Page 26 - BNE_magazine_02_2020

26 I Cover story bne February 2020
Russian elections: Dume 2011, President 2012
even more unpopular, as is the whole government. United Russia’s electoral rating dropped to a new low of 33.8% in January 2019 and the substantial fix that is now necessary to allow it to take over 50% of the vote will almost certainly lead to popular unrest. Even Putin acknowledged this in his state of the nation speech
on January 15 saying the people were becoming more “politically mature”.
This must be one of the main reasons why he is moving more power to the Duma and presumably intends to
allow more parties to run as a way of increasing the appeal of the government as he can’t rely on United Russia alone as his proxy in government any more.
Interestingly while both the government and United Russia are increasingly unpopular, Russia’s regional governors have seen their popularity soar in the last year. During the last elections Putin turned to the regional governors to deliver the votes he needed to get both himself and United Russia re-elected and the associated largess has stuck to the regional governors as a result.
The regional governors saw their approval tick up 2pp in September to 63%, which is now on a par with Putin’s own popularity. Putin is now widely expected to move sideways to the State Council, which is made up of governors, and gives him a solid base to continue to control the country.
Instead of acting through regional Duma deputies, the governors give Putin a tool to directly act in every region of Russia. In this sense Medvedev’s appointment to
However, unlike the accession countries of Central Europe that embraced EU-style liberalism, Putin has gone in the opposition direction. He explained his plan right back at the start of his first term in office in a little noticed speech. He said that Mikhail Gorbachev’s mistake in perestroika was to do the political reforms first and leave the economics
for later. The situation quickly ran out of control and rapidly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin has reversed this thinking: do the economic reforms first and the politics later.
Tenuous grip on power
“Putin’s Russia” implies that Putin has total control of Russia, whereas digging into the voting data shows that while he has a firm grip on power, he has
a tenuous grip on total control.
Putin’s sky-high personal popularity makes him impervious to a palace coup. In the elections the most important constituency is not the people but the elite and while Putin would walk to victory even in free and open elections, the actual elections are fixed as he needs to win by a wide margin to assure the elite he is in full control.
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His hold over the Duma is based on the vote of United Russia and he exercises it via his proxy, former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.
But Putin’s grip on the Duma has been slipping in recent years. The fix in the 2011 Duma elections was so blatant
that it resulted in 100,000-strong street protests. In that that election, despite the addition of an estimated 11% to United Russia’s tally, two thirds of the regions voted less than 50% for United Russia and one third voted less than 40%. United Russia’s continued majority depended
“Putin’s grip on the Duma has been slipping in recent years. The fix in the2011 Duma elections was so blatant that it resulted in 100,000-strong street protests”
entirely on the vote in eight regions, including Chechnya and Tatarstan, that delivered over 80% of the vote for United Russia (and more in some cases).
Since then United Russia has become
the newly created role of vice-president of the State Council, which will also see its powers increased, is continuation of the Putin-Medvedev double act that has been the staple of Russian politics for almost two decades.