ABSTRACT
Vladimir Putin has developed and consolidated a personalist political regime that incorporates every key formal feature of liberal democracy while also virtually eliminating the chance that the Putin network can be removed from power by electoral xxixmeans. Putin and his allies have captured the administrative machinery of the Russian state and in the process created a hybrid post-Communist party-state – a “neo-patrimonial façade democracy.” The essay argues that the structure and functioning of Putin’s system is best understood in terms of the history of one-party political “machines” that have appeared over the past century and a half in nominal democracies in the United States, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and so on. Paradoxically, Russia is freer than ever in its history, but at the same time much of Russia has rejected liberal values as understood in the contemporary West. By cultivating a charismatic traditionalist bond with the Russian people, reinforced by defensible performances in a series of domestic and foreign crises, Putin’s position appears unassailable although his bond with the Russian people has become more fragile. Whether this system can long survive Putin himself, however, remains very much to be seen.
