ARTICLE: 'The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back,' By Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008
Pretty reasonable piece, but it argues against a strawman that time will reveal and repudiate.
Nobody argues that, all things being equal, it's smarter and more efficient to have authoritarians run your market economy than have a democracy process demands for proper governance from a market economy. The data is clear on that.
The basic "sequentialist" argument is about timing. Was Russia doing well with that mess of a political system in the 1990s? No. Is it more settled now? Yes. Does that help Russia get back on it's feet? Yes. Would that alone have done it? No, the price rise on energy and commodities enabled that. Looking ahead, will Russia keep growing if it calcifies in authoritarianism? Probably not. But if it keeps growing, we'll likely see more pressure for pluralism.
Putinism, if successful, is a phase--at best a recovery model, not a long-term economic model. The key will be: Will Putin accept the inevitable waning of his personal power (already begun by naming his successor)?
I think he'll have no choice and in a dozen years we'll be venerating him like Lee Kuan Yew, but hardly pretending like he found some new model that threatens the legitimacy of liberal democracies. Ditto with the Chinese.
Why must we constantly get so wobbly all the time over any success that does not mirror our current state? Especially when our own journey to this mature point wasn't pretty and featured all sorts of bad stuff that we condemn others for today?
As always, a little more belief in ourselves would be nice.
If all Putinism aspires to is raw materials authoritarianism, then that's all it will achieve. That doesn't scare me and it shouldn't scare you.
The A game model in globalization is a market economy plus liberal democracy. If you want risk-taking and innovation and competitive drive, then you have to accommodate it in all its demands. Authoritarianism, well-funded, can buy you the team, but it can't make it win over the long haul. Success simply makes people too uppity and demanding.
(Thanks: Terry Collier)
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Comments (2)
Hi Tom, interesting article - you may want to look at how we see Russia affecting China and ASEAN here: http://www.2point6billion.com/2008/01/14/russia-a-key-component-of-china-%e2%80%93-india-development/
Posted by Nazia Vasi | March 3, 2008 10:34 PM
"Would that alone have done it? No, the price rise on energy and commodities enabled that."
Don't forget the other thing significantly adding to the average Russian's wealth just now -- the fact that their population is imploding by a net million deaths a year. The result is not unlike how we got the Renaissance after the Black Death -- property is being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.
(Feshbach has been analyzing Russian demographics for a long time. I particularly remember an article in The Atlantic called, "Counting the Russians".)
Posted by Hal O'Brien | March 5, 2008 5:09 AM