Power(s), elites, and institutions
CORUSCANT study group
- Dr Emilija Pundziūtė-Gallois
- Dr Victor Violier
This study group aims to research policy-making in Russia from a socio-historical and comparative perspective, from late socialism to today.
Our reflection is based on the premise that in order to grasp contemporary Russian politics, it is essential to shed light on the workings of the Russian institutions, understood in a wide sense: state administration, its ministries and agencies, its diplomatic corps at home and abroad, its power institutions such as the secret services and the military-security community, regional administrations, as well as state corporations and a number of state collaborators in private and societal sectors, such as government supported NGOs, private consulting and communication companies (the “polit-technologists”), media outlets, banks, business elites, criminal networks, private military companies, public opinion makers, and, last but not least, the Russian Orthodox Church.
Our aim is to understand, where power is located in Russia, how it is deployed, and how its constantly shiiftng distribution transforms state institutions and the state itself.
Scholarship proposes several ways to look at the Russian government: Kononenko et al. (2011) analyze Russia as a network state, Ledeneva (2013) refers to it as a sistema of formal and informal networks, it has been largely popular to talk about Putin’s “power vertical”, the regime of siloviki, or the oligarchic nature of the Russian state (Dawisha 2014), although a number of authors dispel the illusion of coherent and centralized power structures in Russia, underlining competition and dispersal of different power centers throughout the Russian central, regional and local administrations (Renz 2006; Schulman, Galeotti 2021).
The institutional arrangements of the Russian state are in constant evolution. One of the tasks of this research axis, therefore, will be to illuminate these transformations of the Russian state, especially in light of recent upheavals, most notably, the war in Ukraine in 2022, without leaving aside the historical perspective, which can be traced back to the late soviet period, and a comparative touch, where relevant.
Our research will follow three tracks:
References
Kononenko, Vadim, Moshes Arkady, et al. 2011. Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ledeneva, Alena. 2013. Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Renz B. 2006. ‘Putin’s militocracy? An alternative interpretation of siloviki in contemporary Russian politics,’ Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 58, no. 6, p. 903-924.
Our reflection is based on the premise that in order to grasp contemporary Russian politics, it is essential to shed light on the workings of the Russian institutions, understood in a wide sense: state administration, its ministries and agencies, its diplomatic corps at home and abroad, its power institutions such as the secret services and the military-security community, regional administrations, as well as state corporations and a number of state collaborators in private and societal sectors, such as government supported NGOs, private consulting and communication companies (the “polit-technologists”), media outlets, banks, business elites, criminal networks, private military companies, public opinion makers, and, last but not least, the Russian Orthodox Church.
Our aim is to understand, where power is located in Russia, how it is deployed, and how its constantly shiiftng distribution transforms state institutions and the state itself.
Scholarship proposes several ways to look at the Russian government: Kononenko et al. (2011) analyze Russia as a network state, Ledeneva (2013) refers to it as a sistema of formal and informal networks, it has been largely popular to talk about Putin’s “power vertical”, the regime of siloviki, or the oligarchic nature of the Russian state (Dawisha 2014), although a number of authors dispel the illusion of coherent and centralized power structures in Russia, underlining competition and dispersal of different power centers throughout the Russian central, regional and local administrations (Renz 2006; Schulman, Galeotti 2021).
The institutional arrangements of the Russian state are in constant evolution. One of the tasks of this research axis, therefore, will be to illuminate these transformations of the Russian state, especially in light of recent upheavals, most notably, the war in Ukraine in 2022, without leaving aside the historical perspective, which can be traced back to the late soviet period, and a comparative touch, where relevant.
Our research will follow three tracks:
- Mapping actors and practices on different levels of administration through multi-scalar analysis, explaining Russia's centralized authoritarianism, its federal, regional, and local levels of power and administration. The interplay between formal and informal political networks, the dichotomies and synergies of public and private actors, both, in a specific configuration of Russian capitalism, and in comparative perspective, reaching beyond the post-soviet and post-communist contexts.
- Studying the dynamics between elite groups, construction and maintenance of their legitimacy and authority, including their embeddedness in, and relation to the more general Russian political and socio-economic system. We will also look into “politics from below”– how different societal actors, interest groups, NGOs, journalists, social mobilizations, businesses, etc., relate to state power, and how they generate institutional change.
- Explaining the construction and the transformations of the Russian state that the shifting power relations between the society, elites and institutions produce. Understanding the policy-making mechanisms and their evolution, including interrelations between domestic and foreign policies, but also grasping the relationship between state institutions and the Russian society.
References
Dawisha, Karen. 2014. Putin’s kleptocracy: who owns Russia? Simon & Schuster.
Kononenko, Vadim, Moshes Arkady, et al. 2011. Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ledeneva, Alena. 2013. Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Renz B. 2006. ‘Putin’s militocracy? An alternative interpretation of siloviki in contemporary Russian politics,’ Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 58, no. 6, p. 903-924.
