The end of tyranny (updated)

Well, decolonization may be a reason, or at least a factor for so many countries finding int them some “Bonaparte” in the chaos of organizing themselves as countries.

Putin is often presented as being a near-dictator. But he doesn’t need to repress his opponents – it’s pretty clear he would easily win elections in Russia with or without doing so.

I don’t know whether he needs to, but he certainly has done so, and I have seen no evidence that he has stopped doing so.

I always tought that this kind of dictatorships are the result of (or a byproduct of) fast industrialization, where the mores of a big part of the population are somehow overturned by the social evolution caused by industrialization, and a relative minority is able to take control of the most important economic features of a country, thus being able to pay for a repressive burocracy to keep them in power.

I’m not sure why you’re eliminating Assad, Castro and Kim. Dictatorship by inheritance is still dictatorship; it just means the first guy was really good at his job. Also, you forgot Aliyev _fils_ of Azerbaijan.

As for ones that you missed: Four of the five ‘stans are currently under tyrant-dictators, not “a couple”. And none of them are particularly shaky-looking.

Cambodia.

You mentioned Zimbabwe. Also in Africa: Ethiopia, Eritrea. Chad. Equatorial Guinea. Angola. Uganda. Cameroon. The Central African Republic.

Sudan, of course.

Belarus, of course.

Fiji. (Everybody misses that one.)

Burma. (The current dictator is the hand-picked successor of the previous dictator, but not a relative.)

So even excluding inherited tyrannies, borderline cases (Mali, Mozambique), and tyrannies that are disguised as traditional monarchies (UAE, Bahrain), that’s sixteen. A lot fewer than 40 years ago, sure — but too many to claim that this form of government is “disappearing”.

Doug M.

Don’t forget Teodoro Obiang in Equatorial Guinea, one of the most horrific cases. And there might be one or two more in sub-Saharan Africa.

But I don’t quite get the artificial distinction between seizing power, and originally getting it via inheritance or elections. And wasn’t Mugabe originally elected? Not that it would matter.

Whoops, forgot the two Congos, Rwanda, Djibouti, and Algeria. How could we all forget Algeria? Bouteflika’s been running the place since winning unopposed “election” in 1999. And Djibouti’s had a couple of waves of Arab Spring protests this year. (Not that anyone ever pays attention to Djibouti.) That makes twenty-one.

South Sudan would make twenty-two, but it’s probably not fair to add them to the list yet — give the new guy some time.

Gabon and Togo– President Ali Bongo Ndimba of Gabon is the son of President-for-Life Omar Bongo; Togo, same-same. I suppose you’d disqualify them along with Assad & co.

That said, twenty-one countries = over 10% of the United Nations’ membership, and that’s after excluding all the borderline cases. A BOTE calculation gives well over half a billion people living under old-school, non-inherited dictatorships.

Seriously: not disappearing.

Doug M.

I started thinking on this at around the same time as Doug M, and came up with a similar list. The current governments of Mauritania, Fiji, and Niger all came to power in military coups. The government of Honduras wouldn’t be in power if it weren’t for a previous coup (with the active connivance of the US, lest we forget). The government of Madagascar came to power in what was basically a coup five years ago, and has survived another coup since.

In general, I don’t believe *a generic country* is any less likely to see a violent transition of power. What seems to be less likely is for large, globally-connected economies to see these transitions. A revolution in China or Russia is made less likely by these countries systemic importance.

I’d agree that the distinction is pretty artificial. Lots of bad actors have come to power through elections. What makes you a dictator is not how you get into power, but how you stay there.

Anyway: I’ve counted 21 that are dictatorships by John’s original definition. (Most in Africa, to be sure. I have the impression he Just Forgot about all those African countries. ) If we add the six inherited ones, plus two or three absolutist monarchies, we’re up to around 30 or so — and, again, that’s not counting the many borderline cases.

Doug M.

13, “blance of class forces” is possibly why so many full socialist states have evolved into tyrannies (not so pejorative to the Greeks)

It has been a long slow road to neo-liberalism, but the fall of the tyrants means the workers are about to get screwed.

> Burma. (The current dictator is the hand-picked successor
> of the previous dictator, but not a relative.)

Myanmar is basically a resource extraction colony of the PRC, so whoever the current dictator or junta nominally may be he/they are more in the role of governor general in the old British system than absolute ruler.

Cranky

“Myanmar is basically a resource extraction colony of the PRC”

I would disagree. But in any event, the PRC (as far as we can tell) seems to have had no hand in the selection of the current dictator.

Doug M.

> Putin is often presented as being a near-dictator. But he doesn’t
> need to repress his opponents – it’s pretty clear he would easily
> win elections in Russia with or without doing so.

That explains Russia has been universally lauded for its fair
elections.

You assume that people hate tyranny, Myles, but that’s far from obvious. I hear in Russia ‘liberal democracy’ is a swear, meaning something like ‘rule by a criminal oligarchy’.

or the sudden disappearance of this form of government from around the mid-1960s

I’d take another look at the puppets/tyrants installed by the major powers during the Cold War, combined with the revolutions fomented by “the other side”. Military coups followed by dictators running the country continued long after the “mid 1960s”. Pinochet taking over Chile in 1973 is an example.

My hypothesis is that the decline in tyrannies has more to do with more effective cold war strategies and the rise in cheap effective weapons supplied to “revolutionaries” (of both sides). How many countries include an AK-47 on their coat of arms or flag?

And I noticed you added “by inheritance” to your definition of tyranny. While that brings it much closer to the ancient Greek definition, it also conveniently excludes Saudi Arabia. Most non-muslims who have lived there would describe it as a tyranny (our family did).

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/notes-on-libya/

You assume that people hate tyranny, Myles, but that’s far from obvious. I hear in Russia ‘liberal democracy’ is a swear, meaning something like ‘rule by a criminal oligarchy’.

I make no such assumption. My assumption is people like the ability to self-actualize as individuals and human beings, which is tautological. That ability is a sum of positive and negative liberties. In Russia, liberal democracy destroyed positive liberty to a much greater extent than it increased negative liberty. Thus, the sum of the liberties is lower, and the process, known to Russians as “liberal democracy”, was in fact a de-liberalizing and de-actualizing one.

In much of the rest of the world however, the advent of liberty and the withering of tyranny has led to increases in this sum of liberties and in the ability to self-actualize as human beings. That is something everyone should unreservedly cheer, for what is being cheered as the elevation of human existence and progress in the human condition.

I don’t think it’s useful or meaningful to group a highly disparate set of regimes in different societies at different historical junctures under a single generic rubric “Bonapartism”. But one type of regime is the phalangist dictatorship, which would include not just Franco, but figures like Admiral Horthy and other such eastern European worthies from that time, as well as, many of the Latin American military dictatorships. It amounts to a post-traditional authoritarian regime, which finds its base of support and “legitimation” in an alliance of traditionalist classes held together especially by comprador elites, as opposed to being based in still weak industrial classes, (as with, e.g., fascism). The “explanation” would be the erosion of traditional bases for authority with the shock of modernity combined with relative underdevelopment of modern economies for nations on the periphery of the global capitalist world system. (The current Iranian regime would partly fit the phalangist description). As such, I think that changes in that world system under neo-liberal globalization could pretty well account for the tendency of this type of regime to wither away.

But it’s also a mistake to focus on the individual dictator, whatever the cult-of-personality propaganda, since all regimes must rest on some basis of social cooperation and support to secure their “legitimacy”, even if partly induced through repression and terror. As Arendt pointed out long ago, no regime can sustain its power by means of violence alone, if only because it depends on the cooperation of the bureaucrats and the police.

Someone may already have said this, but surely the difference between one man rule and one party rule is surely just PR.

John @35, if you mentally classified Belarus as a ‘stan, then did you simply forget about the four Central Asian ‘stans that have been governed by dictators since the 1990s?

Algeria: there’s not a hard and fast dividing line between an absolute dictator and a guy who’s _primus inter pares_. However, Algeria and Fiji are both pretty clearly on the “dictator” side of the line — viz., their current leaders are going to stay in office until forced out by revolution or some massively dramatic change in circumstances.

Burma: no, I’m referring to the fact that the current leader, Thein Sein, was the hand-picked successor of the previous leader, Than Shwe. Than Shwe had been battling diabetes and cancer for years, so he had time to choose his replacement. He had several kids, but they were all pretty worthless. The general assumption in Burma is that Thein Sein got to be the new President in part by guaranteeing that Than Shwe’s dimwitted and feckless children would get to keep their business empires.

“The fact that none of their names is recognisable is one indication of this”
— dude. No, it’s not.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema has been running Equatorial Guinea since 1979. He’s a bloody-handed monster who, by any reasonable standard, is worse than Qaddafi or Robert Mugabe. You’ve never heard of him.

Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a absolute autocrat whose security services regularly use rape, torture, mutilation and murder to keep his helpless population cowed, and who has on several occasions ordered dissidents to be boiled alive. You’ve never heard of him either.

As you pointed out yourself, millions of people may have the vague idea that Vladimir Putin is a dictator, but that doesn’t make him one. Well, the converse is equally true: just because Hun Sen and Isayas Afawerki are obscure, doesn’t make them any less vile — or any less dangerous, should you happen to be Eritrean or Cambodian.

Doug M.

I suspect any classification scheme that puts Assad’s Syria and Gaddafi’s Iraq in distinct buckets does leave a bit to be desired.

It’s possible to over-think things. When it comes down to it, there are really only two types of government. There are those where the junior tank commander facing down middle class protesters on the central square of the capital will make one choice, and those where he will make the other.

Everything else is either PR, or long-term economics that’s at most marginally and gradually impacted by the name on the brass plate of the office of state.

It should be clear to anyone who has eyes to see that the major threat to democracy nowadays is no longer from a Hitler style totalitarian regime, but from oligarchy.

And oligarchies have always been pretty good at disguising themselves as democracies.

1st, I think we can dismiss Myles “self-actualization” as a simple variation on “equally free to sleep under bridges

2nd, since it is becoming increasingly difficult to look through the forms of politics to see the realities, we need an objective measure.

3rd, it might be acceptable to posit that those in control of a political economy will not use that power to lower their own share of that polity’s resources or output, leaving Thomas Frank and false consciousness aside.

4th, so it seems to me that the Gini coefficient is a fairly objective measure of how democratic a nation is in actual practice rather than concealing forms, a majority in power will distribute output most widely

therefore, Egypt under Mubarek was considerably more democratic than the United States

(As far as Libya goes Juan Cole shouldn’t be the only source, but he is pretty good, and apparently as Qaddafi has opened up to western capital and development, the economic quality of life for his subjects has drastically declined.)

And thus is bob mcmanus outed as someone properly belonging to the insane asylum.

No, it is those who claim that somehow a polity freely votes itself into a horrible inequality that either are insane, or assuming an insane polity.

I don’t have to claim that Mubarek is a saint, or explain all the internal processes in a “tyranny” that result in a more fair distribution to say that a given “tyranny” has provided a more democratic result.

Mugabe was elected in 1980. Gotta say, this post is about as clear an example as a person could want of how globally ambitious disciplines like economics and political science don’t actually have to know anything about “the world’s poorest and least powerful countries,” and when they are shown (as Doug M has done) to have completely ignored a giant part of the world’s humanity, they intuitively know it doesn’t matter very much. Certainly Quiggin’s failure to say “oh, hell, the entire premise of this post was based on a completely wrong set of facts about the world’s poorest and least powerful countries” speaks volumes. And I like and respect Quiggin’s work! But this sort of thing is completely and monumentally normal.

Are we going to ask actual Egyptians whether they thought income inequality was worse in Egypt or the USA?

Indeed, political “theory”, or even political economy, is not the most salient of Prof. Quiggin’s many talents. Often enough, in response to the events of the day, a sententious solemnity scarcely masks a tautological emptiness.

@37 PR= Public Relations or Proportional Representation?

The former. See e.g. Matt’s comments.

Also think about the question “how is it that the dictator [or in fact any government] stays in power?”. Because the Generals of the army, the heads of the police, the judges, lawyers, bureaucrats and various other intellectuals prop the regime up (and the ordinary population find it hard to rebel due to the collective action problem – assuming they want to rebel).

Presumable, Ian Kershaw’s “Working towards the Fuhrer” theory comes into this too – what do people think of it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#The_.22Working_Towards_the_F.C3.BChrer.22_concept

While Doug M. has a point with his non-African cases, I think he’s missing the boat comparing the Congos, Cameroon, Uganda, Angola (Mali as a borderline case? Mali’s basically a really poor liberal democracy with some ups and downs) to Libya. In all of those cases, the regimes are far less personal (in the Rosberg and Jackson 1982) sense than they were/would have been 25 years ago. All of those regimes depend on a much broader base of support across ethnic groups, regions, and religions than would have been the case in Libya. Compare Kabilia fils’s grip on power to that of Mobutu, a real personal ruler in the old sense? Has he expropriated a similar % of state income? Is he similarly insulated from elite opposition? All of these guys are in much more tenuous positions since the 1990s (Bratton and Van de Walle 1998) and their means of taking power don’t necessarily reflect their current circumstances. There is a difference between elite coalition rule and personal. charismatic rule, and that difference matters in shaping the terms of regime transitions.

John @42, I’m pointing out that you were wrong. I know that’s not fun for you. But correct play is “you know what, I was wrong”, not “you’re making a meal of this”. Ignoring half a billion people is not a rounding error.

‘Never in my recollection to the “Than Shwe” regime and hardly ever to the “Bouteflika regime”.’

— John, the fact that you’re not aware of something /does not mean it doesn’t exist/.

Before posting something like this, you could take a couple of seconds to type the phrase “Bouteflika regime” into google. How many hits do you get? About 1.1 million. IOW, this is a tolerably common phrase, and the fact that you’ve never heard of it probably reflects your lack of engagement with matters Algerian.

(By way of comparison, “Qaddafi regime” only gives about 1.9 million. “Assad regime” and “Castro regime” are 17 million and 19 million respectively.)

Doug M.

Zunguzungu (#47) says Mugabe was elected in 1980. He has been re-elected repeatedly since. Not a single one of these elections, starting with that of 1980, was without physical intimidation of opposition candidates, of opposition parties, and of voters. Since 2000, Zimbabwean elections have also been subject to large-scale fraud, such as large numbers of dead people on the electoral roll – and voting. Mugabe is still a dictator, despite the veneer of democracy.

Bobcat @ 55, you raise some good points. John never bothered to clarify his terms, so we’re left with a somewhat nebulous and subjective notion of “dictator”. My working definition is threefold: the guy’s gotta have tremendous personal power, has to govern in an essentially illiberal manner, and must be likely to stay in office indefinitely unless removed by force majeure.

Museveni of Uganda, dos Santos of Angola, and Kabila _fils_ definitely qualify. Comparing them to Mobutu is not really fair, because Mobutu was no ordinary dictator. It’s like saying an average NBA player isn’t really a professional athlete because he’s not Michael Jordan, you know? Kabila doesn’t have the sheer arbitrary power of Mobutu, nor is he capturing nearly as great a percentage of the country’s GDP. But his personal wealth is vast nonetheless, and his grip on power is pretty secure. A B-list dictator is still a dictator.

I agree that there’s a difference between elite coalition rule and personal charismatic rule — but it’s a difference that lies along a spectrum, not a binary either-or. And one can morph into the other over time; Pinochet and Than Shwe, for instance, both started out as members of the ruling junta, and only consolidated power in themselves over time.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that not all dictators are flamboyant, nor do all develop a cult of personality. Hun Sen of Cambodia is a drab, dull little man, and you could spend a week in Phnom Penh without seeing a picture of him. But he’s exercised brutal and absolute power for 25 years now. Than Shwe of Burma very much preferred keeping a low profile, in part to keep up the illusion of collective rule. People get confused because collective rule was indeed the case in Burma — for a while. Than Shwe didn’t take over as sole leader until he broke his last rival, Khin Nyunt, in 2004. By that time everyone was used to the idea of a military junta running things, and Than Shwe didn’t care for personal adulation, so he ruled from behind the scenes while allowing the public illusion to be maintained. But he was a dictator nonetheless.

Anyway: you can argue some borderline cases, sure. (And you’re right about Mali – my bad.) OTOH, I’ve left out a number of cases that could be argued in. I think we’d agree that the number is around 20, give or take a couple, not counting the hereditary dictators and the royal autocrats.

Doug M.

Most likely due to the multitude of ways his name is often spelled.

Not necessarily. Google can take different spellings into account.

Dr. Q did not mention the “tyranny of the majority”, but it is often more brutal than personal dictatorship. I would much rather live in Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew than be a Palestinian living under the rule of democratic Israel in the West Bank.

You can’t compute some sort of “oftenness” relationship based on anecdotes. You have to look across all cases. Anecdotes are vulnerable to other anecdotes – observe:

I would much rather be a Palestinian living under the rule of democratic Israel in the West Bank, than a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.

Doug M @ 57:
… you could take a couple of seconds to type the phrase “Bouteflika regime” into google. How many hits do you get? About 1.1 million.

Strangely, I only got about 6050, which yielded only 771 actual web pages when I clicked through to see the final page of results[*]. Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of those were actually “Bouteflika’s regime”, which is not quite the same thing as “the X regime”.

Of course, if you forget how Google actually works and just type the words “Bouteflika” and “regime” (without carefully surrounding the phrase with quotation marks), then, yes, you can get “about 1.1 million” hits (which, again, is Google’s unreliable off-the-cuff estimate). Which includes lots of pages where “Bouteflika” and “regime” appear somewhere on the same page, but not as a phrase the way John was suggesting.

[*] This is at least partly because Google’s initial page-hit estimates are surprisingly flaky; see the discussion and analysis in this Language Log post: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1943

Peter T @52,
There are a fascinating set of cases where personal rule with wide and arbitrary powers itself becomes a tradition (the post-Caliphal Muslim Arab states are the best examples).

Are you referring to a wide range of post-Caliphal states here, or 20th c. Gulf monarchies and the like? Because if the former, then I’m inclined to doubt that you have any idea what you are talking about, because:
1) Few of the post-Caliphal rulers of Muslim Arab populations were Arab, they mostly were of Turkic or other ethnicities (“Arab rulers of post-Caliphal Muslim Arab states” almost describes the null set).
2) Maybe it’s just that I’m not aware enough of European history, being a Middle East/Central Asia historian, but the idea that Middle Eastern rulers had more arbitrary personal power than other monarchs of the time (10th – 18th c.) strikes me as a broad claim wanting evidence.

J. Otto Pohl @61 But Israel is not a typical democracy by any stretch, in fact classifying it as a democracy at all in this context seems to be intended for mischief. India, Turkey, and the US would be more typical examples of majoritarian rule, and I don’t see their problems stemming from majoritarianism being any worse than those of China or Egypt pre-2011.

zunguzungu wins the thread: I don’t think the claim that a certain type of personal tyranny is dying out is absurd on its face, but it’s a claim that needs to be supported by a much closer consideration of governments of poor countries than was given in the original post.

66:The problem with Bob’s argument is that Mubarak was not, in fact, a left-wing development dictator who protected Egypt from the forces of globalisation.

I don’t disagree, but I was trying to keep my “point” very simple and limited, that the GINI coefficient tells us something about the internal conditions of nations that could get past the confusion of political forms and symbols. Whether it does tell us something, what it tells us, how it should be interpreted, whether there are more important factors I’ll leave up for discussion. From Wikipedia (numbers don’t seen available for Libya)

2001 Egypt 34.4
2005 UK 34
2007 USA 45
2005 Sweden 23
2002 Uganda 45.7

And I also postulated that whatever appearances or the mechanisms might be, a nation with a low Gini would have more widely distributed power, and a nation with a high Gini would have more concentrated political power.

Some of the implications about “tyrannies” and “democracies” have been implied recently above. A possibility is that a tyrant would want to spread the available surplus as widely as possible as insurance, but then we might need to explain why he would feel that necessity.

Kaveh:

We are constantly told how Israel is the model democracy. But, it is not the only democratic ethnocracy. The one stan that is not a dictatorship is in many ways more ethnocratic and discriminatory than some of the ones that are dictatorships. I do not think this is really a controversial point. George Fredrickson argued that the reason racism was so virulent in South Africa and the US was precisely because the White population of these states was ruled by democratic structures.

African post-colonial dictators: actually, this breed is not so much dying as already dead. About the only ones left are Mugabe, Afewerki, and dos Santos of Angola.

Most of Africa’s current crop of dictators are second- or third-generation; they came to power, not by struggling against the colonizers, but by seizing power within governments already long since independent. Kabila _fils_, for instance, is the son of the guy who won a civil war against the guy who seized power from the first elected government. Idress Deby of Chad seized power from Habre who had seized power from Oueddi who — cripes, I don’t even know. But Deby was a little kid at independence, and Kabila wasn’t even born.

That’s why I don’t think African dictatorship is going away any time soon. Running a quick eye over the continent, it looks like it’s in a rough state of equilibrium. You have some countries that are becoming less authoritarian (Zambia, Tanzania), but you have just as many countries that seem to be drifting the other way (Malawi, Senegal). The Ibrahim Index — go on, look it up — has hardly budged in the last few years; individual countries have risen or fallen, but the numbers as a whole are around the same.

I’d be happy to be wrong, mind.

Doug M.

Mistake: that should be “one data point in 2001”. A data point in 2011 would be handy.

The anglophone Google’s hairsplitters may try to change their Google settings to multiple languages.

With the search
“régime de Bouteflika”
I got 767 000 hits.

Peterv, I agree that we’re including very different sorts of despotism. Still, it’s an interesting exercise, and possibly worthwhile.

As for Mugabe, he first came to power via armed insurgency. He’s stolen several elections since then, but his initial claim on the Presidency came from the barrel of a gun.

(Historical trivia: Mugabe is the only head of state to have fought a war involving both chemical and biological warfare. No, no — against him. In the last years of the Bush War, the Ian Smith government deployed warfarin and weaponized anthrax. Didn’t help.)

French Uncle, d’oh! And I speak French. Oh the embarrassment.

Doug M.

Doug M,
The statement that “his initial claim on the Presidency came from the barrel of a gun” is a bit too simplistic; certainly he led an armed insurgency for years, but the 1979 Lancaster House agreement paved the way for a more or less internationally recognized election in 1980. See, for example, Houser’s statement. Again, I’m not trying to say good things about Mugabe, but his crimes came wrapped in the banner of electoral legitimacy; in 1980, his election was as legitimate as such things could have possibly been. And we might be splitting irrelevant hairs at this point — I’m sufficiently unimpressed with the significance of “came to power by gun rather than ballot” to care all that much — but if the requirement to be included on the “tyrant” list allows for people who came to power after a brokered cease fire that led to elections, my quibble would just be that there would be a whole lot more tyrants in the list. Paul Kagame, for example, began as much more of a “tyrant” by that standard than Mugabe, no? Which speaks a lot more to the relative meaninglessness of the standard than anything else…

zunguzungu: A Mandela-style, more or less peaceful path to power was simply not an option in Rhodesia. Given the situation from 1965 on, nobody was going to end up running a majority-rule Zimbabwe without first leading an armed insurgency. So I don’t think it’s simplistic; it’s precisely correct.

Anyway, I’m not even sure what we’re quibbling about here. Lots of bad actors first come to power by elections — some even by more or less fair elections. Again, it’s not how you gain power, but how you keep it and what you do with it.

Doug M.

I would think that, as wealth and material power leak into the middle and lower strata of a society due to the progress of capitalist industrial development, that more complex means of organizing the state become necessary. Hence, an advancing state like China begins to resemble less a monarchy and more a modern corporation. Lesser states, once simple dictatorships, begin to resemble old-time constitutional monarchies.

The case of the United States is curious, for it seems to be proceeding in retrograde, towards centralized authoritarianism rather than away from it. I suppose this might be due to its having bankrupted itself financially and morally with its imperial adventures. It would hardly be the first imperial metropole to degenerate.

I have a strong suspicion that the Gini is not a good measure of inequality because it is heavily dependent on absolute wealth, and almost always decreases as wealth increases.

I also think it does not provide a reliable measure of inequality. A single value can refer to multiple different distributions of wealth, some of which are better than others.

It’s not as useless as an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, but I don’t think it’s the best way to compare inequality between nations or across time.

@84
Sigh. Don’t mean to jump all over you, but the notion that Russia is just the same as the US (pick your country) is so prevalent and so annoying that my blood pressure races just to read it. (I do see that you were joking, sort of) But this kind of statement puts the two countries in the same paradigm, just on different parts of the continuum, and that’s false. There is essentially no conflict of interest in Russia. The bureaucrats have economic interests that they fight to preserve. The oligarchs share their resources with the bureaucrats in order to have the right to get more resources. Some people think it’s closer to a sultanate.

Putin was appointed by Yeltsin when he resigned, voted in (there was no one else plausible), won again (by now with some manipulation). Then he appointed Medvedev, who won (by now with huge manipulation). It’s a tyrany in the sense that there is little recourse against anything he/they do, and certainly in the sense of lack of representation of other interests and points of view.

Like other corrupt leaders, Russian leaders don’t know when to stop, take their chips, cash in, and go away. So they’ll fall like all the rest of them. There is considerable panic at the top these days. And the two options — crack down or loosen up — are being debated more heatedly than in the past. As much as they maintain that the “Arab Spring” can’t happen here, they are indeed very frightened by it.

For what it’s worth, in ex-Soviet Central Asia there are at least as many cases of Soviet holdovers as there are of personal seizure of power. Nazarbayev, Karimov and Turkmenbashi had all been First Secretary of the republic-level Communist Party. In the absence of the Union, they carried on much as before.

The scuffle after Turkmenbashi’s death looks like a personal seizure of power, while Tajikistan looks more like gradual accretion of power following a reasonably legitimate (at least under the circumstances at the time) initial election.

Away from Central Asia, Lukashenko’s election in 1994 was reasonably legitimate (iirc, may have to look more closely at the details) but the authoritarian tendencies came out right quick.

Not sure that people still reading this thread are much fussed about how the dictators got where they are, but it’s at least interesting to note that the most tyrannous post-Soviet leaders were/are in fact Soviet holdovers. (Any thoughts on Aliyev pere, Doug M.?)

Doug @93, Aliyev _pere_ was Soviet, but not a holdover — he didn’t come to power until several years after independence. He had been running the place as Communist Party Secretary back in the 1980s, but fell from power in the late Gorbachev years. At independence he was an important figure but had no official position.

His immediate predecessor fell after the humiliating loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev stepped in to pick up the pieces. By that time Azerbaijan had already been independent for a couple of years.

Seven post-Soviet republics fell under dictators in the 1990s: the five ‘stans, Azerbaijan and Belarus. Only one of them (Kyrgyzstan) has, maybe kinda sorta, come back from dictatorship. The region doesn’t have strong traditions of democracy, nor well-developed institutions of civil society. And the Russians are not generally a positive influence. So while I think the deaths of the older generation will open a window of opportunity, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if most of them were still dictatorships a decade from now.

Doug M.

Can I say how much I’ve appreciated Doug M’s comments on this thread?

Can I say how much I’ve appreciated Doug M’s comments on this thread?

Me too. Exactly what these conversations need more of, the spirit of Montaigne: “Men too often ask why is it so, without first asking, is it so?” (Is there an idiom that’s the opposite of spinning in his grave?)

We should also appreciate John Q. here. While it seems to me that Doug M. hasn’t conceded the point of the original post at all (Africa still exists, I guess), provoking people to disagree with you in productive ways is one of the less appreciated but critical qualities of a good blogger.

While the precise term may not be ‘tyrant’, there really is a sense that Gaddafi represents the last example of a style of dictatorship that was very common not so long ago.

Thirty odd years ago the likes of Idi Amin and Bokassa were not uncommon. Although Bokassa is probably the only dictator credibly accused of serving human flesh to a visiting French President.

There are quite a few unpleasant regimes left, but none that has the same Kafkaesque style as the ‘brother leader’. Mugabwe is trying hard but is hardly in the same league.

What really marked out Gaddafi was the total lack of self-awareness. He would attack his neighbors, suffer a humiliating defeat, declare a victory and then exhort the country he just attacked to participate in some scheme to promote peace &ct. Even now, Gaddafi can’t understand that whether he controls 10% or Tripoli as is generally reported or the 90% that he claims, the indisputable fact is that the battle is taking place in his own capital and that he is one battle away from total defeat.

The monarchies will undoubtedly fall in due course, as will the Iranian pseudo-theocracy. Whether Saud or Iran will be the first to go is still to be seen but the collapse of one will likely lead to the collapse of the other.

Burritoboy, there is no question that the US plutocratic system is smoother, with better control over the mass-media, more institutionalized; the Russian one more personal, more direct, more in your face. Hey, it is much younger, give them time. Nevertheless, how do you explain, for example, Lehman Brothers going belly up, while Goldman Sachs getting bailed out (via AIG, and by other means)?

In any case: it’s liberal, and it’s democratic, with multiple parties. Elected politicians (the top ones, at least) appear to have more real power than their US counterparts, which, one could argue, makes it more democratic. And, perhaps as a consequence, unlike the US, it appears that there is some actual politics, actual political struggle there. So, it seems a bit more hopeful.

@104 I don’t understand your pessimism re the Arab spring. I mean, “assuming [Qaddafi’s regime] does indeed fall”? Are you joking? Do you actually have doubts that it’s going to fall? Also, I mean, sure, over the years there has been a lot of rosy talk about Middle Eastern politics by people trying to avoid real discussion (‘Palestinians and Israelis took another step towards peace’, &c.), but that doesn’t mean it’s actually impossible for Arabs to build democratic institutions, even (God forbid) at a time when those in the US are in a period of decline.

The US/NATO has precisely zero interest in having any kind of democracy in such an oil-rich country.

NATO/the US doesn’t actually dictate everything. This kind of fatalism/determinism seems to be a recurring misconception of people (I don’t know if you’re one) who buy too heavily into Military-Industrial Complex-types of explanation for Middle East-US political interactions. Small steps and small actors don’t matter, anything that seems like progress is a sinister plot being orchestrated from above, &c. Everything going on is determined by structures far too entrenched and massive to be affected by mere politics, so any apparent change is ipso facto merely superficial.

I might also add that at the time of writing not one country which has been part of the ‘Arab Spring’ has yet had free and fair elections

For the love of God, it’s been barely half a year since dictators/oligarchs were removed from countries that have not had effective opposition parties for decades! Of course they haven’t had free and fair elections yet.

Maybe we’re all still recovering from Obama disappointment (or disappointment over how much other people believed in Obama), but the Arab spring is not a political candidate, everybody I’ve talked to who is in any position to really see what is going on in Egypt–i.e. people involved in or attuned to Egyptian politics, not people I don’t know (however well-informed and educated they may be) commenting on blogs–or to put it another way, I actually asked some politically-active/attuned Egyptians I know–is very optimistic, at least to the extent of thinking that things are on the right track.

Henri Viewtemps: What on earth are you talking about? Liberal? Democratic? Multiple parties? Political struggle? You mind actually spend some time reading something about Russia before posting.

@105: #This kind of fatalism/determinism seems to be a recurring misconception of people (I don’t know if you’re one) who buy too heavily into Military-Industrial Complex-types of explanation for Middle East-US political interactions”

And what arguments have you given to refute said fatalism/determinism? What if these politically active and aware Egyptians you’ve spoken to are overly optimistic?

I’m not saying things can’t change eventually in the Middle East, but I’ll believe in the decline of U.S.-Israeli meddling ability when I see it — and I don’t expect it any time soon.

Henri,

Multiple parties do not really exist in Russia in a substantive political sense. That is, the regime allows small minority parties to pretend to be in existence, so long as they don’t threaten the ruling party. It’s the same set-up as the old PRI regime in Mexico or the PAP party in Singapore – and neither of those can be described as liberal democracies either.

Elected is a very dubious term to describe the office-holders within the Putin regime. You probably (quite rightly) fault the liberal democracies in that the members of the elite who control the major broadcast media have often tried to turn those liberal democracies into oligarchies. Examples being, Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi, Lord Beaverbrook and many others. But that process is precisely what did happen within the Putin regime. Again, while Rupert can buy more media properties, he can’t just take them – other powerful media owners demand that Rupert obey rules (at least in his dealings with them). Putin has, in fact, just simply taken media properties, including simply shutting down multiple media sources. What you correctly see as an oligarchical tendency in the liberal democracies is itself one of the major props of the Putin regime. The fact that Putin has done this far more thoroughly than even the most masterful maestros within the liberal democracies should be indicative of something. To the extent that Rupert Murdoch deforms the liberal democracies in which he operates and makes them more oligarchic, Putin’s regime has magnitudes more control than Murdoch does and thus is magnitudes more oligarchic or tyrannic.

My (perhaps mistaken) impression is that while Russian major TV channels are more or less government – controlled, most newspapers are independent and they are more critical of the establishment than the American ones (those in the mainstream).

Right, Murdoch can’t just take a TV channel from GE or Disney, but that’s irrelevant: they are all large corporations, representing more or less the same interests, in the institutional/ideological sense. Everything has already been taken, and it doesn’t have to be, literally, the man behind the curtain.

I mean, sure, of course there is more lawlessness there, among the elite. They are still dividing the loot. Probably comparable to the prohibition time in the US, the stuff you see in Boardwalk Empire. But is it so radically different from what’s going on today?

The discussion would benefit from paying slightly more attention to the economic foundations, as well as the institutional richness, of these various regimes and societies.

Military dictatorships do tend to arise in countries, where the military is the only large, reasonably well-funded institutional ecology, capable of recruiting, conferring status, developing doctrines (ideologies) and taking coordinated action.

Along separate analytical lines, we can note that the enormous economic rents associated with resource extraction for export tend to hazard a concentration of wealth and power. Concentrating wealth and power in that way puts the leadership into a web of relationships of the global elite — dependent or conflictual, shared identity or otherwise.

The political leadership of a country has to find a resource base or stream, and has to not only extract some form of “consent” from the governed, but some sort of modus vivendi with the global elite.

Gaddafi, long ago, was fairly typical of a military strongman, who played on nationalist sympathies to get popular support, and played on cold war conflict to navigate the international hazards. In time, he distinguished himself for his willingness to provoke the hostility of the Western powers.

I don’t think you can be truly paying attention and be entirely optimistic. The Libyan people have risen up, in a display of remarkable solidarity. That so many high officials and officers defected from Gaddafi is a good sign; there’s some humanity there, latent idealism and identification with the nation-state, mixed in, no doubt, with calculation. On the other hand, their success clearly rested on the committed determination of the European powers to disarm the regime. This may be a triumph of a spirit of democracy, but it is also a triumph of neoliberal globalism.

When you look to the details of the origins of the Arab rebellion, I think the neoliberal role seems darker and more pervasive. There was a time, when Gaddafi used the country’s oil wealth to embark on grandiose projects — water and electricity, etc — that actually did spread benefits to the broader population. As his son took over, that spirit faded, and economic conditions for the masses worsened, which may have undermined popular support for his regime. Libya is not a country, which has much in the way of institutional development. When you see news reports of “clans” and “tribes”, that’s usually a sign that a society is near rock bottom, reaching thru a fog of half-remembered history for the most rudimentary social ties, to try to get some basic organization happening.

Egypt, too, is a society, where there’s been very little institutional development, but, of course, Egypt does not have oil, either. There’s religion and some labor movement. Mubarek lived on the generosity of the Saudis and on what he could extract from the Arab-Israeli conflict as America’s instrument of peace. The military, with extensive industrial assets not typical of a military, is *the* pillar of Egypt political economy. Again, the dark side of neoliberalism seems to have done him in, as rising food prices collided with stagnating wages.

There were other kinds of dictatorships, formed in the early and mid 20th century, in nation-states with aspirations to join the developed world of industrialized countries. These, too, were often military dictatorships. But, they functioned to keep the lid on a boiling pot, as those societies developed social organization and institutions. They were not simple kleptocracies, devoted to extracting wealth; they were trying to nurture wealth. When those “dictatorships” were successful, and could be put aside, those societies had the possibility of functioning, with distributed power. If any form of “dictatorship” is so out of fashion as to be gone from history, it may be that one.

The purely extractive-repressive client-state dictatorship, , however, seems to be just undergoing a re-design, to make it more suitable to a unitary neoliberal globalism. The global elite has reached a consensus, which makes it more difficult for dictatorships, predicated on exploiting conflict among the global powers. The Gaddafis, who went around tweaking Western noses, and talking up third-world solidarity, are obsolete. There’s some scrambling for economic relationships with China, but that seems a forlorn hope.

Russia has the remants of an extensive effort to create an industrial economy, but its modern economy is all resource extraction, all the time. Russia has an income distribution as heavily concentrated as an Arab oil state — with more billionaires than the U.S., but its size and military resources gives it a seat at the table with the global western elite. Putin, I would think, represents and draws his power from the remnants of the old order, and its police power; he demonstrates his power to the new order, rather dramatically, in order to discipline the new order, to gain resources and to marshal popular support. I don’t quite understand the insistence on typing Putin, though — what’s the point of categorizing his regime with moral epithets?

The most disturbing and pessimistic thing, of course, is to analyze the political deterioration of the United States, which is decaying into an authoritarian state, very rapidly, under the weight of extreme income distribution. The U.S. is the center of the neoliberal global system, and its extreme income distribution is due to its role, as a financial center, and the dominant role its elites have assumed in the global system, thru banking, oil, military-industrial power and multinational corporations.

The mass U.S. industrial economy is in an advanced state of decay and obsolescence, disemploying millions, with wages stagnating and declining. The mass economy is teetering on the brink of a depression. The institutions for organizing mass, popular will and opinion are also deeply decayed and dysfunctional. The church, the independent press, the professions, the law, academia — its all corrupt and incompetent. The elite, plugged into the global system for its wealth, power and status, does not need the masses, and wonders whether “we” can afford Social Security. Popular sentiment is deeply angry and resentful, but has no means of organizing or acting.

I find myself “hoping” for collapse.

@115: “The fact that the liberal democratic regimes seemingly can (with some level of reliability) enforce laws between members of the elite is a very critical point.”

It wouldn’t qualify a state as either “liberal” or “democratic” to my mind. For that, it has to be possible to enforce the law against members of the elite, on behalf of ordinary people. Recognizing that no one thinks Russia is a fully qualified liberal democratic regime anyway, what’s the point, exactly?

The Russian state, under Putin, is not fully controlled by the oligarchs; clearly, a mixed curse. I would be inclined to explain the core strengths of the Russian state, and the manner of its sometimes hostile relationship with the oligarchs, more in terms of of its historical inheritances, rather than the idiosyncracies of Putin, but be that as it may. Neither Czar nor Communist seems to have done much to develop non-authoritarian expectations, respect for honest business practice, or the law and judicial practice — shocking!

It is not possible to enforce the law against the elite in the U.S., and no independent Media with the prestige and influence of the Guardian or the BBC exist. The fact that large corporations can still sue each other just makes the system sclerotic and unstable — quite an accomplishment.

Rupert Murdoch managed to offend deeply a sufficient number of immensely wealthy, world-famous and powerful people, that he isn’t able to get absolutely everything he wants, on his own schedule. Sean Hoare is still dead, though. Feel the “liberal democracy” and its benefits! Oooh.

Bruce Wilder @114
When you see news reports of “clans” and “tribes”, that’s usually a sign that a society is near rock bottom, reaching thru a fog of half-remembered history for the most rudimentary social ties, to try to get some basic organization happening.

Bruce, I generally appreciate and agree with your what you’ve said in your comment, but I should point out that when somebody bases a judgment about the level of a country’s institutional development on what epithets are used in news reports, that’s usually a sign they put a disturbingly low value on specific and reliable information about the country in question.

“no independent Media with the prestige and influence of the Guardian or the BBC exist.”

But how does that relate to my generalized comments about liberal democracies as a whole? The US does have a particular problem with tightly concentrated media ownership. But the US government can’t seize media entities, and Putin already has done so. It’s a critical difference – major opposition media currently happens not to exist in the US as the result of a complex history. (Major opposition media does exist in other liberal democracies, so clearly it’s a possible thing under liberal democracy.) But if major opposition media were to exist, neither Murdoch nor the US government would be able to simply seize it.

“Rupert Murdoch managed to offend deeply a sufficient number of immensely wealthy, world-famous and powerful people, that he isn’t able to get absolutely everything he wants, on his own schedule.”

But that’s something that would be impossible under Putin’s regime. Say that there was a Rupert Murdoch equivalent in Russia. Like in the real-life version of Murdoch’s alliance with the Tories, our equivalent would be a close ally and supporter of the Putin regime who is a major media mogul. Some non-profit newspaper causing a critical Putin ally a loss of over a billion dollars, exposing the ally (and by extension, Putin himself) to ridicule and increased opposition (including revealing large amounts of criminal behavior) simply would not be allowed to happen. The only way for that ally to suffer what Rupert is suffering is if he started opposing Putin – and the current Tory government in the UK remains closely allied with Murdoch and yet is still having trouble pulling Murdoch’s bacon out of the fire!

I’m trying to make a case that even the worst of the liberal democracies are different types of regimes than Putin’s Russia. That regime isn’t just another step on a continuum, but a different kind altogether. Not that I’m trumpeting liberal democracies (which I find somewhat disappointing myself), but it’s important to actually be able to define regime types.

“Neither Czar nor Communist seems to have done much to develop non-authoritarian expectations, respect for honest business practice, or the law and judicial practice—shocking!” But that’s part of the reason why Putin’s regime is not just some sort of degraded liberal democracy. Russian, under Putin, lacks key important institutions that liberal democracies do have. Of course, much of the reasons for the lack is Russia’s political history, not something that Putin created himself (though he certainly has exploited these lacks for his own gain). But that, again, emphasizes that Putin’s regime, while a relatively mild one within Russian history, remains quite different from the liberal democracies.

“the US government can’t seize media entities”

It can, but it won’t. Not major ones, anyway. Wouldn’t want to be Wikileaks, though, eh?

“. . . major opposition media currently happens not to exist in the US as the result of a complex history”

Oh, that’s alright, then. So few of us were born without parents — a pity, really.

“Rupert Murdoch managed to offend . . . powerful people . . . But that’s something that would be impossible under Putin’s regime.”

Of course, a Rupert Murdoch figure could exist in Russia, and, yes, could, indeed, manage to offend Putin or other powers-that-be. The configuration might be a little different. But, there’d still be offense given, and a public scandal, exposure and humiliation in some form of broadcast Media. Public humiliation to induce shame and submission is part of power politics in every regime type — it’s basic to human nature — maybe basic to mammalian nature. It’s not distinctive of a liberal democracy.

“I’m trying to make a case that . . . Putin’s Russia . . . isn’t just another step on a continuum, but a different kind altogether. . . . it’s important to actually be able to define regime types.”

I don’t think Putin’s Russia qualifies as a liberal democracy, either. I think what’s had you stumbling about is that the emblematic, historic liberal democracies have, in their recent decay into neo-liberal democracies entered an ambiguous territory, where they have arguably ceased to be either liberal or democratic. Your standards of measurement have been stretched out of shape, like a ruler printed on silly putty.

I’d like to say that’s nothing to do with Russia, but that’s not entirely true, since the same neo-liberal doctrines and trends, which contributed to creating Russia’s oligarchs, who prosper in a neo-liberal global economy, created America’s financial de-regulation, bubble economics and crisis. The political root traditions are radically different, but the economic fabric is common and connected.

“Jeez, nothing about how our beloved “liberal democracies”, through their “international” agencies, imposed “shock therapy” on the post-Soviet republics and thereby aided and abetted the looting of remaining productive bases of those countries, instituting a reign of mafia capitalism, with the result all-but-inevitably being its overcoming/rationalization through Chekist capitalism”

I’m confused. I made a claim that liberal democracies do have a rule of law between members of their elites. I explicitly the same can’t be said of their own citizens. Of course a liberal democracy doesn’t maintain any pretense of the rule of it’s laws when that liberal democracy is acting outside of its own borders, even against the elites of other countries. Liberal democracies not infrequently try to murder the elites of other countries, for example.

Just about the least worthy OP on CT ever. Seems very rushed, perhaps JQ regrets posting it now, especially the bits that cannot be edited.

Really grateful for Doug M.’s interventions though, and what Hidari said.

I can’t say I understand the significance of Murdoch story. He was useful to the ruling clique, right until he’s become an embarrassment for the ruling clique. At which point he was criticized by the ruling clique, and got (so far) a slap on the wrist. What’s so dramatically un-Russian about that?

They have independent press, opposition newspapers. http://en.novayagazeta.ru/ is, apparently, the most prominent.

FWIW, I think John perhaps had part of a correct and possibly interesting idea, but expressed it so sloppily that it has since gotten lost. I think PHB @101 cut close to the heart of the matter. What is perhaps disappearing with Qaddafi is one particular type of dictator, viz., the flamboyant malignant narcissist.

There are still plenty of dictators around — but most of them are relatively bland compared to the Brother Leader. The typical modern dictator at least pretends to be a technocrat, and goes easy on the insane claims and wacky-ass titles. For an example of a “modern” dictator replacing the classic whackaloon model, see Turkmenistan. The current Maximum Leader is every bit as brutal and oppressive as his predecessor, and Turkmenistan’s human rights rankings haven’t budged out of the cellar. But Berdymuhammedov doesn’t feel the need to build immense golden statues of himself, rename the calendar months after his family members, and require everyone in the country to own and read his book of sayings.

So why are these guys dying out? My tentative guess would be that it’s harder — though probably more fun! — to be totalitarian leader when you’re obviously and loudly insane. A lot of these guys didn’t actually last that long. PHB mentioned Bokassa and Amin; those are both excellent examples. On one hand, they were so flamboyantly crazy that they’re still remembered today, more than 30 years after losing power. On the other, neither managed to *stay* in power for even a decade.

Most of the ones who’ve hung on fall into one of two categories. Either they’re running countries that are near-autarkies (Kim, Castro, Afewerki), or they’re sitting on top of serious oil wealth (Qaddafi, Obiang). It also seems to help to have come to power in a nationalist revolution (Castro, Afewerki, Qaddafi, Mugabe); I’d tentatively suggest that this gives the Maximum leader an extra hit of legitimacy, allowing him a somewhat broader leash.

So, flamboyant narcissists may indeed be on the decline. But dictatorship as an institution? Looks to be doing just fine, alas.

Doug M.

Actually, fwiw, democracy has been in decline for the last half decade*. However I’m sure NATO’s ‘intervention’ in Libya (followed by the almost inevitable economic collapse/insurgency/civil war/return to authoritarian rule) will change everything.

http://www.economist.com/node/15270960

*Assuming you accept that what Freedom House has to say about things is the last word on the matter.

Further still: there are quite a few dictatorships that have seen a successful handoff from an old, sick or dying dictator to a successor. This has happened in Azerbaijan, Burma, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and arguably Togo and Gabon. In DR Congo, the dictator was assassinated, but his son promptly stepped up. And Turkmenistan and South Sudan can be added to the list as “top guy died mysteriously, but equally dictatorial new guy took over in a smooth succession”. So while having the Maximum Leader get old and feeble opens a window of opportunity, it’s also perfectly possible that the old dictator may simply be replaced by a new one.

So, taken all in all, I’m just not seeing why the number of dictatorships should decline significantly over the next decade or two. Sure, I can imagine a best-case scenario where a Central Asian Spring takes out three or four more later in this decade while half a dozen others evolve peacefully towards more liberal rule. That’s happened in all sorts of places, from Paraguay to Indonesia to Bhutan. So it’s certainly possible.

But OTOH, I can just as easily imagine a worst-case scenario in which almost all of the current crop stay in power or are replaced by someone just as dictatorial, while various countries that are currently under authoritarian or oligarchic rule drift into full-blown dictatorship. (Do I really need to come up with a list of plausible candidates for the latter?)

All in all, I think the median scenario over the next decade is either stability or slight decline. To nail this down, I’ll define my terms. At the end of comment 72 I listed 22 extant dictatorships. I would add the inherited dictatorships of Cuba, Syria, Azerbaijan and North Korea to that list, bringing the total to 26. (We’ll leave Algeria, Burma and South Sudan out for the nonce, and ignore the dictator-monarchs.) So I’ll go out on a limb and predict that in 2020, this number will be 25 +/- 3.

If it drops to 21 or lower, than that will be a significant decline, and I’ll cheerfully admit I’m wrong. Very cheerfully! Because that would be, you know, great good news.

Doug M.

Yeah, influential individuals dangerous to the regime get persecuted. Cry me a river. Fine, what about this: in the 1940s and 50s, for about 20 years, the American establishment felt threatened by so – called ‘un – American activities’. Many of those deemed dangerous were jailed, black – listed, lost their jobs. Some fled the country. New laws were passed, to deprive ‘communist front organizations’ (labor unions) of any legal rights. Then COINTELPRO started, and it lasted for more than a decade.

Was that still a spot in the continuum, or was it a completely different political system, like a fascist dictatorship or something?

I’m simply trying to understand your point of view; that is my only motive, as far as I know.

Look, any country with a multi – party system, free (i.e. ‘secret ballot’) elections, capitalist economy, and laws that guarantee basic freedoms – is a ‘liberal democracy’. Depending on strength or weakness of various institutions, things often go wrong: rampant corruption ensues, a clique acquires (and abuses) disproportionate power, nationalist sentiment rises, incited by politicians, whatever. To me, that’s just one of the characteristics of liberal democracies.

Ah, so you think Putin, as an individual, is the real center of power there, not just a figurehead representing some businesses and property owners. Well, if that’s the case, then you’re right of course. I find it hard to believe, though. But hey, what do I know.

I have no idea where those cross-outs come from.

John,

Again, it’s unclear what work your narrative does. Yes, Russia’s current regime came about inside of the Russian historical experience – which has included significant episodes of predation by foreign regimes (including – but not limited to – by liberal democratic ones). No one is suggesting that the liberal democratic regimes always play by the same rules when they play in foreign lands.

@ 142
A much more gradual approach to economic restructuring would have been far more preferable, assuming the masses of the Russian and associated peoples counted for anything.

Yes, absolutely. No one is arguing with you, least of all Gaidar and his crew. They spent several months trying to figure out how to institute reform in a gradual way (a chance lost when Gorbachev didn’t go for the 500-Day Plan). The problem was that they didn’t have time. The stores were empty. The Grain Commission met every night in the fall of 1991, getting reports on grain supplies across the country, moving two tons of wheat from Ryazan to Tula and one from Kazan to Nizhni Novgorod to keep bread in the stores. I’d also like to remind you that the Russian congress – overwhelmingly communist – voted overwhelmingly for the shock therapy reforms. It’s certainly true that they weren’t economic geniuses, but they weren’t all idiots, either. I’ve read all the criticism about this for 20 years now, and the problem with it all is that ignores facts. “They should have done this or that” falls apart when you understand that they couldn’t because they didn’t have the money or the control or the data or the time. I would also caution you not to overestimate Soviet industrial capacity. It was largely military – don’t need all those tanks – incredibly inefficient, and produced a lot of crap that no one wanted.

And sorry to be curt, but spare me the accusation of indifference to the suffering of the masses. We stood in breadlines before the reforms, not after them.

Yes, I suppose Putin’s problem (and Medvedev’s – the guy is nominally president), burritoboy, is an economy based on one natural resource. But Russia is different than the Gulf States in that it can, theoretically, produce a lot more than that but isn’t because of the stranglehold of the bureaucracy and corruption. That leads to a lot more frustration and discontent, especially in a highly educated population with high expectations (based on either real or manipulated nostalgia/memories of the USSR). They keep yammering about modernization and blackmailing foreign companies to invest in Skolkovo (instant Silicon Valley), but the very people who could actually do something there are emigrating in droves because they don’t believe in it.

No, Putin isn’t a figurehead representing business or other interests. He runs the show, he dictates the terms, he allows the rents to flow, and he punishes viciously. I don’t know what definition of “tyrant” you all are using, but that’s the word I’d use, which is why I chimed into this thread. He does arbitrate between competing clans, however, and if he goes, the clans would probably erupt into some form of war. There are also certain clans who have gravitated to Medvedev. They don’t believe the high prices on energy resources will last much longer. They don’t believe that Russia can survive if it remains more or less antagonistic to the West, or by playing divide-and-conquer with gas and oil resources in Europe. They don’t believe that the country can diversify its economy with the current level of corruption and the present system. And some of them would like some of the goodies that Putin’s buddies and their sons have gotten (ie companies, land, pipelines, middleman contracts, etc.). It seems, however, that they have lost this round and that Putin will continue to run the show, either as president again or in some other way.

Come on, Bruce. That’s as egregious of an example of taking a quote out of context as I’ve ever seen. The full quote is “McCarthyism wasn’t primarily a power struggle over which individual politician got to rule the US.” It’s completely clear from the context that burritoboy is arguing McCarthyism was a different kind of power struggle.

mossy @147:

You seem rather flighty and in denial over what happened to Russia in the 1990’s. And some of your fact set is just wrong. Gaidar was a radical advocate of “liberalization” and no the Duma or whatever the congress was called back then didn’t approve Yeltsin’s shock therapy, which was obviously not his own invention, but stictly made-in-Washington. Rather it was initiated by decree in Jan. 1992, and after increasing conflict with the parliament, Yeltsin attacked it with tanks in the fall of 1993, dissolved it and promulgated a referendum on a new constitution with greatly enhanced executive and much reduced legislative powers, (which, I take it, is still in force). Talk about tyrannical behavior, eh? Officially output declined 50% and official poverty rates went from 2% to nearly 50%. The hyperinflation unleashed by decontrolling prices and eliminating subsidies, (which is never a good idea when all the producers are monopolists, whether state-owned or not), required high interest rates and tight constriction of credit, which automatically bankrupted most firms. And the removal of any capital controls didn’t result in an influx of foreign investment, but rather an outflow of loot. If there were no longer any bread lines and the stores were stocked, it was because many people didn’t have any money to buy bread.

The point isn’t that Russia didn’t have any other options or choices. Rather it’s that other options were deliberately blocked off and the Russians were given a unilateral Hobson’s choice by the U.S.-led “international community”. And all that panicked talk is just part of the bum’s rush in imposing shock therapy. If you don’t understand how these sorts of IMF-type one-world capitalist operations work, just look at what’s happening with Greece nowadays, as PM Jr. is force to commit political and national suicide, narrowly ramming the demanded austerity measures through his ever diminishing parliamentary majority. Either you’re being naive or sheerly ideological in your glib dismissal of the role of the “international community” in engineering the catastrophe. (And I’ve little doubt that some in the Cold War hawk wing deliberately wanted to bring about such an utter collapse).

And then you go on to complain of the lack of any industrial base in Putin’s Russia? Well, there’s no doubt that salvaging and restructuring the legacy industrial infrastructure of the former U.S.S.R. would have been a difficult task. But there’s a big difference between starting from an industrial base that has been effectively devalued by 70% and starting from no industrial base, since it was entirely liquidated. Which was the fully foreseeable effect of shock therapy.

At any rate if I want a dose of facts and analysis on contemporary Russia and its economy, I’d rather consult this guy, who at least had the great good sense to serve some time in the GULAG under the ancien regime:

http://www.tni.org/users/boris-kagarlitsky

@151 Walt: “burritoboy is arguing McCarthyism was a different kind of power struggle”

No. He’s arguing that Russian power struggles are different from power struggles in liberal democracies. And, to make those arguments, he makes absurdly naive assertions about the nature of particular power struggles in U.S. and U.K., and the importance of laws and norms in institutionalizing practice in U.S. or U.K. politics.

I’ve yet to see anyone in this thread argue that the Russian Federation is a liberal democracy, so, to a large extent, burritoboy, has been arguing with a strawman of his own making. Stuffing that strawman appears to require burritoboy to assert and believe things about politics in the U.S. and U.K., which are simply not true. I object.

I was using the quotation as a headline, for a whole line of argument concerning what McCarthy and the episodes associated with him were all about. I was objecting to the whole argument, as an absurd interpretation. The absurdity centered on the idea that McCarthy’s activities were not part of a power struggle. Picking out the kernal, and saying, “Jeebus” is my way of saying this argument is absurd — so absurd on its face that I do not even know how to engage with its author.

What burritoboy says about McCarthy and “McCarthy-ites” is wrong in every detail and every generalization. McCarthy became part of the mythology of American politics, a morality tale of the limits of civility, and so might actually be useful as a counterpoint regarding the establishment of norms, in the hands of someone, who knew what he was talking about. If he thinks anticommunist hysteria was not “a power struggle over which individual politician got to rule the US” he might want to re-acquaint himself with Joseph Kennedy, Sr. or Richard M Nixon. And, if he thinks McCarthy genuinely cared about anyone’s political “ideas”, he might want to look up, Roy Cohn.

“If he thinks anticommunist hysteria was not “a power struggle over which individual politician got to rule the US” he might want to re-acquaint himself with Joseph Kennedy, Sr. or Richard M Nixon.”

Actually, Richard M. Nixon buttresses my case, and doesn’t buttress yours. Why did Joseph McCarthy’s career end so abruptly? Because his supporters realized McCarthy was a buffoon. And McCarthy was a buffoon because he was not going to achieve their policy aims. However, McCarthy was always perfectly good at collecting public attention with his antics. That is, McCarthy’s supporters didn’t care whether McCarthy was good at getting himself on TV if that didn’t also mean their policy goals got accomplished in the process. They showed that they cared very little about promoting individual politicians (look at how McCarthy was abandoned such that he fell into complete obscurity and pathetically drank himself to death), but instead primarily about achieving policy goals.

@157: “Richard M. Nixon buttresses my case, and doesn’t buttress yours.”

The Ur anti-communist hysteric and demagogue became a Senator, Vice-President, and, finally, President of the United States. And, how does that buttress your case @142?:

Notable, however, is that McCarthyism persecuted people for their political ideas and activities. Nobody cared if American communists supported Eisenhower or not. American McCarthyists, evil though they were, had essentially no interest in which individual major current American politician their victims liked . . . McCarthyism wasn’t primarily a power struggle over which individual politician got to rule the US.

Henri V made a general reference @139 to the persecution by politicians of a fairly large number of people for ‘un – American activities’. In your reply, you focus exclusively on the minor figure of McCarthy, a clown who was made a scapegoat late in the game, and you completely obfuscate the role anti-communist hysteria and witchhunts had played in the struggles between Republicans and the Truman Administration, over labor policy and foreign policy, Hollywood and homosexuals. Not to mention the role that the competition to appear anti-communist played in the careers of many post-WWII politicians. You miss, for example, McCarthy’s alleged alliance with Joseph Kennedy, Sr., who arranged for his son Robert to serve as minority counsel (or Roy Cohn’s number 2 in many accounts) on McCarthy’s subcommittee.

Over and over again, you allege a qualitative distinction, based on differences, which only exist as matters of degree. And, you try to support your dubious case with ridiculous caricatures, like your narrow and ignorant portrait of post-WWII political persecutions and slanders of the left, as limited to McCarthy-ism, in the person of McCarthy.

“Two on my list” is a mug’s bet — Mugabe is nearly 90, and Kim and a couple of others are in shaky health. Also, the issue isn’t whether individual dictators come and go; it’s whether the total number of dictators decreases.

FWIW, if Assad does fall, I don’t think the process will be very protracted. He has all the top military and security commanders on side, and the dissidents have no guns and no hope of military intervention. So the most likely scenario would be an internal coup by his fellow Alawites — the generals and secret police deciding to throw him overboard. That’s going to happen fast if it happens at all.

But anyway. Sure, I’ll go with a year. I’m betting Assad will still be in power at COB Syrian time on August 31, 2012. You’re betting he won’t. Other details as per #156, above.

Confirm?

Doug M.

I translated john c halasz’s comments to my 87 yr old dacha neighbor last night, and he laughed to the point of tears, then was outraged. “Don’t these people read the newspapers? Do they really know nothing about Russia and the USSR?”

You are doing what is called “whataboutism” in Russian-watching circles. You are picking one thing — McCarthyism — and showing that it is similar to/just the same as, say, persecution of the opposition in Russia and then coming to the conclusion that the systems are the same, basically, and it’s just a matter of degree.

But that ignores the context that these events take place in. The context in Russia is appointed mayors and governors; control over the media used by 95 percent of the population; massive corruption; bureaucrats who own corporations and protect their interests; non-independent judiciary; police that are used as personal retaliatory armies; killing of journalists — the list goes on and on.

I should also say that there is another big distinction. You don’t get in much trouble in Russia for saying Putin is a Poop or Putin and Medvedev’s foreign policy stinks. No one cares. But you do get in trouble for saying that Putin is the major stockholder of the company that exports oil to Europe. That is, you get in trouble for threatening a government figure’s personal economic interests.

So McCarthyism would be “the same” if McCarthy had gone after people who had documents proving he owned part of Shell Oil. It’s not the general criticism that gets them here — they leave the communists pretty much alone. They are using the state apparatus to jail, kill, discredit (in the best situations) people who threaten state official’s personal wealth. Personal economic interests, not general systems or structures.

McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover went precisely after the people and organizations that represented a danger to big businesses, not necessarily to Shell Oil, but certainly to ExxonMobil, or whatever it was called at the time.

Protecting personal economic interests of the ruling elite is (more or less) the purpose of general systems, in any hierarchical society.

I don’t have the impression that mayors are appointed in Russia; as for the regional governors: in India they are directly appointed by the president. Yet I’ve never heard any suggestions that this makes India a dictatorship.

Sigh. Yes, mayors and governors are appointed in Russia. And again, you’re picking one thing. It’s not just the appointed mayors, it’s the totality of the whole system which is fundamentally different.

And, I repeat, it’s not just general interests being attacked and defended. It’s Bureaucrat A who owns Acme Oil Pipelines ordering the police to beat up Journalist C who has proof of his misuse of his office to gain profits for his company. Or having his kid arrested for drug use. Don’t you folks read the papers about Russia?

Yes, some elderly neighbors are idiots, but mine isn’t.

What I find impossible to understand is this: most of you folks are liberal to left politically. And yet you are defending a regime that should disgust you. You fight against people who know much more about this. I cannot figure out why.

McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover went precisely after the people and organizations that represented a danger to big businesses

So you’re saying that the people on the Hollywood Blacklist actually represented a danger to big business? – I don’t think so, rather the whole thing was an ideologically motivated witch hunt.

Yeah, but why did they go, with such a massive force, after this particular ideology, and all its manifestations? Isn’t it because they felt it was threatening their (or their sponsors’) economic interests?

@167, you seem to feel that ‘liberal democracy’ is a synonym of ‘happiness and sunshine’, but to me it’s just a political arrangement built on top of the economic system that is not necessarily known for happiness and sunshine, and is often described as ‘rat race’.

Isn’t it because they felt it was threatening their (or their sponsors’) economic interests?

Well, nobody can say for sure what went on in their paranoid minds, but objectively the threat to business interests posed by people on the blacklist was close to zero and the threat of the commies taking over the US was definitely zero. Arguing that there was an actual threat, rather than an imagined and ideologically convenient one, is playing into the hands of revisionists seeking to justify McCarthy et al – after all, as bad as capitalism might have been in the US, I’m sure most of us would have preferred it to a Soviet style dictatorship.

Umm…mossy, get your ducks lined up straight, eh? I never mentioned McCarthy. You already mis-attributed a remark directed at burritoboy as referring to yourself, and when I pointed out that, yes, in fact, shock therapy was imposed by decree, not a parliamentary consensus, no relevant response forthcoming. What I specifically argued against was your idea, somewhat contradictory and confused, tat shock therapy was somehow necessary and inevitable and that it was entirely something that the Russians did to themselves and their own damned fault, not something that resulted from intensive foreign interference. (Er, ever hear of the Harvard boys?) Which is exactly the sort of thing that one would expect from a native guide, attempting to butter up the foreign tourists. And I specifically argued that “Putinism” was just the logical succession to “Yeltsinism”, as the anarchic criminality of the “free market” capitalism under the latter, was replaced by a more orderly system run by a higher quality, more disciplined and more “legitimate” class of criminals. (And BTW just in purely economic terms, if you have an entirely natural resource based economy, you’re dealing with the extraction of a limited flow of economic rents. so you can expect contention over the control of those flows). And, hey, I didn’t even mention Chechnya. But do you really mean to tell me that Russia is currently more violent and worse off than it was under our good buddy Yeltsin?

Well, we were merely arguing here about taxonomy: is Russia a real bad case of liberal democracy, or does it belong to a whole different category? This is a systemic analysis that should have nothing to do with being pro or anti Putin, or any moralistic grandstanding.

@179: I suspect the problem is that you are actually implicitly making a rather different claim: that the problems of Russia are just the problems of the USA written a bit larger.

I’d say it is far from obvious that is a useful model. Even sticking to a linear spectrum, and restricting discussion to countries that have some kind of election, then I think you could quite plausibly draw a line with Russia at one end, and Iran at the other.

One has elections that determine a very strong leader, who gets to throw around money and bullets as a consequence of that victory. With there being a feedback loop that that power makes them not only very unlikely to be arrested and tried for anything they do in the exercise of that power, but also more likely to be voted for next time. There is widespread scepticism about the possibility of anyone else being able to compete.

The other has elections that produce a nearly powerless figurehead. All real decisions are justified with reference to a predefined set of theological doctrines. There is widespread scepticism about there being any point in participating in the electoral process, _even if your preferred candidate is likely to win_. In short, a republic not a democracy.

Italy is the western country that is more obviously Russia-lite. Whereas most of the real problems of the USA seem more a consequence of it being rather too much like Iran.

Only the nature of the theology changes (capitalism instead of Sharīʿah, bankers instead of clerics) .

mossy @ 178:

Well..of course, you lived through it, whereas I was just distantly observing from “across the pond”. And, of course, the Soviet economy was in long decline, especially after the collapse of world oil prices in the early 1980’s. And Gorbachev’s dithering basically sealed his fate, as, if I understand it, he basically tried to reform the central planning mechanism by de-centralizing it, without realizing that it actually was already de facto highly de-centralizated, and he was really re-centralizing it. (In another context, I compared Obama to Gorbachev, as another lawyer with only a dim grasp of economics, who constantly tacks to his right to maintain his dwindling base of support). And, yes, then there was the rejection of the Yavlinsky plan, which might have been the last chance. But as to the “Congress of Peoples’ Deputies” granting Yeltsin emergency powers, well, 1) he was the hero of the moment, having faced down the coup at the White House and 2) it hardly amounts to a ratification of what he would do subsequently. But the basic package of the radical “liberal” reformers such as Gaidar was entirely “Washington Consensus” prescriptions, in which those reformers had been thoroughly indoctrinated. I will grant you that events were moving very fast and unpredictably, but you yourself indicate in your comment factors for why it couldn’t possibly work. (I mentioned that above in terms of Minsky’s institutionalism). At the very least, any genuine reform program that sought to salvage some remaining value from installed legacy capital stocks, (which weren’t “competitive” by international standards, but did retain residual value, given the factors I cited above), would have had to retain capital controls and maintain domestic markets and domestic demand for output, and would have had to gradually withdraw subsidies and work through the on-site industrial managers, granting them discretion, rather than just “privatizing” ownership, which meant nothing more than a corrupt swindle by a few well-placed insiders, who were interested in anything but actual management. Once any industrial base was liquidated, the plain fact is that “structurally” zero-sum contests over resource rents was all that was left.

So my dispute with you has been to reject the aura of historical inevitability and the claim that the troubles were entirely endogenous and had nothing to do with foreign impositions and intervention. Which is just the sort of thing that the Clintonoids and others such love to hear. (Remember when Yeltsin had a 9% approval rating in the polls and yet managed “gloriously” to secure re-election, because of those God-damned commies?). It would have been interesting to give the German proposals an airing, since, aside from the fact that that they and their interests were regionally most directly affected, and the fact that for obvious reasons they had plenty of inherited guilt,- (they do that shtick rather well, having been well trained in it, and, being German, well-disposed toward accepting their training),- their “social market economy” is far more institutionalist in its mentality than the American model. The Cold War was finally over, and after its insane and supremely dangerous excesses, a new turning of what we are too pleased to call history was possible, (yea!). But, no, there was only to be an inertial repetition of more of the same. (You do recognize the difference between George Kennan’s original “containment” strategy proposal and what was made of it by the Cold War hawks, who were especially in power during the Gorbachev and after era, eh? Which is why he was rather quickly shunted aside. Oh, and who subsequently returned to power in the most virulent form, long after the Cold War was a relevant framework).

There were also some inferences, though no actual knowledge, to be draw from the textual evidence you present here. Which stuck me as somewhat glib and flighty. You’re fairly obviously an educated member of a rather narrow slice of the professional middle class, (perfect English, without even the typos that I regularly produce, the notion of emigration and the brain-drain, the reference to dachas, etc.), in one of the metro areas. (B. Kagarlitsky mentioned the point in one of his essays: a certain slice of the former professional/technical Soviet intelligentsia benefits form “globalization”, whether domestically or through the possibility of emigration. If one has an advanced degree in physics, maybe one can emigrate to Wall St. and design neutron bombs,- oops!, I mean derivatives. But most have no such luck and are utterly entrapped.) And there seemed to be a certain nostalgia for the “reform” era and perhaps even sympathy for radical “liberals” such as Gaidar. So, I surmised, perhaps your particular experience is not typical for most Russians and contains a certain ideological slant. Which I took issue with.

Yes, we do hear over here occasionally of some “unexplained” murders, (Anna P. being a particularly prominent case, though IIRC that had a Chechnya connection), and of general intimidation tactics. But the reports from the Yeltsin era were of wide-spread “gangland-style” contract killings and extortion rackets. So on the evidence I have, (which obviously is spotty), I have a hard time crediting that things are so much worse under Putin than Yeltsin, since most of the population seems to be left alone in a policy of malign neglect, apathetic, cynical, and alienated. But mostly it seems that people are left to their own devices, a kind of “negative freedom”, so long as they don’t directly threaten the hierarchy, which could be worse. (The comparison with Mexico, both with the PRI and after, suggests itself). Nor is it clear from here, that the “human rights abuses”, (always a euphemism), are somehow centrally planned, as in olden times, rather than ad hoc “expressions” of various factions. Though, if some robber-baron gets sent to jail or driven into exile, that scarcely gets my dander up. Does it really matter that killings were conducted by non-state actors before, but fewer killings and less repressions occur, though at the behest of shadowy state agents? As I said, that amounts to an upgrade in the quality and the predictability of the mafia involved. Though Russia et alia have never really had any tradition of the “rule of law, not men”. But if that is an assertion of the difference between personal rule and publicly mediated rule, it’s a meaningful distinction. However, if it’s an assertion of the autonomous, self-regulating nature of legal systems, as not rooted in sovereign power as the “organized monopoly of legitimate violence” as at once necessary to the promulgation and coercive enforcement of any system of laws, then it’s just a liberalistic illusion. At least, without any account of the actual political economy involved.

But maybe as well, you should attempt to grasp the perspective of us foreigners. The answer to the “extra credit” question I posed above, as to the first European country to undergo IMF-sponsored,- and thus effectively imposed,- “shock therapy” is Yugoslavia in late 1988 to early 1989. How well did that work out? And surely you haven’t forgotten the “Coalition Provisional Authority”, which attempted to impose a “vision” of “free market” utopia on Iraq, after the unprovoked invasion of that country? Yikes! So we’re fairly inured to this sort of thing and bemused as to what exactly is “our” responsibility. I think a lot of the attitudes expressed by Western commenters here are born out of a recognition that “liberal democracy” isn’t a panacea and doesn’t automatically confer political “legitimacy”, but rather has been degenerating in the West for quite some time now. (I did mention the case of that malignant clown Berlusconi above, which another commenter just repeated). So, while we might offer “tea and sympathy”, there’s little else we can do. Given our own abysmal cynicism. On the other hand, disgust and outrage are understandable emotive reactions. But, aside from limitations on personal “carrying-capacity”, they are emotive reactions, which might distract from cool, though not to say cold-blooded, analysis of what might still, in fact, be possible to be done. Since such emotive reactions, based on the sense of one’s own political impotence, might be precisely what “they”, the “authorities”, wish to produce. Maybe keeping a cool clear head is the most resistance anyone can be expected to muster. Before the next seismic tremor.

So yes, I contend that the Russians made the initial decision to institute what they called radical economic and political reforms largely by themselves.

This I think is certainly true: it’s the rest of the argument I disagree with, not least the inability to tell disagreement from support for your enemies, which is silly at best.

There’s a few things I’d pick you up on (I am quite sure, for instance that the foreigner-hating skinheads predate Putin by quite a while) but specifically, when you wrote this

There were virtually no murders of politicians or journalists – that’s all new under Putin.

I recall that I had a friend who in Yeltsin’s last years was working in St Petersburg. She was subsequently in Kyiv and Moscow, and where she is now I don’t know so I can’t ask her, but I vividly recall her tellling me that she’d attended a demonstration after the killing of a liberal figure in 1999. Couldn’t tell you the name, I’m afraid, it was in the days before we had infinite amounts of email storage, but that was under Yeltsin all right.

(Also, you know, Larisa Yudina. I know that was Kirsan, but he’s not wholly independent.)

This seems to be in some ways a rehash of Weber: charismatic leaders are incapable of sustaining power past one or maybe two generations, and generally their regimes evolve into some sort of bureacratic regime or slide back into chaos. A question might then be, as Doug M points to, what has changed in the past 30 years or so which makes charismatic leaders less likely to develop? Is it neoliberalism? Circulation of global capitalism?

On the Russian stuff, I also don’t get what’s at stake at insisting it’s a liberal democracy. I also think it’s entirely possible to believe 1) the US is becoming an authoritarian regime, and 2) does not (yet) resemble Russia. As much as I dislike the US, it seems to be a bit of a willful misreading of history the current political situation to claim that Russia and the US are just a few degrees apart. (and for the record, I think that the US is inching towards Fascism, although without the social welfare state traditionally provided by Fascist governments.) However, I’d say that, to the extent the US resembles Russia, that is because it is not a liberal democracy. For those who argue that Russia is a liberal democracy (and I think Henri Vieuxtemps did make that argument, so it’s not a strawman), I would want a definition of “liberal” and “democracy.”

On China though, I agree that dictatorship is the wrong term to describe the country. At the lowest level, China is a straight up democracy, with village level elections that appear to be reasonably fair. In terms of higher level control, I agree with Henri Vieuxtemps that the CCP resembles the US army more than an oligarchy: ostensibly anyone can join the party, and through hardwork, ambition and loyalty, it’s quite possible to rise to the top ranks. Although there appears to be some nepotism in terms of wealth and connections of the children of leaders (where doesn’t this exist?), children generally do not succeed their parents in high ranking positions, and if they were to do so, they would have had to work their way up the party ranks like anyone else. I think that unlike oligarchies or nepotistic regimes, meritocracy is too strong a concept in China for that to function. People expect their leaders to be competent here, and they get upset when gross incompetency is exposed (and heads do roll when that happens). If I had to put China into a typology, I would say it’s a mix of meritocracy, technocracy, bureaucracy, and a bit of authoritarianism thrown in. Perhaps one difference from other non-democratic regimes is that the leaders of appear to be China smart and competent and that, while not democratic, there does seem to be a balance of power.

But as to the “Congress of Peoples’ Deputies” granting Yeltsin emergency powers, well, 1) he was the hero of the moment, having faced down the coup at the White House and 2) it hardly amounts to a ratification of what he would do subsequently.

Don’t get this. Logically the communists would have supported the coup (to reinstate the old regime), not Yeltsin, who defeated it. And it was a ratification of what he would do – he laid out the plan for releasing prices, privatization – the whole thing. They knew what they were voting for, and in fact they knew that they were voting for a process that was unpredictable, but sure to be miserable.

I don’t get the air of inevitability bit. I’m arguing that this wasn’t imposed on Russia from abroad – prove that Gaidar was “indoctrinated” please – but was chosen by Russians as the best choice out of a bad lot. Did they consider “the Chinese model?” Yes. Did they consider the option of spending a year putting in place legislation before releasing prices? Yes. Did they consider what happened in Poland? Hell, yes. The Russian gov’t was very close to the Polish gov’t in those years. They didn’t chose other options not because they had been “indoctrinated” or had been given no option by the IMF and the Harvard boys, but because they thought any other option would risk famine, total economic collapse, unrest and possibly civil war. Do you want to argue against that? Go ahead. A lot of people do, and many of their arguments are valid, although they are also based on speculation about variables (the govt feared unrest; opponents say it wouldn’t have occurred). (On the other hand, I reject arguments like “they should have invested in infrastructure first” because it ignores the fact that the country was bankrupt.) My argument is not that their choice was inevitable or that it was ideal, but that it was their choice based on painstaking analysis of what they knew. The initial choice was not forced upon them.

People didn’t starve (especially later, when what Russians call “Bush legs” – cheap American chicken legs – appeared on the market). But they lost a lot of money and their world turned upside down. Of course it was horrible economically for most of the population. And even when it wasn’t horrible – for example, when in polls people said they were eating more meat than pre-1992 – people still hated the uncertainty and instability. But in April 1993, there was a referendum with 4 questions. After very vociferous, open, passionate campaigning on all sides, the vote went like this: Do you trust President Yeltsin? Yes: 57.8%. Do you approve of the President and govt’s socio-economic policy? Yes: 53 %. Do you think there should be a preterm election of the President? Yes: 49.5%. Do you think there should be preterm elections of the parliament? Yes: 41.2%. (The govt was frankly flabbergasted by the support.) I cite this to suggest that the Yeltsin era should not be painted in black and white. That 53% who voted to stay the course lost their savings, struggled to make ends meet, and all the rest. But still, they voted for it.

The USSR was a corrupt system based on insider connections, priviledge, and scant or no regard for the law. Under Yeltsin’s first term (his second was much different), there were broadly two trends: institution of some rule of law and opening the field of economic players (yes, really); and expanding the old Soviet system of insider priviledge, abuse of power, and disregard for the law. The second trend won out. I’m not sure that was inevitable. It might not have happened if Yeltsin hadn’t run for a second term and/or given in to it. As I wrote, second-term Yeltsin and first-term Yeltsin were significantly different.

Does it really matter that killings were conducted by non-state actors before, but fewer killings and less repressions occur, though at the behest of shadowy state agents?

God, yes, it matters. That’s much of my whole point. In the 90s the killings were largely one mafia group against another. Today it is the state doing the killing – and it’s more, not less — largely to protect specific economic interests.

In support of what burritoboy wrote, if you want the US to be on the same spectrum, here it is: Obama owns a third of the company that controls the Alaska oil pipeline. When Joe Schmo has the idea of building a second pipeline, Obama taps the DA to have him arrested for tax evasion. Michelle owns a construction company and gets 35% of all DC construction contracts. Joe Biden arranges for his son to become vice president of Shell Oil, which the US gov’t owns 51% of. When Susan Gungho, a reporter for WaPo, finds documents showing kickbacks from subcontractors (gov’t contracts) going into Biden’s son’s Swiss bank account, she is killed by a group of FBI agents and mafia thugs. It is believed, but not proven, that Biden’s son ordered the hit. Meanwhile, Chelsea Clinton decides that she’d like Microsoft. So Bill Gates is approached, told to sell it to her for half its value. While he’s thinking it over, his daughter is arrested for drug trafficking. Back in DC, a Bush appointee still heads the customs service. John Doe pays him 20% of the value of his imports of Korean cars to let them through. (If they were illegal in some way, he’d charge 60%.) Obama’s golf buddy wants the customs service job. Obama appoints him, he demands 30%, John Doe balks, he is charged with spurious customs violations and flees the country. The cars are confiscated and later sold on the black market, proceeds going to Obama’s buddy.

That’s Putin’s Russia. It doesn’t have to do with protecting business interests in general or ideology. It is very primitive use of the state apparatus to protect the specific economic interests of the people in power. On the bright side, that means that if you have a company/land/house that is not in conflict with or coveted by anyone in power, chances are you will be able to make money, keep your land, and happily redecorate your house. Of course, you’ll have to pay kickbacks and bribes to stay in business, but you factor that into your pricing and manage to make money anyway. But if someone in power wants it, you don’t have any recourse. To make sure you understand that, they arrange selective show trials, killings, beatings, explosions, etc.

ejh, you’re thinking of Starovoitova, who was killed in 1998. Did I overstate? I did say “virtually.” I can dig up the stats on journalists and politicians killed in the last 20 years. You’ll see the numbers go up dramatically under Putin. Yes, nationalists existed under Yeltsin (then more what were called “red-brown”), but the skinheads going on rampages in markets, whacking migrant workers with pipes, is a Putin-era phenomenon. Not allowing (arresting, beating up, etc.) oppositional demonstrations is also a Putin-era phenomenon, as are media black lists.

For those who argue that Russia is a liberal democracy (and I think Henri Vieuxtemps did make that argument, so it’s not a strawman), I would want a definition of “liberal” and “democracy.”

Well, definitions of ‘liberal’ and ‘democracy’ are irrelevant, but a “liberal democracy”, as I understand it, is an arrangement with (officially) more than one political party, secret ballot elections, and some basic un-discriminatory liberal (i.e. individual property-protecting) laws.

In the Soviet days there was only one party, and no secret ballot (you would state your name, get a ballot with the name of the official candidate, and immediately drop it into the box – or you would go to a booth and cross the name out, which was kind of obvious).

Under Putinism there are plenty of parties, and secret ballot elections, and basic laws protecting individuals and their property.

The way I see it, people feel that “liberal democracy” has to be a good thing, they don’t like the result, and so they say: no, this stinks, so it can’t be liberal democracy. But come on, do we have to be that naive?

Dollar, not Allah

Actually the kleptocracy running Iran is mainly interested in dollars, not Allah.

a “liberal democracy”, as I understand it, is an arrangement with (officially) more than one political party, secret ballot elections, and some basic un-discriminatory liberal (i.e. individual property-protecting) laws.

This would mean that Zimbabwe counts, correct?

According to wikipedia:

Members of the assembly are elected from a government-screened list of candidates by direct public vote to eight-year terms.

Since the government is also elected, this seems kosher enough. Certainly not any worse than the US Supreme Court.

Zimbabwe? Sure, why not. It’s useful to know how bad it can get.

no, this stinks, so it can’t be liberal democracy

Yes, that is what the phrase means. A democracy that, domestically, delivers results that are satisfactory to liberals, broadly defined, is a liberal democracy. So rule of law, no arbitrary punishments, etc. One that does not is an illiberal democracy.

Since the government is also elected, this seems kosher enough. Certainly not any worse than the US Supreme Court.

The part of the government that does the screening is not a part that will ever have to stand for re-election. Which is why most observers say that those parts are the ones who, in practise, actually have the power.

Any type of representative democratic republic is going to have elected and unelected parts, of varying strength. Given unsatisfactory results, of whatever severity, it does seem useful to distinguish between those caused by pathologies of the elected parts (Zimbabwe, Russia, Italy) and the unelected parts (Iran, the USA).

“The President and V-P were from the same state (in violation of the Constitution)”

Must be a different constitution – there is no residency restrictions on the President and VP in the US Constitution. There are restrictions on the electoral college voters, but that is not relevant in the prior administration’s election.

I mean I get snarky usually, but this isn’t a funny list, so I am missing something.

Henri,
By your definition, what isn’t a liberal democracy? With the exception of the high-modern totalitarian states (Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany), what country isn’t at least in appearances a multi-party state with “secret” elections. Currently China more than fits your definition, but would you call it a liberal democracy? I wouldn’t, although I acknowledge that there are “liberal” and “democratic” elements to the government. I think that once your definition of liberal democracy encompasses 99% of countries in the world, the term becomes worthless. So Iran, Sweden, China, Russia, Zimbabwe, the US, Argentina, Egypt are by your definition all liberal deomacries? Fine. So what? What meaningful information does it tell us about the differences between governance in these countries? Or, if they’re all the same, what meaningful similarities do they share? You might argue that there are “better” and “worse” liberal democracies–what makes one better or one worse? If the definition comes down to “I would rather live there,” or “I have less likelihood of being shot in the head there,” don’t you think there are structural governance elements that make that the case?

“prove that Gaidar was “indoctrinated” please ”

Perhaps you don’t understand how U.S. indoctrination works and how Milton Friedman gibberish was so readily spouted by Russian “reformers”. Probably they had been inculcated in a doctrinaire mentality by their Soviet formation and simply reversed signs in opposition to it. (In other parts of eastern Europe, the radical “liberal” reformers resembled inverted Bolsheviks. As an example, consider Vaclav Klaus.) And perhaps you don’t understand how the “free enterprise system” and “free markets” has be so intensively and extensively propagandized over here, often in conjunction with “Christian” fundamentalism and anti-communist paranoia. But maybe just do a google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=russian%20reformer%20attend%20harvard&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&source=hp&channel=np#pq=russian+reformer+attend+harvard&hl=en&sugexp=gsis%2Ci18n%3Dtrue&cp=17&gs_id=4&xhr=t&q=russian+reformers+attend+harvard&qe=cnVzc2lhbiByZWZvcm1lcnMgYXR0ZW5kIGhhcnZhcmQ&qesig=R_5nknMKIwQ0siv-MqZ0Hg&pkc=AFgZ2tmjGc_nCCs4P2zECtMk6T7STjfeCd3BAVecH7xo_lSehoWC6im0A-UR6xjcW3mSCaVGdfQi5PTBP7riZ4jLYDyI9HXbGQ&pf=p&sclient=psy&client=firefox-a&hs=KvJ&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&channel=np&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=russian+reformers+attend+harvard&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=67cca108e1ea2034&biw=1345&bih=744

FWIW China is not a one party state and never has been, although the contrary is widely believed in the ‘West’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Since the government is also elected, this seems kosher enough.

This is a pretty silly thing to say. (Also, it’s Iran. Don’t you mean halal?)

In the past I thought that Russia’s present system is just “early democracy and capitalism.” Certainly there are characteristics that are very much like the US 100-150 years ago.

No, it’s like the US will be in 100-150 years time. De te fabula narratur to coin a phrase..

@208, sure, halal. Why is it silly? The UK has a monarch who can dissolve the Parliament, and it still qualifies as democracy. If you don’t want this to be reduced to “I call it ‘democracy’ because I like the place”, you need to come up with some criteria.

I don’t think Parliament had anything to do with the Glorious Revolution, having been prorogued by James earlier in the year. The Dutch Army did the deed.

“The previous Administration was all about Big Oil. The President and V-P were from the same state (in violation of the Constitution), but from different oil companies. The Secretary of State had an oil tanker named for her. The V-P’s former employer made billions from Iraq contracts, and ex-patriated; the V-P himself collected many millions through a “retirement” package. President Bush’s family has a business alliance with Saudi Arabia, worth hundreds of billions.”

And what you describe was a major threat to the US’ liberal democracy. But again, you’re missing key details. Many (probably most and possibly all) liberal democracies have political elites who are tied (in one way or another) to their nation’s economic elites. In most (if not absolutely all), political elites will often take positions, consulting fees, etc from the economic elites after they leave office. If you use the mere existence of this as a metric of liberal democracy, there likely have been no liberal democracies ever – and you end up classifying Sweden as the same thing as Syria or Saudi Arabia.

So that can’t be our metric. Is our metric how much monetary gain political elites get from the economic elites? Well, that is one helpful metric. In what are traditionally regarded as the best examples of liberal democracy, political elites will get comparatively modest monetary benefits from the economic elites – funding for a non-profit the ex-politician might run (and pay themselves at most modestly from), funding for a university chair the ex-politician will occupy, speaking fees perhaps and things along these lines. In worse examples, the ex-politicians get direct employment from the economic elites, etc. And so on.

Under this analysis, Putin’s Russia is very different from countries regarded as good example of liberal democracies, as mossy has described. Further, Putin’s Russia is relatively similar in this respect to countries which are generally regarded as dictatorships or tyrannies. And using this (admittedly crude) metric along with other obvious governmental norms and institutions, we have some metric that seems to correctly identify Finland, say, as a liberal democracy, identifies Berlusconi’s Italy and GWB’s US as still liberal democracies but ones that are becoming problematic and identifies tyrannical governments as such.

Or we could use metrics like the willingness of political and economic elites to observe norms like property rights. That could be a useful metric as well.

But in neither case does Putin’s regime resemble what we generally regard as the better liberal democracies. It more resembles the tyrannical regimes – the political elites in Russia get gains that look like those of tyrannical regimes – we’re not talking cushy jobs or lobbying gigs in Russia, but political elites taking major slices of the overall economy for their personal wealth. Cheney, perhaps the worst malefactor of this in US history, absconded with amounts that are trivialities to the overall US economy. Cheney didn’t get a notably large pay package on the scales of US CEO’s (US CEO’s are grotesquely overpaid, but Cheney wasn’t vastly overpaid in comparison to other US CEO’s).

Also, there are plenty of competitors to Halliburton. While I do think Halliburton got quite a bit of business that they wouldn’t have had if Cheney hadn’t been their CEO, Halliburton’s competitors weren’t driven out of business. Yes, it’s likely true that Halliburton’s competitors got less revenue than otherwise, but none of Halliburton’s competitors were worried that the government was going to come down on them harder than normal, or arrest their kids for phoney drug charges, or tell the IRS to audit them every week.

Henri,

What makes China’s multiparty state not a liberal democracy, by your definition, but Russia’s is? Why aren’t China’s other parties opposition parties? I believe there is still a Guomindang party presence in China. (I mean, I wouldn’t call China a multiparty state, but neither would I call Russia a multiparty state.) All things considered, I’d much rather be a member of one of China’s opposition parties than Russia’s. I’d rather put up with potential house arrest and possible police surveillance than the threat of having my kneecaps broken, my house firebombed, and my entire family murdered. As people are pointing out, you seem to contrarily naive or to accept things on face value when it comes to Russia, but not so in regards to other countries.

…take the Church, for example. Priests molests children, bishops know and do nothing. This is not what’s supposed to happen in a religious Christian organization. Nevertheless, we don’t say: ‘no, this is not a religious organization’. We know it is one, and we know that it must be that this sort of organization, whatever its stated ideals and goals are, creates the conditions for child molestation by priests to occur. Why should it be different for liberal democracies?

‘A Caesar might well be coming within a few years’.

Yes but which Caesar? We will remember that it was Augustus Caesar who finally turned the Republic into an Empire. But he did not do it by saying: ‘right that’s it, lads,your democratic experiment is over, time for dictatorship.’ Instead he posed as being a friend of democracy, a restorer of the Republic, a moderate centrists after the rule of the ‘extremists’. And this was so incredibly successful that it took a few generations for educated Romans to realise that their democracy had been gutted, by which time it was too late.

Since this discussion seems to be getting quite high-faluting, may I lower the tone by referring to the best of a Star Wars films (a view that is shared by no one else on the planet except myself) The Revenge of the Sith. In that film, you will remember (or maybe, if you have a life, you won’t), Palpatine turns the Republic into an Empire (many dark references to Dubya here) in the name of saving democracy. Indeed, it is the ‘real’ friends of democracy who are traduced as being traitors, fascists, totalitarians etc. And since everyone thinks that democracy has now been ‘saved’, no one fights against The New Order.

You assume that Americans will cast off a Caesar because you think they will realise that they no longer live in a democracy. But they might not.

As someone above pointed out, the classic example here (apart from Augustus’ pro-democratic propaganda) is the 1688 invasion of England by the Dutch. If the English had become aware that this was actually what was happening, they would have fought against it. So huge efforts were made to portray the invaders as the friends of national autonomy, and the rightful rulers of the country as the ‘invaders’ (invading from within, presumably): hence the empty phrase The Glorious Revolution. And this was so successful a feat of propaganda that it was really only in the 20th century that people started to question it, although a second’s thought and a quick glance at the historical record reveals that it was self-evidently a crock of shit.

@220
Henri, what “oppositional parties” do you mean in Russia — and did you really write the bit about protected by the law with a straight face?

The only parties that would be truly oppositional — that is, that threaten the system of power –either can’t get registered, or were dissolved administratively, or can’t get past the 7% barrier largely due to vote falsification and the use of what are called “administrative resources” (like media black lists, etc.).

@205
No, I don’t have to google that stuff. I’ve read that stuff. I know that’s where you get your conviction that it’s all the fault of the West, Harvard, USAID, etc. that Russia took the radical reform route. I’m saying it’s largely wrong. The decision was made before these guys came in. I gave you proof; you ignored it.

Have you noticed in all your googling that these accusations come from Americans and Westerners?

Okay, I was being both snarky and coy. What don’t I drop coy?

The thing is, when you are not living in the US but rather living in a country that is going to hell in a handbasket by the efforts of Ivanov, Smirnov, and Petrov, who don’t read English, have never heard of Milton Friedman, and think a neo-con is a new kind of Apple computer, but who have a millenium or so of genetic experience fleecing the masses, and when you read about how it’s all the fault of the US — well, it’s very Americentric, you know? It’s like you guys have to be the most powerful people in the world, whether you are doing right or wrong. And that the rest of the world is made up of “natives” who can be “indoctrinated.”

Instead of reading Wedel, read Dead Souls or The Inspector General. Or some Ilf and Petrov.

Responding to Hidari @ 223.

Yes but which Caesar? We will remember that it was Augustus Caesar who finally turned the Republic into an Empire. But he did not do it by saying: ‘right that’s it, lads, your democratic experiment is over, time for dictatorship.’ Instead he posed as being a friend of democracy, a restorer of the Republic, a moderate centrists after the rule of the ‘extremists’. And this was so incredibly successful that it took a few generations for educated Romans to realise that their democracy had been gutted, by which time it was too late.

The Roman Republic was never a liberal democracy in the sense we moderns would use the term. It was always a de facto oligarchy, and in its later days had become a corrupt and brutal oligarchy that squeezed the lower and middle classes mercilessly. (That’s not even counting the slaves, who were treated about equally poorly no matter who was in charge.)

Augustus was popular because he brought competence, order, and stability to a system that had degenerated into fratricidal infighting among selfish elites. Most historians today believe, based on a variety of evidence, that the plebeians were probably better off during the Empire’s glory days than during those of the Republic. But the plebeians did not write the history books; instead these were written by members of the upper classes who nursed grudges over their lost privileges. The ancient histories remember Nero as a monster, because he treated fellow members of the upper classes badly, but many of the common people loved him.

As someone above pointed out, the classic example here (apart from Augustus’ pro-democratic propaganda) is the 1688 invasion of England by the Dutch. If the English had become aware that this was actually what was happening, they would have fought against it. So huge efforts were made to portray the invaders as the friends of national autonomy, and the rightful rulers of the country as the ‘invaders’ (invading from within, presumably): hence the empty phrase The Glorious Revolution. And this was so successful a feat of propaganda that it was really only in the 20th century that people started to question it, although a second’s thought and a quick glance at the historical record reveals that it was self-evidently a crock of shit.

Hold on a minute. An awful lot of work is being done by the phrase “rightful rulers.” We don’t believe in the divine right of kings any more, so what makes someone a rightful ruler? In England, the de facto criteria for rightful rulership had always included not pissing off a substantial fraction of important people in the country. Edward II alienated a sizable portion of the elites, so he was overthrown in favor of his son. Richard II alienated both the elites and the common people, so he was overthrown by Henry IV. Richard III appalled everyone by murdering his nephews, so he was overthrown by Henry VII. Kicking out James II in favor of an alternative candidate who promised to govern more in line with English elite consensus was well within the unwritten constitutional tradition of England.

William certainly had a larger proportion of elite support than James did – he would never have been able to succeed in his invasion if he hadn’t. It is harder to tell, but he probably also had a larger proportion of support from the common people. At any rate, there do not seem to have been any major uprisings or protests among the Commons during his reign (as there were, for example, during the administrations of Richard II and Henry VIII). By what standard can James therefore have been said to be the “rightful ruler” of England? (Regarding post 224, I agree that Scotland and Ireland are a different story.)

As someone above pointed out, the classic example here (apart from Augustus’ pro-democratic propaganda) is the 1688 invasion of England by the Dutch. If the English had become aware that this was actually what was happening, they would have fought against it.

I am not at all sure that this is true.

The thing is, when you are not living in the US but rather living in a country that is going to hell in a handbasket by the efforts of Ivanov, Smirnov, and Petrov, who don’t read English, have never heard of Milton Friedman, and think a neo-con is a new kind of Apple computer, but who have a millenium or so of genetic experience fleecing the masses, and when you read about how it’s all the fault of the US —well, it’s very Americentric, you know? It’s like you guys have to be the most powerful people in the world, whether you are doing right or wrong. And that the rest of the world is made up of “natives” who can be “indoctrinated.”

Instead of reading Wedel, read Dead Souls or The Inspector General. Or some Ilf and Petrov.

See, this is where I have a problem. (For the record, I’ve read all of Dead Souls, and some of Ilf and Petrov.) I don’t think what’s going on in Russia was originated in the US (I think the US playd a part, mind, and not a helpful one) but I’m also suspicious of attempts to locate it too closely in a long tradition of corrupt and authoritarian rule that is particularly Russian in nature. That seems to me to blame it on Russianness, something deeply ingrained in the Russian character and historical experience, and it’s very cimilar to the arguments that people made, before this year’s events, about Arab people and why their governments were (and still are, mostly) comprised of authoritarian crooks of a type really quite similar to that which you’ve described in Russia.

But without entirely discounting the role which historical experience can play in a country’s politics, I think neither Arabs nor Russians are peculiarly attracted to lawless and corrupt government, and the reasons why both suffer from them are mostly to be found in the time leading up to their formation.

What if the country doesn’t follow its laws?

No country follows its laws; institutional practices trump them every time.

ejh, I don’t disagree with you. The key phrase is “that seems to me to blame Russianness.” Actually, many Russians DO blame Russianness. I don’t, although I was probably too flip about the genetic memory bit.

Lots of people have changed their form of governance, for better or worse, quickly or gradually. (That was, after all, the subject of this thread.) Russians could do that, too. I think, however, that this system is very familiar, and a lot of people either feel comfortable in it, or resigned to it, or know how to operate in it. (Many of the ones who don’t are either being arrested or emigrating, or arranging for their kids to emigrate.) Polls show that people think corruption is wrong, but they also think it’s “part of Russia” and hopeless to fight it. Polls also registered, particularly in the 1990s, that although people had better living standards (food), they were very unhappy with the sense of instability and uncertainty.

The most interesting thing to happen here occurred last summer, during the endless heat wave and forest/peat fires (when the Mayor of Moscow evacuated his bees and flew to Austria, leaving the city’s residents to gasp and die). Seeing that the government wasn’t doing anything, a group of people started a website. They found out what was needed in X or Y village, posted the list, got the supplies (shovels, pails, hose, etc.), arranged transportation and volunteers. There was no ideology. It was extremely effective, and shows a change in paradigm, however small. Actually, in general there is more social activism than there was 5 or 10 years ago. That’s the third way (besides acceptance or emigration).

‘And it doesn’t help that people keep voting for the corrupt guys.’

Who else would they vote for?

There was a 20,000 strong invasion fleet, London was put under what was (effectively) martial law for 2 years, there was armed resistance in Scotland and Ireland (which was ruthlessly crushed) , and a fear of civil war (which the outpouring of pro-Dutch propaganda was designed to nip in the bud). It was an invasion. (As those about to be outed were clearly aware: ‘”an absolute conquest is intended under the specious and ordinary pretences of religion, liberty, property and a free Parliament…”‘ as Ignatius White put it, correctly).

The ‘key effect’ of the revolution looks very different depending on whether you are sitting in Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. Or Belfast, for that matter. In fact, especially Belfast.

However, Wikipedia introduces a nice distinction which is of relevance here: ‘The Norman conquest is viewed as the last successful conquest of England, although the Dutch victory in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 should be identified as the most recent successful invasion from the continent; an important distinction is that the Glorious Revolution can be seen as one segment of the English ruling class centred around Parliament collaborating with outside forces to oust a different segment of the ruling classes (that centred around the Stuart monarchy), whereas in the Norman conquest the entire English ruling class was utterly displaced.’

So, if you want to differentiate the previous Roman and Norman invasions* from the Dutch invasion, you can make a distinction between an invasion and a conquest, if you want.

*Although it must be stressed that in both these cases, both Roman and Norman propaganda was devoted to the idea that what had happened wasn’t ‘really’ an invasion either, and was, in fact, something else which just looked like an invasion. And had the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_England

Yeah, who else would they vote for?
In Russia there is also media control. Putin and Medvedev are shown only looking great, in control, knowing all the facts and numbers. Questions are screened and scripted. No debates. No out-takes. No bad moments aired. The only place you find the unscripted stuff is on the internet, and it’s almost always (always?) about Medvedev — boogying at a party, forgetting to put the car in park (it rolled into a crowd), etc. But that reaches a very small percentage of the population.
There has also been a rescripting of history, which gets to that bit about “it’s just Russia, can’t do anything about it.” In the Soviet period, Russian and Soviet history were portrayed as an arch of freedom-fighting, a history of the little man challenging and finally overthrowing the autocracy. Now it’s the reverse. All Russian and Soviet history is the iron fist. “Russians like a strong hand. That’s who we are.” This message has been beaten into everyone for the last decade, and the other message — we’ve fought against tyranny — has virtually disappeared.
ejh — yes, people in Spain (Italy, Turkey and Egypt) generally get this. And they usually get along in Russia pretty easily. Almost like home.

Well. mossy, you just resorted to stereotyping to support your flailing and failing argument. And you’re citing opinion polls for evidence, which is an extremely weak form of evidence, in gaging actual popular feelings. It’s not a matter of some sort of American self-importance, any more than it is a matter of innate Russian authoritarianism, irrationality, or slavishness. I certainly wasn’t one to proclaim the U.S. as “the indispensable nation”, or the “world’s sole remaining superpower” or even as the “hyperpower”. (Besides Henri here is Belgian, so what’s with him). Nor did I declare that it all was the fault of the Harvard boys, without considerable indigenous and endogenous factors at work. But “indoctrination” is not an inappropriate word, since you do recognize what utter crap such pure “free market” economics is and how utterly doctrinaire its tenets are, eh? And certainly the Russian reformers didn’t come up with these ideas all on their own, but had been studying them through contacts for a while and such networks were re-enforced and brought into play in the implementation process. (No doubt there were other currents of economic and social thinking in Russia that were not so, er, “privileged”). And the fact that the communists in the Russian Congress, which had only recently been open to fairly democratic election voted fairly blindly to confer “reforming’ powers on Yeltsin, is not at all extraordinary or counter-intuitive since just about everybody involved, including the radical liberal “reformers” had been involved with the communist party, and the opinion range in the communist party itself was widening and splitting apart. (Certainly Yakolov was not the same kettle of fish as Ligachev, eh?) And your idea that Russia was bankrupt is a mere analogy, since the concept actually applies to business firms not governments, and you would have to specify the problem much better. (The example of Poland is not a good one, since IIRC Poland had half of its foreign debt forgiven, some $24 billion. It helps to have a large ethic lobby on your side and a right-wing government enthusiastic for the role that Solidarity had played, though the Solidarity coalition was to break up as a result of the reforms).

So, no, you really haven’t proven your case. And, indeed, other paths to reform were possible, just not allowable by TPTB. And the destruction of the productive infrastructure and internal markets of Russia et alia did result in the sort of political economy that characterized the current Russian regime. It’s no surprise. BTW billionaires are such, not because they have a lot of money, but because they own/control productive assets, which, er, they can’t exactly eat. They are generally motivated to expand their wealth, their ownership/control, but more out of power and status drives than simple exorbitant greed. The tendency for concentrated production and thus ownership/control is a basic developmental “law” of capitalism, beyond the supposed efficiencies of competitive markets, the world over. These neo-liberal privatization programs don’t really foster “competition” and thus efficiency, but more like corrupt concentrations of underpriced assets. Carlos Slim is no different from his Russian counterparts. (And were those cheap imported chicken parts “dark meat”? If so, you not that they were dumped below cost, eh?)

I think the problem here is that you think that there is some sort of ideal-type called “liberal democracy” and that it is normative. But, aside from the fact that in the 19th century liberalism and democracy were considered opposed perspectives, for some good reasons, and that “democracy” is an exceedingly vague word, there is no way to separate out “pure” economics from “pure” politics, but, without stooping to some vulgar base/superstructure distinction, it’s always rather a matter of political economy. So economic structure is going to constrain the possibility for political reform and vice versa. You seems to have been a supporter of the “liberal” reforms and maintain some nostalgia for that era. Many other Russian might disagree. And the plain fact of the matter is that even if the Putin regime were not to interfer with the attempts of the avatars of the liberal reformers such as Nemtsov and Kasperov to organize electorally in opposition to the regime, the likelihood is that they would receive only a small fraction of the vote, probably less than Zhirinovsky. But your plight is really not all that different from intellectuals in the U.S.A., confronted with the mass stupification of the population by electronic media and propaganda and a two-party duopoly that excludes effective political competition while competing to serve there corporate paymasters, the only difference being that one party is absolutely crazy and the other is completely inept. If the rule of law is nonetheless more robust here, it’s largely because the forms of corruption are entirely legal. (You do recognize that taxes, bribes, and economic rents are, very roughly, functional equivalents as forms of extraction from the working population and productive eficiency, eh?) You are aware that the Wall St. mega-banks had instituted an open air Ponzi market, by which they looted the remaining net worth of much of the middle-class here, and then were bailed out massively by the government, which persists in covering up the malfeasance and suppressing any effective investigation,- (though, due to market “deregulation”, it’s not clear if the corruption was actually illegal, and it’s certain that the regulatory authorities were entirely complicit in it),- while imposing “austerity on the working population, eh? The biggest difference is that the U.S. is still a vastly wealthier country than Russia will likely ever be, though I’ll point out that the U.S. Gini coefficient is 46.7, whhereas Russia’s is around 41-42.

Well, I’ve run out of energy here. You keep ignoring or discrediting facts, spending a lot of ink discrediting who you think I am, and telling me what I’m thinking, what Gaidar thought, what the communists who voted for radical reforms thought – based on nothing (no primary or secondary source material) except your conviction that they – we – were indoctrinated by the evil forces of the West.

In addition to Dead Souls and The Golden Calf – which I really do recommend – you might read a book on the Soviet economy in its waning years, The Breaking Point (Shmelyov and Popov) and Gaidar’s book on the end of the empire (can’t remember the title in English translation). There are a lot of memoirs about the last years of the USSR written by Russians and translated.

Quiggin I think is great in general but gets it wrong about Central Africa. Anyone who says Kagame illustrates that tyranny is not so bad don’t know Kagame, or the context. Rwandan Patriotic Army persuit of Hutu refugees across DRC (using Kabila pere as figleaf) almost certainly caused the deaths of around 200,000 to 300,000 (Prunier thinks 300,000 and his figures seem as well informed as anyones). Estimates about the number killed in reprisals by the Kagame regime range from 25,000 to 150,000+ again the figures are not entirely reliable but we know it was lots. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n06/stephen-w-smith/rwanda-in-six-scenes . There is extensive eye witness accounts about heavy arms fire being used on Hutu refugee camp of Kibeho within Rwanda. The numbers killed in the Congo wars, where Kagame’s Rwanda is a major protagonist, and in the continuing instability are estimated at around 4 million+. Elections are clearly a joke – a hugely polarised coutry with a hutu majority that regularly gives a tutsi government 70% + majorities – go figure, as Americans have it. All this I think this stands up pretty well with any tyrant in history.
On the Kabila Mobutu who is worse ?kick that some commentators are going in for – they are both awful but don’t assume Mobutu wins all the prizes here. In terms of an appropriation as an annual percentage it is surely Kabila – the states resources have so dwindled that keeping various political constituencies in order consumes almost the entire official budget, while in terms of illicit resources it is of course hard to know, but the signing of ‘leonine contracts’ for mining rights during the war has left receipts absurdly low. Talk of renegotiation has been pushed to the long grass (partly via threats from interested outsiders) and the state is an abject faliure even in terms of its rentier function.
Mobutu knew from the start that he could not do anything about the term of trade – trying to look for someone else to process Katangan ore made the belgians provoke civil war and murder the prime minister who suggested it. He was not, by central african standards (very low I grant), an especially bloody dictator, and the human rights record of the current government is appalling – the slaughter of 100 unarmed protestors in Bas Congo province in 2007 for example. That said, despite huge irregularities I think it is probably true that Kabila, rather unusually in the region, did get a genuine majority of the popular vote at the last elections.

Hi Doug – I think on Kagame etc. your ‘yes well’ is agreeing with me that John quiggin is quite wrong, or do I get you wrong? It is in no way excusing what went before to say that Kagame is sufficiently bad that he does not begin to look good in comparison with anyone and death tolls associated with him are in entirely the same league as previous genocidaires.
On GDP well there are several complications – first as you point out we don’t really have a clue how much of anything is coming and going! I am about to look at something on precisely this subject so maybe I will have a better idea soon, though I doubt it. Another one is historical – surely for much of mobutu’s rule a smaller percentage of GDP (though much larger absolute figure) would have been taken by him simply because until a certain point in the late eighties salaries in the public sector and public mining companies would still have been paid – this is of course no defence as it was Mobutu that screwed it up (with western support as you well point out). Last if it is less in percentage terms – in an important sense diminished theft by Kabila and entourage is a form of faliure (‘he ate as many as they could get’ a la Walrus and Carpiter) – the current ruling class are in an even weaker position than Mobutu was re both internal and external power brokers (end of the cold war being a key factor as you identify). That is perhaps not a point in their favour? Anyway I think we basically agree that neither is particularly good.

for ‘his is not crankinsh genocide denial ‘ read ‘this is not crankinsh genocide denial’ . Now I am going to work I swear.