When transparency is missing
What is a student of politics to do when the political culture and its institutions are not transparent? The problem was common during the Cold War, but many people thought the idea of transparency, like the idea of democracy, was ascendant in the 21st century. Maybe not.Required Reading in Moscow: Tea Leaves
"KREMLINOLOGY during the cold war sometimes seemed to have as much rigor as astrology, offering up prophesies about an opaque nation by surveying all manner of ungainly texts, dubious statistics, retouched photos and back-room whisperings. Perhaps it was folly to predict the new Soviet leadership or policies based upon which apparatchiks clustered around Brezhnev on the parade stand in Red Square, but what else was there?
"You can detect a similar desperation in Moscow these days in the attempts to divine what President Vladimir V. Putin has in store for his nation in the six months before the next presidential election. While Russia in the Putin era is a far more open society than the Soviet state, the inner workings of the Kremlin are as confounding as ever. Still, the art of Kremlinology has changed, in ways subtle and not...
"Without warning, Mr. Putin sent his prime minister into political exile (or did he?) and installed a shadowy newcomer (does he have something on the president?), all the while leaving in place two other potential heirs to the presidency (why didn’t one of them get the prime minister’s job?). Mr. Putin continued to insist that he will abide by term limits and not run for president next year (but will he stick to that?)...
"Grasping at clues about whom Mr. Putin will endorse for the presidency, today’s Kremlinologists have updated some of their old ways. Instead of tracking who stands next to the party general secretary as soldiers march by, they meticulously calculate which officials get the most time on the television news — after Mr. Putin, of course...
"Nikolay V. Petrov, an expert in Russian politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that if anything, Kremlinology was more difficult now. Under Communism, he said, at least the party had practices that were rigidly followed...
"'It is much more closed now, and it’s like studying K.G.B. clans,' Mr. Petrov said. 'There is no public evidence. There are few details that you can see at the surface. And it’s hard to construct what is happening.'
"It could be said that the Kremlin under Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer, reflects a spy’s penchant for tight-lipped leadership. But Russia, whether under czars or commissars, never had a tradition of open government. The word “Kremlin” derives from the Russian for fortress; the government has the nickname because it is based inside Moscow’s medieval walls..."
William Saletan, in an article in Slate, described Kremlinology this way:
"During the Cold War, pundits entertained themselves with a parlor game called Kremlinology. Every time a Soviet premier was ousted or a new man joined the Politburo, Western analysts spun fresh theories about who was up, who was down, why the chairs were being rearranged, and what those wily old Russians were up to..."
Labels: political culture, politics, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:12 AM
1 Comments:
Want an example of "Kremlinology?" Here's one from The Economist.
Hawks and liberals
"Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cabinet reshuffle was not particularly dramatic, but it does somewhat bolster the position of liberals within the government. This could mean, paradoxically, that the stage is set for a hawk to become Russia’s next president. The identity of the successor, however, depends on Mr Putin’s own plans after his current term expires: retirement, influence from outside the Kremlin, or a return to the Kremlin within a few years?...
"The new cabinet was eagerly awaited for two reasons: as an indication of the balance between the so-called liberals and hawks within the government; and for clues as to the identity of Mr Putin’s preferred successor...
"As expected, the two main departures from the cabinet were the liberal German Gref, who has served Mr Putin as minister for economic development, and Mikhail Zurabov, who as minister of social policy has bungled the reform of in-kind benefits. Their replacements, respectively, are Elvira Nabiullina, a deputy minister under Gref with liberal credentials, and Tatiana Golikova, a technocratic deputy finance minister...
"The net effect of these changes is to underpin the liberal presence in government, if not actually to extend it...
"Rather, given that this cabinet has a look of permanence about it, Mr Putin could be clearing the way for a hawk, most likely Mr Ivanov, to be president. As his defeated rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky wrote (from a prison cell), Mr Putin is more democratic and more liberal than 70% of Russia’s population. Economic liberalism has been a critical element of Mr Putin’s success in office and is probably just as important for the maintenance of his legacy. Yet Mr Putin’s inner circle is dominated by former KGB officers with a statist streak. If he is to hand over power to one of them, and yet to ensure policy continuity, it would be logical for Mr Putin to entrench liberals within the cabinet that his successor will inherit. And this is what he has done.
"The notion of Mr Putin bolstering the government’s liberal wing, as a precursor to anointing a hawkish successor, is plausible. Yet it is only one of several explanations..."
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