ABSTRACT
Many adjectives have been used to qualify the political system that took
shape under Putin’s leadership. Most convey the sense of a democracy
diminished in one way or another: ‘managed democracy’, ‘controlled pluralism’ and ‘electoral democracy’ are among the most common epithets to
describe Putin’s new order. The regime itself came to favour the concept of
‘sovereign democracy’, although Putin distanced himself from the term on
the grounds that ‘sovereignty’ and ‘democracy’ operate at different con-
ceptual levels.2 So how best can we understand a hybrid system in which
democracy has not been repudiated and remains the legitimating ideology,
the formal letter of the constitution is observed, choices remain, votes can
be cast in a relatively free, and even mostly fair, manner; but the options are constrained by an authority standing outside of the system that regulates
the choices and which is not adequately accountable to the representative
system? We have called this authority the administrative regime, focused on
the political institutions of the presidency but rather broader than the pre-
sident alone, standing between the impartial operation of the constitutional
state and the exercise of popular sovereignty through the ballot box and
representative institutions. In trying to get to grips with the nature of the
regime we need to separate processes from outcomes. As for process, the regime under Putin sponsored changes to the party system, electoral legis-
lation, parliamentary procedures and much more, all reflecting its Prussian-
style management of democracy; but this febrile activity was less anti-
democratic than para-democratic, not repudiating democracy but subvert-
ing its operation. As for outcomes, while there is undoubtedly evidence of
administrative intervention in the electoral process, it would be an exaggeration
to argue that results are entirely ‘managed’. There is plenty in Russian politics
that remains unexpected and surprising. It is too early to talk of Russia as a failed democratisation, and the potential for democratic evolution has not
been extinguished.
