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Political party politics meant nothing then. All that was important was who could bring stability and growth. But of course these ideas also have their root in Russia’s long tradition of autocratic Tsars (Autocrat was one of the Tsar’s official titles) which was taken over by the communists.
And the people were quiet happy with this deal until recently. It was the basis of the “social contract” between Putin and the voters where they conceded political power in return for growing prosperity. This deal only started to break down after 2013 when economic stagnation set in and as the emerging middle class had reached a point where life was comfortable enough, they began to ask for a bigger role in running the country.
The West has its own problems with democracy. The sacrosanct principle of “one man, one vote” has also been badly mauled in the US by voter suppression via ID requirements as well as extreme gerrymandering that has cut districts up into impossible shapes, disenfranchising large numbers of voters. The situation has contributed to the Black Lives Matter protests, among other things.
Nato expansion
Maybe the biggest bone of contention between Washington and Moscow is Nato expansion. Putin angrily claimed that the West promised Mikhail Gorbachev that Nato would not expand eastwards during his now famous Munich Security Conference speech
in 2007.
Nato flatly denied any such promise had been made during the Ukraine crisis in 2014: “No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia’s claims has ever been produced.” However, a team at George Washington University published declassified documents showing that a dozen top Western diplomats did in fact promise no expansion, starting with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and including Chancellor Kohl, US Secretary of State James Baker and British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd among others.
“All the Western foreign ministers were on board with Genscher, Kohl, and James Baker,” the George Washington University team said in their paper.
But nothing was ever put on paper and in the world of diplomacy there is a big difference between a verbal promise and a treaty.
Putin intends to hold the West to the promise even if it was not written down – or at least prevent further Nato expansion. Russia rejects the unipolar view of the world, where the US is a global policeman. Putin has advocated a multi-polar world that acts in concert through bodies like the G20 or the UN.
Corruption
While the Washington Consensus does not name corruption specifically, eradicating graft is implicit in all the points.
In the West, corruption is unacceptable and a large body of law and law enforcement is dedicated to preventing corruption. In the East, as bne IntelliNews has written elsewhere, corruption is
the system.
The difference is that over the last few hundred years the West has built up institutions and a system of checks and balances that guard against corruption. Only 30 years into the game few of these
countries are now backtracking and countries like Hungary and Poland are actively attempting to dismantle their institutions. On the flipside, the current crisis has forced some of the countries
in the East to actively build up their institutions as a way of saving money: the Russian tax service is an outstanding example. It has been revolutionised in the last six years. Corruption is being tackled in the East, but out of pragmatic necessity, not because of principles.
The Moscow Consensus sees corruption as a fact of life; Russians expect their leaders to be corrupt. The issue is simply the level of corruption. There is a complex set of unwritten rules dealing with corruption and citizens are more tolerant of corruption than they are in the West.
Corruption is a big problem in the
West too, but there the larger part is institutionalised. Lobbying is a multi- billion dollar business, where former politicians can be hired to push laws that benefit private interests legally. And the lack of controls over campaign financing in the US is another form of big business corruption that is worth multiple billions of dollars a year.
Low government borrowing
The advice to keep debt low has bizarrely been turned on its head. Russia
“The advice to keep debt low has bizarrely been turned on its head. Russia now has zero net public.. while developed markets have built up record amounts of debt”
institutions have been created in the East. Without them the most effective way
for a political leader to bind his minions and control them is to grant them fiefdoms from which they can draw rents. Corruption is a means of control.
The exception is the 2003 EU accession countries that had EU institutions forced on them ready-made. And the result was an extraordinary boom in Central Europe. But here too these
now has zero net public or external debt having built up almost $580bn in reserves. In the West, governments across the developed markets have built up historical record amounts
of debt. According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), developed markets now have an average of 266% of GDP of debt, whereas emerging markets have 166%. According to the EU’s Maastricht treaty, debt was supposed
to be capped at 60% of GDP.
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