Conclusions and Implications for the Study of Russia and Personalist Regimes

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the main research questions and outlines how the book’s empirical findings support the argument that the Russian political regime can be understood as a personalist regime in the making. Russia is highly personalised in terms of patronage networks, the ruler’s authority is widely understood to be implicitly permanent, but it is only moderately deinstitutionalised, and it has a relatively low level of media personalisation. This chapter further discusses the multidimensionality of personalistic politics and that consequently political regimes typically do not resemble “ideal types,” nor do they necessarily strive to become ever more personalist. In fact, even though the levels of personalisation change over time, by and large the Russian regime may be in a steady state in between a democracy and a full-blown personalist regime. A state that allows it to solve various problems of governance and that reflects preferences of the ruler and those of the ruling coalition. While the overall focus is on the dynamics in Russia, this study also illuminates how other personalist and personalising regimes emerge, develop, and function. Finally, it demonstrates how scholars of other non-democratic regimes may improve their studies by relying on similar techniques to those introduced in The New Kremlinolog and discusses methodological implications for the study of authoritarian politics in general.