Institutionalizing Pluralism in Russia: A New Authoritarianism?

Abstract

Contemporary Russia is a peculiar regime which combines democratic and authoritarian features: here internal factors strongly prevail over external variables of democratic imitation and contagion, showing the extent to which Russia differs from other political contexts. The leadership uses some strategies to solve internal conflicts and become stable in spite of democratizing pressures coming from outside. In particular, the mechanisms are aimed at limiting pluralism within the two arenas of political competition and civil society, from where the major threats to the status quo are supposed to come. The incumbents' interventions in these spheres during the past ten years have shaped a regime that can be understood by reference to the concept of ‘new authoritarianism’.