they hoped in the 1990s that the country would transition in short order to a full-fledged liberal democracy, and when it didn’t, they felt cheated. But the fact that a fully democratic Russia did not emerge does not means that a fully authoritarian Russia is now inevitable. Russia’s future will not be inevitably shaped by its past, but by the decisions that contemporary Russians will make, and the opportunities that the international environment provides them to make the right choices.
This article appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun on July 16.
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22 Comments »
The really big gorilla sitting in the middle of this room is that as long as America and the West rationalize their own more repressive instincts in public policy, then Russia, China, and more illiberal countries will do the same.
There are competing trends in the West and more liberalized notions will will out, of course, as they have since the beginning of civilization. But as long as more illiberal countries and groups – including terrorists -can look to more liberal countries and say, “We do what you do, just with more resolve because you are weak,” then the more repressive trends in Western and more liberal democracies give them license to march in more repressive, regressive directions.
What liberal countries, like America, need to do is to shake off their insecurities about being too liberal and too weak and embrace the liberal values that make them so intelligent and strong and cease to give license to the repressive rationalizations of illiberal cultures and governments.
As we do this, they will follow, over time, and, more importantly, their citizenry will be empowered to expect such changes from their governments and societies. But as long as we give cover to their repressive instincts, their citizens will be afraid to stand up to powerful, often brutal regimes without some hope from the West that a more liberal direction is the right direction to take.
Many of those students and young people who lost their freedoms and their lives in China in 1989 and in Iran in 1999 and 2007 have got to be looking at the West and imagining what cowards we are that we cannot take seriously the more liberal values that offer hope to their causes.
Repression breeds cowardice temporarily. And then liberalization brings better and clearer honesty and moral clarity, over time. That was the kind of honesty and moral clarity and confidence in liberal values that Ronald Reagan brought to these issues that helped to inspire the efforts of Eastern Europeans and Chinese in 1989. Today those trends are more decentralized. But it would help for Western and American leaders to speak kindly of genuinely liberal values every now and then.
Ben Sutherland
http://benfrankln.blogspot.com/
Comment by Ben Sutherland – July 21, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
Mr. Fukuyama has to honestly ask himself the following question – does the West i.e. US want to see a strong, sovereign, nuclear-armed Russia with all of its international and economic implications or would it rather preside over a dozen tiny, impoverished, ethnic-based nation-states, each one contributing a dozen troops to the Iraqi experiment? You could call the latter a “Yugoslav model.” The answer seems obvious and has nothing to do with Russia’s liberalism, which by the way offers a much wider degree of personal and economic freedoms, if not protection, than American liberalism. On the contrary, the West wants Russia to be less liberal than it actually is. It wants a corrupt oil oligarchy which Mr. Khodorkovsky represented. It wants Shell and BP to bribe and plunder the land to the West’s advantage. It wants Russian gas subsidies to finance the Russophobic Orange regime and Ukraine’s entry into NATO. And it wants the likes of Mrs. Politkovskaya to ‘crusade’ for an Islamic Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Maybe instead of watching Russia’s actual behavior, the West should watch its own and stop experimenting with the fates of other nations?
Comment by Anatoly Ostrovsky – July 25, 2007 @ 7:07 am
I would suggest, Dr. Fukuyama, that exactly the rationalization for Russia’s autocratic and illiberal tendencies, as of late, that Mr. Ostrovsy articulates beautifully, are what are at stake in what direction the West takes in its own liberal democratic future.
He is right. Putin and most more illiberal states, right now, excuse their own illiberal actions for the same reasons that leaders in the West do the same.
The question is, “Will be able to face that reality more honestly?”
Ben Sutherland
http://benfrankln.blogspot.com/
Comment by Ben Sutherland – July 25, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
Dear Fukujama,
To put it simply, Russia wants to be itself. I don´t see the same dynamics in Russia as in China. China has the chance of being the leading country in the world. Russia doesn’t. Russia will inevitably be somewhere between China on the one side and Europe and the US on the other side, so who really cares about Russia (with a BNP pr. capita as that of The Netherlands).
Sincerely,
John
Comment by John – July 28, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
Comletely agree with A.
Ostrovsky!
But your editor Adam Garfinkle is an ass! A big ASS!
[...] The Russian Model [...]
Pingback by The Russian Model at izbrano – August 4, 2007 @ 4:46 am
“China has the chance of being the leading country in the world”
The idea that a totalitarian government that imprisons and kills students who protest its autocratic governance could be the leading country in the world is exactly what is wrong with the world and this whole godforesaken political era, right now.
The idea is as repugnant as it is wrong as an empirical matter.
Ben Sutherland
http://benfrankln.blogspot.com/
“…does the West i.e. US want to see a strong, sovereign, nuclear-armed Russia with all of its international and economic implications or would it rather preside over a dozen tiny, impoverished, ethnic-based nation-states, each one contributing a dozen troops to the Iraqi experiment?”
So strength and sovereignty are mutually exclusive with freedom and democracy?
Russia’s strength (and probably much of the lack of democracy) these days has more to do with high energy prices.
“Putin and most more illiberal states, right now, excuse their own illiberal actions for the same reasons that leaders in the West do the same.”
I agree. Just as there is some corruption and attempts of electoral fraud present in liberal democracies, there are illiberal tendencies. But in countries like Russia corruption, electoral fraud and illiberal tendencies are the norm. And that’s the difference.
Comment by Tim Lowry – August 5, 2007 @ 3:04 am
Dear Tim Lowry
“Russia’s strength (and probably much of the lack of democracy) these days has more to do with high energy prices.”
Foreign currency accumulated from oil profits is held in a stability fund, which in turn is invested by the Central Bank in various foreign bonds. Consequently, energy profits have little affect on Russian economy since they end up as US or EU foreign debt.
Comment by Anatoly Ostrovsky – August 6, 2007 @ 9:40 am
[...] am descoperit blogul pe care scrie Francis Fukuyama (l-am pus la RSS-uri). Recomand, deocamdata, The Russian Model si In St. Petersburg with [...]
Pingback by Fukuyama « Vizuina Tapirului – August 6, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
I admit some of the energy profit ends up in the stability fund but a big part of it sure ends up in those Topol M missiles and similar prestige projects. We all know that Putin’s regime couldn’t afford all this if a barrel of oil cost $20.
And maybe mr Ostrovsky could also give his view of Russia’s dramatic fall in all those democracy and freedom of press ratings during the Putin era. Is it because the ‘fascists’ have besieged Mother Russia and drastic times demand drastic measures?
Comment by Tim Lowry – August 9, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
Dear Tim
“but a big part of it sure ends up in those Topol M missiles and similar prestige projects.”
This is true of Venezuela or Iran – countries that do not have native military technology or manufacturing. But Topol-M is 100% homegrown. It is paid for in rubles and ruble emission for dollar reserves is Yeltsin economics.
Comment by Anatoly – August 10, 2007 @ 5:32 am
Consequently, energy profits have little affect on Russian economy since they end up as US or EU foreign debt.
Really? I guess you haven’t heard of inflation in the Russian economy. It is a direct consequence of a resource based economy driving up the value of the ruble. Even at that, analysts feel the ruble is undervalued by about 40% at this time.
Not all Russian energy profits are placed in the stabilization fund. That fund is a series of foreign investments, meant to stabilize (duh) the Russian economy in the case of a drop in oil and gas prices (which is inevitable).
Recently the Stabilization Fund investments were split, creating a new fund that invests domestically. Typically this wouldn’t be recommended for such a fund, but the feeling is that Russian reserves are sufficiently large enough at this time and the country would benefit from reinvestment of some of the profits.
Additional parts of the oil and gas profits do fund the Russian government and are used to help modernize the military, etc. Many parts of the Russian federal budget are being increased by 200% and 300% each year. It is actually anticipated that by 2009 or 2010 that the Russian government will be running at a slight deficit. It’s about time too. Russia’s infrastructure could use the money and resources. However, inflation is going to eat up a bigger and bigger chunk of that money and objectives will become increasingly difficult.
And despite your objections to the contrary, this scenario is all due to the vast export of natural resources.
Dear Shedd
First off, inflation is a devaluation of the currency; not its rise.
Secondly, current inflation levels are due to FDI and consumer credit on the demand side which the economy cannot absorb precisely because it requires massive investments (“national projects” if you may) into the supply side that are instead being used to finance American and European budget deficits. A drop in oil prices will only (duh) slow the growth rate of StabFund, while holding 45% percent of it in US T-Bills only exposes Russian savings to inflation risk in case US defaults (which is inevitable). In case I did not make myself clear in the previous post – Stabfund props up the US dollar and helps to finance F-22s, Iraq, and democracy, not the ruble, Topol-Ms, or the Eeevil Putin regime (emphasis added).
In 2008 the Stab will be split in half but it is unclear exactly how it will be spent and I do not think there is a consensus on this issue yet. They say it will cover budget deficits but those are going to be ruble deficits, and as I said – nowadays rubles are not being printed with IMFs permission. In either case, petrodollars are not going to be spent on Russian-made weapons which will be mainly purchased by governments other than Russian.
Comment by Anatoly – August 20, 2007 @ 9:49 am
There are three great experiments in authoritarian power, Japan, EU, and America. These are called managed democracies. Other forms of democracy, are piffled as populist, or chaotic. The elites in Washington-New York, Tokyo, and London-Paris-Brussels, are no different from the oleagenous slobs in Ryiad-Jedda, or Moscow-St. Petersburg. Except, that they run the world, while the latter, want to run it.
Comment by blabbo – August 25, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Read Amitai Etzioni, before you start your liberal-la-la engines. Most of the world is illiberal. People don’t or can’t tell the difference between “free societies” and authoritarian. But they do know the difference between a Buick and a Cadilac. Or is Fukayma one of those clowns who still clings to the notion that history ended due to the declaration of independence (by Russia from the USSR)? It ended due to Coca-Cola, not Madison and Comp. The american world view is warped, out of touch and out of stride with reality, producing nincompoops and oracles prouncing funnier prattle than Delphi or Delos. Only americans can go about thinking that foreign policy consists of values, not geostrategy. Yet, the very same ameriacns then bugger everyone about capital account liberalisation, structral adjustments, and access to hard, solid, miasmic hydrocarbons. Which one are you, Fuky?
Comment by semiramis – August 25, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
Russophobia.
The reason Americans can get away with picking on Russia, and not China, is the same reason you can criticize your wife but not your neighbours wife. Criticizing China is cultural-imperialism, scolding Russia is like scolding a wayward concubine. Its politically correct, and acceptable. In a perfect world, it would be called Russophobia, and stand somewhere between racism and anti-semitism.
Comment by Vitaly – August 25, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
Fukuyamea, certainly does not understand that in this world of so rich and powerful multinational enterprises the only counterbalancing force is the national state.
It is true that the West wished to see Russia not only submitted but also partitioned, and its riches at the disposal of western powers.
Comment by jose oscategui – August 29, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
[...] Fukuyama actually makes some sense about Russia: What the West needs to do is watch Russia’s actual behavior, and not project onto it the West’s own hopes and fears as occurred over the past fifteen years. Many Westerners are angry with Putin and the Russia he is creating in part because they are jilted lovers: they hoped in the 1990s that the country would transition in short order to a full-fledged liberal democracy, and when it didn’t, they felt cheated. But the fact that a fully democratic Russia did not emerge does not means that a fully authoritarian Russia is now inevitable. Russia’s future will not be inevitably shaped by its past, but by the decisions that contemporary Russians will make, and the opportunities that the international environment provides them to make the right choices. [...]
Pingback by Eunomia · There’s A First Time For Everything – August 31, 2007 @ 4:39 pm
I’m Russian and I’m 26. I want to be rich and secure. I’m not care about all the rest countries in a world, democratice they are or not. I’m not care about US and EU, as they have short mind and do not understand what peaple in Russia thinking and what they wanting. US now have the same problem as USSR 30 years ago, they pay more attention what happing outside of the world than inside of the US.
I’m as a lot of young Russians care only about me, my family and my country, that is it.
Comment by Emin – November 2, 2007 @ 11:28 am
[...] descoperit blogul pe care scrie Francis Fukuyama (l-am pus la RSS-uri). Recomand, deocamdata, The Russian Model si In St. Petersburg with [...]
Pingback by Vizuina Tapirului » fukuyama – November 5, 2007 @ 2:50 am
I’d dear to state that Russia’s recent success has done more harm to the rampant ideology of liberal democracy than the collapse of USSR has
helped to fostered its sanctity. The simulacrum of liberal democracy is being revealed not so by
the shame of Iraq, doubtful success of Chinese pseudo-communism, new eastern European illiberal
democracies as by the qualitatively “new” way of Putin’s Russia. It is certainly not authoritarianism or totalitarianism. It is something that can only be found in the Xenophon’s “Cyropedia” and certainly not Machiavellian “Prince” or Hobbs’s “Leviathan” . The very idea that something that foramlly
looks as authoritarianism but is actually more democratic than liberal democracy is an
embarrassing as it can be to West in general
and something that has to be discredited by
the strongholds of democracy (U.S. and E.U.)
by any cost. It would declare the death of the so called values of democracy if international community and more to that the
struggling third world itself would finally
recognize that liberal democracy is not the
cause but certainly the effect if not only the by-product of the state’s economic wealth .
Comment by Lukas Zagnojus – December 21, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
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