ABSTRACT
Most Western and Russian scholars have tended to evaluate recent political developments in Russia as something 'between authoritarianism and democracy'. It is common to encounter qualifying adjectives, such as 'quasi', 'semi', 'pseudo', or 'proto', in descriptions of Russia's democratic development over the past few years (Collier and Levitsky 1997; Gel'man 1997; Vainstein 1997a; 1997b). But to what extent are these adjectival qualifications helpful in understanding Russia's post-communist political transition? To help answer this question it is useful to develop a comparative perspective.
