State capacity and Russia

Abstract

The concept of state capacity, which still lacks sufficient analytical clarity, appeared in the focus of contemporary political research, both theoretical and empirical, within the context of the so-called “return of the state” in the 1980s as the main agenda of political science after decades of predominant interest in political systems, their structure, functions and components. This chapter presents a general outline of current debates on state capacity, key unresolved issues under consideration and various approaches to its conceptualisation, operationalization, measurement and comparative analysis. It focuses on explaining the dynamics of state and state capacity in post-Soviet Russia since the state collapse in 1991 through stages of state building during the presidencies of Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev and, again, Vladimir Putin. Three major components of state capacity – coercive, extractive and administrative – represent important dimensions of conceptualisation and measurement, particularly for comparative analysis of state building and regime consolidation.