Building an Authoritarian Polity Russia in Post-Soviet Times

Graeme Gill shows why post-Soviet Russia has failed to achieve the democratic outcome widely expected at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, instead emerging as an authoritarian polity. He argues that the decisions of dominant elites have been central to the construction of an authoritarian polity, and explains how this occurred in four areas of regime-building: the relationship with the populace, the manipulation of the electoral system, the internal structure of the regime itself, and the way the political elite has been stabilised. Instead of the common 'Yeltsin is a democrat, Putin an autocrat' paradigm, this book shows how Putin built upon the foundations that Yeltsin had laid. It offers a new framework for the study of an authoritarian political system, and is therefore relevant not just to Russia but to many other authoritarian polities.

1. Stability and authoritarian regimes; Part I. Structuring Public Political Activity: 2. Regime and society; 3. The party system and electoral politics; Part II. Structuring the Regime: 4. Structuring institutional power; 5. Elite stabilization; Conclusion: the Putin system and the potential for regime change.

Graeme Gill is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He specialises in Soviet and Russian politics and has published nineteen books and more than eighty papers in this area, including Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia (Cambridge, 2013) and Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics (Cambridge, 2011).