Theorising the Structure of the Kremlin Factions: Lessons Learned from China

Theorising the structure of the Kremlin Factions: lessons learned from China

Introduction

Two decades after the end of communism, the ‘state of democracy’ in Russia remains a point of vivid debate within academic circles. There’s no lack of concepts to describe the nature of the current regime: ‘managed democracy’ (Lipman and McFaul, 2001), ‘Potemkin democracy’ (Clarck, 2004), ‘forms without substance’ (Brown, 2009), ‘phony democracy’ (Sakwa, 2008b), ‘facade democracy’ (Rutland, 2003), ‘democracy’s doubles’ (Krastev, 2006), ‘imitation democracy’ (Shevtsova, 2007), etc. All of them point in a certain extent to the same conclusion: although formally and constitutionally Russia could be labelled as a ‘democracy’, in practice and in substance it just isn’t. A real democracy is hampered by the existence of an informal ‘regime level’ operating around the Kremlin which has been dominating Russian politics for the last fifteen years (Willerton, 2010: 230). This regime level is considered to be largely free from genuine democratic accountability, and is succumbed by fluid ruling groups or ‘factions’ (Sakwa, 2008a: 136-38). While there has already been done much work in identifying and describing these different groupings or factions, much less attempts have been made to theorise their composition, the relationship between the faction-members and their institutional position within the formal state structures. An exception to this is the recent work by Richard Sakwa (2010, 2011) in which he defines Russia as a ‘dual state’ with a formal constitutional order (the normative state) and a second level of informal, factional politics (the administrative regime). However, Sakwa limits himself to giving a broad definition of these factions and to locate their position within his concept of the dual state. In this essay a first, modest, attempt will be undertaken to theorise the structure and composition of the Kremlin factions and to devise a corresponding model. Yet, this

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