ABSTRACT
Under Russia's current system of crony capitalism and illiberal democracy, organizational processes are driven by personalistic considerations that override both efficiency calculations and procedural propriety. It is now obvious that the infrastructure of Russian public administration operates with little of the procedural impersonality required for the cohesion of a market economy and representative democracy. Russia lacks regulatory institutions that can ensure tax collection, protection of property rights, enforcement of contracts, and procedural propriety in the financial sector. It lacks police, legal, and judicial institutions that can ensure physical security for the populace and rule of law in the adjudication of social conflicts. The purpose of this chapter is to document Yeltsin's personalistic style and its impact on institution-building in post-Soviet Russia. Events in Russia in 1998 and 1999 suggest that the system Yeltsin constructed was like a skeleton without ligaments: prone to collapse when it loses its artificial supports or when it meets countervailing force.
