Russian Politics Today Stability and Fragility

This chapter examines the workings of Russia’s superpresidency. It explains how Russia’s executive branch of government arose out of the politics of the early 1990s, and it shows the ways that it has evolved since then. Russia’s constitution grants the president a wide range of responsibilities and prerogatives, many more than we usually associate with a presidential system of checks and balances. This chapter elaborates the formal powers of the president and explains what makes a “superpresidency” different from other types of political executives. The constitutional powers allocated to the president are only one part of how authority functions in Russia, however. The personal characteristics of the individuals who have occupied the office, their leadership style, and the political context in which they operate have also all shaped how the superpresidency works in practice. This chapter introduces the concept of Vladimir Putin’s “vertical of power” in order to understand how decisionmaking authority has been consolidated in the office of the president over the past twenty years. Finally, we will see how Putin has managed to circumvent presidential term limits to extend his time in office. It concludes by highlighting the sources of stability and fragility within the superpresidency. With a very powerful executive and a strong vertical of power, Russia’s political system has become highly personalized around the figure of the president. Consequently, the stability of this system will depend in large part on the president’s ability to maintain the support of political elites and Russian citizens as he fights a costly war and needs to respond to increasingly painful sanctions.