ABSTRACT
This chapter provides various definitions of the state and its purposes, and identifies the challenges that Russia and other states face that can prevent them from effectively performing their tasks and achieving their goals. It explores a series of domestic and international obstacles that deter the Russian state specifically from strengthening state institutions and from fulfilling the promise of building a liberal democracy. In countries with regional "strongmen", state autonomy may be compromised when the domestic societal actors are able to exert influence over the state's policy choices, manipulating the leadership into handing out state resources in exchange for the strongmen's temporary support. One way in which Russia may be distinguished from the Third World states that Joel Migdal analyzed is the long institutional legacy of monopolistic rule by the Soviet Communist Party, and the attendant weakness of Russian civil society. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
