Domestic Regime, its interests and External Actions. State vs. Oligarchs, shifts in FP from Yeltsin's to Putin's era, regime type in modern Russia, corporatist-kleptocratic influence on FP

1. Domestic Regime, its interests and
External Actions.
Russia
●TSPMI 02/27/13
●Didkovska Valeriia

2. List of Content
●
State vs. Oligarchs
●
Shifts in FP from Yeltsin's to Putin's era
●
Regime type in modern Russia
●
Corporatist-kleptocratic influence on FP

3. State vs. Business
Yeltsin Putin
Oligarchs

4. Domestic policy: shifts from Yeltsin's to
Putin's era
●
Citizens lost lots of its direct leverage over political life;
●
Decrease in number of small interest groups;
●
Revival of security forces;
●
Independence from external aid.

5. Shifts in foreign policy
Weak lacking autonomy and capacity state,
dependent on the economic and financial support
of OECD-countries.
●
Dominated by small interest groups;
●
Dependent on on governments capacity to control other
bureaucratic actors;
●
Ignoring cooperation with other Post-Soviet states;
●
“Cold peace”, “guarantor of peace and stability in regions of
the former USSR”;
●
Independent bureaucratic groups of interest cooperating with
NIS and non-OECD countries;
●
Contradicting and uncoordinated policy;
●
Dominated by executive power;
●
Relative independence of federal subjects in theirs foreign
policy – ind. players passing center;
●
West-vector supported by oligarchs;
●
Economical priority over security (reluctant cooperation on
security issues with West).
Strong state, backed by a solid material base and a
streamlined bureaucracy, able to formulate a
more independent and coherent foreign policy.
Centralized and streamlined with small degree of competition on federal
level;
Less dependent on oligarchs and aid from OECD-countries, conflicting
relations;
Cool down in EU-Russian relations;
Dependent on Putin and his confidence (siloviki);
Determined and better coordinated;
Elimination of federal autonomy in FP;
Increase of the defense budget;
NIS policy on economically based;
Establishment of the Collective Security Treaty Cooperation and
Shanghai Cooperation Organization;
Foreign investments excluded from strategic sectors;
Security policy determined by MOD.

6. Is Russia struggling democratic state, hybrid, semi-
authoritarian, rentier, corporatist-kleptocratic state?
●
Foreign political actors – state – promotes national interest and elites – promote
own corporatist (kleptocratic) interest and undermine national interest and create
threat to the primacy of the state as in conducting FP.
●
Source of Russian FP – domestic conflict of elites, who hold positions of both
formal authority and private benefit.
roof for elites
elites power depend less on their formal
institutional relations than on their relation to
Putin
arbiter of disputes and the source of “law” to
maximize elite position
Putin

7. Is Russia really a classic rentier
state?
Rentier state – state with few hugh skilled professionals in non-diversed economy
dependent on revenues from energy export (ex. Saudi Arabia)
Russian case:
●
30% of its export revenues from non-energy sources;
●
Individual companies are significant recipient of the revenues from energy, not the
state itself (quite arguable statement);
●
The Russian budget is in fact dependent on tax revenues, with only 14 percent of
its revenues coming from nontax sources;
But, nevertheless in foreign policy, energy has become preeminent in the Russian
state’s concerns, in promoting Russian routes for oil and gas pipelines, maintaining
Russia’s monopoly as a supplier for many European countries, and controlling
access to the Russian market for external investors.

8. Why Russia is a corporatist-
kleptocratic regime?
●
Russian corporativism - state has an intrinsic right to involve itself in every sector of the economy and
to suppress labor and social movements, even if both the market mechanisms needed to maintain the
efficiency of a liberal economy and the legal guarantees of freedom of assembly and freedom of
speech necessary for a democratic system are undermined;
●
Putin's elite privatize all the rewards of economic performance while nationalizing all of the risk;
●
Putin appointed key officials to big business not just to make policy and strengthen the state, but also
for their mutual personal profit;
Andrei Piontkovsky, a lead researcher at the Institute for Systems Studies of the Russian Academy of
Science: “The corporatist kleptocracy that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has erected is profoundly
misunderstood in the West. …totally ignores the actual nature of Russian “capitalism.” The right to
property in Russia is entirely conditional upon the property owner’s loyalty to the Russian government.
The system is tending back toward feudalism, when the sovereign distributed privileges and lands to
his vassals and could take them away at any moment. The only difference is that, in today’s Russia, the
things that Putin is distributing and taking away are not parcels of land, but gas and oil companies.
Over the last decade, a mutant has evolved that is neither socialism nor capitalism. Its defining
characteristics are the merging of money and political power; the institutionalization of corruption; and
the domination of the economy by major corporations, chiefly trading in commodities, which flourish
thanks to public resources”.

9. Trends in modern FP
●
Putin and the Statists - FP that promotes a strong, unified, centralized,
and respected Russian state as the best guarantor against disintegration
and dismemberment. Biggest threat to Russia’s stability and power is of
democracy closer to Russian borders. To counter this threat not just
increase military expenditures, but dependance of Europe on Russias
energy resources.
●
Sechin and the Siloviki - military rebuilding and a more muscular foreign
and defense policy, including rebuilding Russia as a major arms exporter
and supporter of authoritarian regimes abroad.
●
Medvedev and the Modernizers - FP should serve the need to develop
Russia economically, through planning for the post-extractive energy era
and building a more attractive climate for innovation in Russia.

10. Influence of corporatist-kleptocratic
regime on foreign policy
●
Russia and Europe - preventing foreign investments undermining
the long-term reputation of the Russian state as a reliable guarantor
of legal contracts. War for the new European states.
●
Russia and the Post-Soviet States – gas and oil wars apart from
strengthening Russia's influence on these countries, provoked by
the willingness of e interest of elites in Gazprom or Rosneft, or
deputy ministers in foreign trade ministries (sometimes these could
be the same people), who are willing to negotiate these subsidized
oil and gas deals but only in return for huge personal kickbacks or
to get shares in industries in debtor states.

11. Conclusions
Russian foreign policy under Yeltsin was determined by a multitude of
economic and bureaucratic interest groups which impacted on the
formulation and making of the government’s external policy. As a
result, Yeltsin’s official policy course often appeared uncoordinated,
incoherent, erratic and at times contradictory.
The number of groups impacting on the definition and implementation
of foreign policy decreased considerably under Putin. In
consequence, Russian foreign policy became better coordinated and
more conditional. Groups close to Putin influence much FP making
its the regime of corporatist-kleptocratic one.