The Tandem and the Crisis

Abstract

Unlike his predecessor Vladimir Putin, Dmitrii Medvedev had relatively little success in promoting his own supporters to leading positions. His meetings with defence and security officials took place less frequently, and were more highly formalized; he met key economic ministers less often than his predecessor, and continued to meet them irregularly even during the worst of the international economic crisis. Responses to the crisis, in practice, were devolved to government commissions, which met daily. Putin's political weight was meanwhile enhanced by his appointments to leading companies and by the substantial majority in the Duma that had been secured by United Russia, of which he was the leader. The ‘tandem’ was an unstable construction that depended entirely on the relationship between the two leaders; but it survived the economic crisis, in large part because Russia's soft authoritarianism allowed no space for an independent media and a political opposition to resist and delay its decisions.