How Does the Weak Strongman Stay in Power? Exposing the Roots of Vladimir Putin's Rule in Russia

Abstract

How Does the Weak Strongman Stay in Power?Exposing the Roots of Vladimir Putin's Rule in Russia Aleksandar Matovski (bio) Conventional wisdom holds that populations support autocrats only because they are coerced, bribed, or brainwashed into obedience. Driven by this perception, much of the public discourse and analysis of contemporary dictatorships ignores the role of societies in the rise and operation of these regimes. Similarly, many of the checks on authoritarian power are downplayed. Elections are assumed to be so reliably manipulated, protest and opposition so effectively quashed, and all other institutions and elites so thoroughly co-opted that they do not meaningfully shape politics in these countries. Unsurprisingly, most of the ink is spilled on the seemingly all-powerful puppet masters. Dictators' personalities, obsessions, and purported worldviews are obsessively scrutinized as the ultimate resource on politics in these regimes. These accounts of court intrigue and leadership produce gripping narratives. But their pervasiveness creates an illusion that autocrats operate with very few constraints. They also make us lose sight of the fact that dictators are products of the circumstances in which they rule at least as much as they create them. Timothy Frye's Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia is thus an exceptionally timely and prescient treatise, addressing these pathologies in the study of one of the most consequential present-day dictatorships: Russia under Vladimir Putin. Weak Strongman is not based on new research by the author; instead, the book is an exceedingly rare species: an effort to distill the cumulative wisdom of political science research on the Russian and other autocracies, and in a way that makes it widely accessible beyond narrow scholarly circles. The book's core mission—and achievement—is to bridge the gap between the scholarship on Putinism and similar regimes and how these are understood in policy circles and by the public. In this sense, Weak Strongman tries to reverse a frustrating trend. Over the two decades of [End Page 182] Putin's rule, academic research on Russian politics has advanced by leaps and bounds to become more nuanced, sophisticated, and grounded in "hard" empirical evidence than ever before. But at the same time, it has become more and more disconnected from policymaking and the public discourse on Russia, which have often been dominated by superficial analysis and political polarization. Frye centers Weak Strongman on the two most important misconceptions that have emerged in this context. The first is that Vladimir Putin is the be-all and end-all of Russian politics, that Russia's autocracy is a reflection of his will, and everything important that happens in Russia is part of his design. The second is that Putin's rule is an exceptional, inimitable product of Russia's circumstances and its predisposition toward authoritarianism. Weak Strongman demonstrates that the opposite is true on both accounts. Putinism is a far weaker (as the book's title implies) and more circumscribed dictatorship than is generally assumed. And for the most part, it is also a fairly typical sort of autocracy. Frye combines insights from the study of Russian and comparative politics to show that Putin rose to power in the same way as other strongmen—not as part of any unique or grand design but by taking advantage of his country's dysfunction and the weakness of the alternatives. And his rule has been fraught with many of the same limitations and metastasizing pathologies as any "standard-issue" personalist dictatorship. Putinism, in Frye's rendering, is a fragile balancing act in which the strongman must rely on elite networks that play by their own rules and could ultimately depose him. Putin must tolerate the systemic corruption that keeps these self-serving elites in check but also ruins the economy and increases the odds of a popular rebellion. Repression, propaganda, and electoral fraud are blunt tools for controlling Russia's opposition, and their use may backfire amid rising popular discontent. Putin's assertive foreign policy has become an increasingly counterproductive strategy to bolster the regime's legitimacy. And sitting on top of this decaying structure, the aging strongman cannot safely retire, making leadership succession a potentially fatal flaw of Russia's...