Becoming Modern Russian Style

Abstract

Russia finds itself in a situation of stalemate, where social and political interests and epistemic communities are locked in balance, allowing the ‘Bonapartist’ political regime extreme freedom of action. The power system (vlast’), indeed, draws its authority by balancing between factions and the two pillars of the dual state, the administrative regime and the constitutional state. This is a classic ‘stability regime’, permanently engaged in the manual manipulation of political processes to ensure pre-eminence. In this context, the ‘transition’ will end when there is a shift from the stalemate of the stability regime to equilibrium, based on a more or less organic balance of interests and ideas that reflects the dominant consensus in society. The idea of equilibrium is drawn from neo-classical economics and suggests a ‘normalization’ after a period of turbulence. It is precisely this sort of equilibrium that suggests that a transition is over and society has achieved a degree of normality, until the next period of breakdown and transition to a new equilibrium. ‘Normality’ in Russia will take distinctive forms, but will ultimately be recognizably modern, in that the institutions and practices of governance will be rooted in the tradition born in Western Europe in the passage from medievalism but now endowed with a certain universal stature.KeywordsResource CurseConstitutional StateInfrastructural PowerHybrid RegimeTypological ApproachThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.