More on leadership politics in Russia
Just an hour after posting the blog entry about Mikhail Prokhorov and "his" party, Right Cause, I opened this morning's New York Times to find this article. It makes me more certain that the Prokhorov/Right Cause move is a Potemkin Village designed to manipulate public opinion.Before Voting, Russian Leaders Go to the Polls
Every Thursday, a bearded, bespectacled man arrives at the Kremlin bearing a sheaf of data… There, a roomful of decision makers are gathered to hear the latest installment of What Russia Thinks.
As strange as it may sound to outsiders, the people who run Russia are obsessed with approval ratings.
Political competition has been all but extinguished since Vladimir V. Putin came to power, so elections serve as little more than a ritual display of loyalty. But Kremlin insiders see popularity as a key to the survival of a government that, 20 years after the Soviet collapse, has few stable state institutions other than its leaders’ personalities…
Both Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev are entering the campaign cycle with approval ratings that — though enviable by most international standards — were lower this summer than at any point since 2008, according to the state-owned All-Russian Public Opinion Center. More striking is a slide in the popularity of United Russia, the political party that Mr. Putin leads.
To stop this drift, coming elections “need to attract the real support of the population,” said Sergei A. Markov, a United Russia deputy and Kremlin-connected analyst…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: leadership, politics, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home