Running to stand still: aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

TY - JOUR

T1 - Running to stand still

T2 - aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

AU - Greene, Samuel Aaron

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of 'mundane' policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts -- involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy -- in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality -- usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure -- creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of 'aggressive immobility' -- the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state -- has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.

AB - The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of 'mundane' policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts -- involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy -- in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality -- usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure -- creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of 'aggressive immobility' -- the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state -- has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.

KW - Russia

KW - politics

KW - public policy

KW - informality

KW - institutionalization

U2 - 10.1080/1060586X.2018.1500095

DO - 10.1080/1060586X.2018.1500095

M3 - Article

SN - 1938-2855

VL - 34

SP - 333

EP - 347

JO - Post-Soviet Affairs

JF - Post-Soviet Affairs

IS - 5

ER -