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Meeting report, Vol. 3, No. 7, March 6, 2001
On Tuesday, March 6, Dr. Klaus Segbers, professor of political science at the Institute for East European Research of the Free University of Berlin, discussed the results of the institute's two-year international research project, "Transformation and Globalization: Actors and Factors of Post Soviet Change." The discussion was moderated by Andrew Kuchins, Director of the Carnegie Endowment Russian and Eurasian Program.
Dr. Segbers opened his discussion by presenting some common assumptions that Westerners have traditionally made about the former Soviet Union and Russia; he followed by introducing an alternate set of assumptions relied on by the research project he directed; finally, he placed the findings of the project into a broader context of the Russian political situation.
Traditional Thinking
The "classical Russian text," according to Dr. Segbers, features the assumption of Russia's uniqueness - the USSR and its successor states do not follow the same path as any other region of the world. The second assumption is one of irrationality, summed up by the poet Tyutchev's pithy formulation, "Russia cannot be understood with the mind." Third, this discourse locates Russia at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, questioning its "belonging" to either. Fourth, there is a general assumption that a political entity in the region - be it the USSR, Russia or Moldova -- is a state, and should be treated as such. Fifth, traditional thought has ascribed a consistency of intent to Russia, assuming that directed action is always possible and the Kremlin always acts on its intents. That is, if actors would like to do certain things, they have the capability to do so. The sixth tendency, especially prevalent among Western journalists, is to always describe events in the region in apocalyptic terms. Seventh, traditional wisdom about Russia has been characterized by split discourse - USSR/Russia is at once a dangerous, and a messy, ineffective entity. Lastly, conventional attitudes about Western involvement in the region also followed a two-sided rhetoric - either the West must help, or it should stay out entirely.
Alternative Levels of Analysis
The project of the Institute for East European Research has challenged the above assumptions about Russia, and introduced a non-state-centered approach. Instead of the traditional state-level analysis, the researchers focused on sub-state actors, their preferences, their interests and their strategies, as well as on rules and changing institutional conditions within which the actors operate. The basic question that the project was aiming to answer is: How are actors' interests and strategies, and institutions shaped by Soviet legacies on the one hand, and the global context on the other?
The project's framework introduced a "patchwork" of actors, each with their own preferences and strategies, interacting with each other through network building and bargaining. The four main groups of actors were territories/regions, economic sectors and financial-industrial groups, administrative groups and bureaucracies (which are "state-related", but not identifiable with the unitary "state"), and societal actors. Dr. Segbers asserted that in a climate of weak institutions, these sub-state actors can exert real influence. Those groups that have fewest members and largest resources are the most influential ones.
The research entailed two expert polls conducted in 1999 and 2000 of 60 experts; two-thirds of the experts were Russian, one-half of which were from Moscow, and one-third were Western. The experts were asked to evaluate the interests and strategies of political, economic and societal actors at three points in time - 1990, 1994, 1999, and to provide forecasts for 2004. The researchers also conducted case studies to check the conclusions of the experts.
Actors' Influence
Assessing the relative power of the groups to "shape the rules of the game" in the patchwork, in 1999 the experts rated the President as the most powerful, followed by Gazprom, UES and the oil companies, with foreign transnational corporations and the Russian Orthodox Church as the least influential. The projected configuration for 2004 retained the President as the most influential actor, but followed by economic and financial ministries and the Central Bank. Ranking various political resources as determinant of the actors' power, the importance of personal charisma and the capacity to mobilize the population have declined and are predicted to further decline, while that of access to natural monopolies, hard currency, credit-worthiness and expert knowledge is increasing. Dr. Segbers characterized these trends as a "normalization of the use of political resources."
Actors' Preferences
Since the project intended to analyze the impact of two forces - the Soviet legacy and the imperative of globalization - the next questions gave an indication as to which force shaped certain actors' behaviors. Assessments of 1999 and predictions for 2004, identified the IMF, the international corporations, and domestic export-oriented corporations (such as Gazprom) as "pursuing global strategies," while the Church, the Armed Forces and commercial banks as uninterested in such strategies. The Russian commercial banks and the "oligarchs" were rated most interested in pursuing "protection from global competition" in the same years.
Rules of the Game
With regards to the institutional change, the expert respondents were asked to assess and project the interest in specific rules from 1999 to 2004. There is a slight projected increase in the actors' interest in hard budget constraints, with a slightly smaller decrease of interest in soft budget constraints. An interest in meaningful and enforceable property rights is also projected to increase from 1990 to 2004. And several indicators demonstrate that the importance of public goods in general will increase. Dr. Segbers explained that such results reveal good prospects for stability in Russia. Adopting Mancur Olson's typology, Dr. Segbers explained this increased interest in stability by a crowding out of "roving bandits" by "stationary bandits." "Roving bandits" are interested in maximum short-term gain, whereas "stationary bandits" are more interested in a stable environment, from which they can profit continuously. The research data shows a slight decrease in short time horizons -- a "roving bandit's" perspective -- thus indicating a increased interest in stable institutional rules.
The Putin Phenomenon
Within the framework of the project's approach, Dr. Segbers described Putin's ascendancy as an "expression of a new equilibrium." His coming to power and his popularity expresses a sufficient presence of "stationary" elite players that are interested in some measure of stability. These players come from diverse social strata; Putin's administration is an "uneasy compromise" between the former Soviet elite, and the new middle class. Putin's double biography - a Soviet KGB biography, and a successful post-Soviet one - is responsible for forging this compromise. This situation makes Putin a moderator and a preserver, rather than a mover and shaker. Putin does not have the political resources or sufficient support to re-build a common Russian institutional space, and certainly not to engineer an authoritarian state.
Question and Answer: Origins of Stability?
Several participants asked Dr. Segbers to elaborate on the path by which the increased interest in stability among the actors in the patchwork can actually motivate the government and translate into increased stability in the country. Dr. Segbers conceded that stability is not certain to result from the expressed preferences, but remarked that stabilizing dynamics need not emanate from the state itself. Russia is seeing increased processes of privatization, regionalization, and informalization of institutions, which places more power to shape the rules into the hands of actors other than the Kremlin. It is the interactions among these actors, consequently, that can produce the increased stability desired by many.