Putin's Russia: Is It a Doable Project?

Demokratizatsiya, Winter 2004 by Beliaev, Mikhail

Explanatory Variables

On the scale of democratic development, the Putin-style "strong hand," or "managed democracy," approach is located between "soft authoritarianism" of the East Asian type and streitbare Demokratie, "democracy that can fight for itself of the early FRG. The tense competition for electoral support and freedom of expression outside the state mass media explains the difference between today's Russia and Kuomintang's Taiwan of the 1960s and 1970s. The presence of a single predominant political institution (the presidency) and the ability of the government to resort to non-democratic means, such as the manipulative use of the state mass media, distinguish Putin's regime from the liberal democracies of the West.

The similarity to the measures employed by Putin's administration is a desired property of our explanatory variables. Since the control of the mass media and the president's popularity have been among the key features of Putin's "managed democracy," this study uses the following variables to establish the place of the regional political regimes in the space between authoritarianism and "almost democracy":

State control over mass media (MEDIA). This factor is quantified as the weighted average of the state share in the television (weight of 40 percent), radio broadcast (weight of 30 percent), and printing media production (weight of 30 percent) in a region;15

Electoral mandate of the acting head executive (EL_MAND). This variable is defined as the percent of votes the elected head executive received in the first round of the previous elections.16 The share of these employed by private enterprises in respect to the total number of those employed in the regional economy (PRIVAT). This variable is used as the proxy for economic liberalization. This may not be the best proxy for economic liberalization from a theoretical point of view, but it is one of the best available in the Goskomstat data for the period under study. The one-year lag between privatization and its effect on a regional economy is assumed.17

Controls-"Initial Conditions"

Ratio of GRP per capita in 1998 to the national average (GRP98). This variable is controlled as a proxy for the initial state of the development of a region. The control is especially relevant, since FDI inflows are measured as their volume per capita instead of the more conventional operationalization as the ratio to GRP or GDP. However, this study does not take a position in the well-known convergence debate;

Education 2000 survey data (EDU00). The positive effect of educational attainment on economic performance constantly finds strong empirical support in research on post-communist transformation (Fidrmuc 2000, on growth in CEE and the CIS; Broadman and Recanatini 1999; and Manaenkov 2000, on the FDI allocation among the Russian regions). This variable is measured as the share of persons with at least some professional or full secondary education among the economically active population of a region in 2000. The data are available only for that year, but the relative stability of this indicator over time can be safely assumed;