Stanford University

Putin or the People? The Surprising Politics of Authoritarianism in Russia

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/HFZJj01vC3U

 

Abstract: By most accounts, the most important political space in the world's largest country is the four inches between Vladimir Putin’s ears. In a new book, Graeme Robertson and Sam Greene challenge the idea that Putin has shaped Russia in his own image, arguing instead that it his power flows from a particular relationship he has developed with his citizens -- and that his citizens have developed with one another. The result is a view of Russian politics as something much more fluid and fragile than we generally understand, a shifting landscape in which Putin's power -- and that of whoever succeeds him -- is continually negotiated and renegotiated between the Kremlin and the public, even in the confines of an increasingly authoritarian state. In this discussion, Greene and Robertson explore the social and political imperatives, challenges and dilemmas Putin and Russia face as he rounds out his fourth term and wonders about a fifth.

 

Speakers' Biography:

 

Sam Greene is reader in Russian politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King's College London. His research focuses on the relationships between citizens and the state in Russia, and in societies experiencing social, economic and political transformation more broadly. His first book, Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin's Russia, was published by Stanford University Press in 2014. More recently, he is co-author with Graeme Robertson of Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, published by Yale University Press in 2019. He also serves as Associate Fellow in the Russian and Eurasian Programme of the International Institute for Security Studies and a Visiting Professor at the UK Defence Academy.

 

Graeme Robertson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies. His work focuses on political protest and regime support in authoritarian regimes.

Graeme’s new book (with Samuel A. Greene) is Putin v. The People, published by Yale University Press in June 2019. The book presents a fresh new look at the social bases of support for and opposition to authoritarian rule in Russia. Graeme is also the author of Revolution and Reform in Ukraine, published by PONARS Eurasia (with Silviya Nitsova and Grigore Pop-Eleches) and The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia, published by Cambridge University Press. He has published articles in many academic journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science, as well as contributing regularly to the media on Russia and Ukraine. Graeme currently serves as the Associate Editor for Comparative Politics for the American Journal of Political Science.

Sam Greene King's College London
Graeme Robertson University of North Carolina
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Health and Human Capital in Putin’s Russia

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/5c8Un2Y9-sw

 

Abstract: Over the last fifteen years, the Russian government has invested significantly in improving Russia’s education and health care systems and in reversing the health and demographic catastrophes of the 1990s. This discussion will assess the extent to which those investments have paid off and the continued challenges Putin faces in aligning Russia’s human capital resources with his political, economic, and foreign policy ambitions. It will also examine the ways that health and social policy have been used as political tools – not always successfully – by the Putin regime.

 

Speaker Biography: Judy Twigg is a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University; senior associate (non-resident) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies; consultant for the evaluation units of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank; and adjunct professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Twigg’s work focuses on issues of health, human capital, and health systems reform in Eurasia, as well as evaluations of human development and public sector management assistance projects globally. She has been a consultant for John Snow, Inc., UNICEF, USAID, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Twigg was a 2005 recipient of the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. She holds a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.A. in political science and Soviet studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in political science and security studies from MIT.

 

 

Judy Twigg Professor of Political Science Virginia Commonwealth University
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Naimark's New Book Makes Financial Times Best History Books List

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Norman M. Naimark
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The Financial Times named Norman Naimark's latest book, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty, one of the best history books in 2019. The Financial Times writes "Naimark has few peers as a scholar of Stalinism, the Soviet Union and mid-20th-century Europe. Here he selects seven case studies, from Denmark and Finland to Austria and Albania, to illustrate the complexity of Stalin’s objectives after the second world war as European leaders on both sides of the emerging Iron Curtain strove to reclaim national sovereignty."

 

Read the rest at Financial Times

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Russia as a Failed Developmental State: Economic Policy and Predation Under Sanctions

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/q5g6fuAVG2w

 

About this Event: For over a decade, Russian officials have a championed a model of economic growth that draws inspiration from East Asian developmental states. The state’s role in economic decision making has been accentuated, setting in motion ambitious industrial and stimulus policies, import substitution, and as international sanctions have mounted, fierce protectionism. This memo explains how this shift in doctrine has contributed to economic stagnation and falling consumer welfare. Weak institutions have enabled a bureaucratic system that privileges loyalty over merit and consequently unproductive, corruption-riddled spending. Politically motivated concerns about keeping wealth and power concentrated among a small group of elites threaten to generate widespread discontent over economic exclusion. 

This event is co-sponsored with the European Security Initiative

 

Speaker's Biography: David Szakonyi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, and a Research Fellow at Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. His research looks at political economy and corruption, with projects underway in Russia and the United States. His book Politics for Profit: Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia is forthcoming at Cambridge University Press, with other work published in the American Political Science Review, World Politics, and Journal of Politics, as well as popular publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Virginia

 

David Szakonyi George Washington University
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Quid Pro Quo? Impeachment, Ukraine, and Russia

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This event is now full and we are unable to take any further reservations. However, if you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email us at sj1874@stanford.edu.

 

This panel will examine the role of Ukraine and Russia in the Trump impeachment inquiry. Why has Ukraine emerged as central focus of the charges? What are Russia’s goals here, and how has it tried to achieve them? How different is an impeachment process driven by foreign policy concerns, rather than by domestic charges? Bringing together three experts on Ukraine, Russia, and US presidential politics, we will examine this extraordinary moment in American and international politics.

PANELISTS:

Headshot of Michael McFaul

Michael McFaul, '86, MA '86, is the Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science; and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University from June to August of 2015. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Michael McFaul is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post.

He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.

He also served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, including most recently the New York Times bestseller, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. He is currently writing a book on great powers relations in the 21st century.

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Terry M. Moe is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written extensively on the presidency, public bureaucracy, and the theory of political institutions more generally. His most recent book on American national politics is Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming.  Coauthored with William G. Howell.)

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Steven Pifer is a William Perry research fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.  He writes on nuclear arms control, Ukraine and Russia.  A retired Foreign Service officer, his assignments included U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and special assistant to the President and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council.

MODERATOR:
Headshot of Anna Grzymala-Busse

Anna Grzymala-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

Michael A. McFaul

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

International Working Group on Russian Sanctions

The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions aims to provide expertise and experience to governments and companies around the world by assisting with the formulation of sanctions proposals that will increase the cost to Russia of invading Ukraine, and support democratic Ukraine in the defense of its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
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Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Anna Grzymała-Busse

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA  94305

 

(650) 723-4270
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.

Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Hal Sonnenfeldt, Hard-nosed Realism, and U.S.-Russian Arms Control

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Brookings Editor's Note: This piece is part of a series remembering the life, career, and legacy of Helmut (Hal) Sonnenfeldt — a member of the National Security Council, counselor at the Department of State, scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Brookings expert.

 

Serving as a senior member on the National Security Council at the Nixon White House from 1969-1974, Hal Sonnenfeldt was Henry Kissinger’s primary advisor on the Soviet Union and Europe. After Sonnenfeldt’s passing, Kissinger told the New York Times that Sonnenfeldt was “my closest associate” on U.S.-Soviet relations and “at my right hand on all the negotiations that I conducted with the Soviets,” including on arms control. THIRD PARAGRAPH Sonnenfeldt brought a practical approach to U.S.-Soviet relations, realistic about the Soviet Union — its strengths, its weaknesses, and the challenges it presented to the West — and creative in trying to address those challenges. He was likewise realistic about the contribution that arms control could make to a safer and more stable bilateral relationship. As he noted in a 1978 article for Foreign Affairs, military and arms control issues were a fundamental part of the relationship, but “the problem [of dealing with Soviet power] does not end or begin with military measures alone.” Other factors — political, economic, ideological, and even cultural — mattered.

 

Read the Rest on Brookings

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CISAC fellow Anna Péczeli suggests that the Trump Administration conduct a broad Nuclear Posture Review that includes the State Department, which in the last such review in 2009 emphasized a number of policies that supported non-proliferation objectives and strengthened U.S. negotiating positions at global arms control forums.
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The Death of the INF Treaty Has Given Birth to New Missile Possibilities

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The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty came to an end in August. The United States and Russia no longer are barred from developing and deploying land-based, intermediate-range missiles, and the Pentagon apparently aims to deploy such missiles in Europe and Asia.

The INF Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, prohibited the United States and Soviet Union (later Russia) from testing or possessing land-based ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between five hundred and fifty-five hundred kilometers. Unfortunately, Russia violated the treaty by testing and deploying the 9M729, a prohibited land-based, intermediate-range cruise missile.

 

Read the Rest at The National Interest.

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Russia, The West and Sanctions

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Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: The West’s sanctions regime on Russia is unprecedented. Russia is the largest economy ever to be subject to major sanctions. And for the first time, the West is now the major constraint on Russia’s participation in the global economy. This experience is driving adaptation and innovation in both Russian public policy and Western sanctions practice.

What do Russian sanctions reveal about both Russia and sanctions? What count as good and bad tests of sanctions’ efficacy? What implications do sanctions hold for Russia’s domestic evolution and its relationship with the West?

 

Speaker's Biography:

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Nigel Gould-Davies is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He teaches at Mahidol University International College in Thailand.

Nigel taught at Oxford University before joining the British Foreign Office, where his roles included Ambassador to Belarus. From 2010-14 he was Vice President, Policy and Corporate Affairs for BG Group in Asia.

He is the author of Tectonic Politics: Global Political Risk in an Age of Transformation (Brookings Institution, 2019). He received his B.A. and M.Phil. from Oxford and his Ph.D. from Harvard.

 

Nigel Gould-Davies Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House
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Authoritarian Legitimation and Insecure Collective Identity: Lessons From Putin’s Russia

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Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: This study brings together social identity theory and the literature on ontological security in international relations to highlight the role of leadership processes for group formation and authoritarian legitimation. Together, these theories allow for exploring the conditions that increase the potency of identity-based politics and the specific ways political entrepreneurs can mobilize this political tool. Ontological insecurity, as I argue and show, is a condition that political entrepreneurs use and manipulate to gain political support and legitimate their rule. I illustrate this argument by looking into ‘late Putinism’ as an example of collective identity-driven politics. This study relies on an original nationwide survey experiment conducted in November 2017 in Russia to demonstrate the extent of the Russian society’s vulnerability and receptivity to insecure identity narratives. The data also allows us to start a discussion on the potential factors responsible for societal differentiation on this issue.

 

Speaker's Biography:

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, a Reader in Russian Politics at King’s College London, is the author of Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism Inside Russia (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011) and the forthcoming monograph Through The Looking Glass: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020). Gulnaz has written numerous articles on Russian regional political economy, state-business relations, and corruption in Russia. She has published an edited volume, Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964-1985 (2012) and has been working on bringing social psychological approaches to understanding collective identity issues and the nature of Putinism in Russia.

 

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova Reader in Russian Politics King’s College London
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Russian Grassroots Activism for the Environment and Beyond

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Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: Despite a lull after the fall of the Soviet Union, grassroots activism in Russia is on the rise. The protests for free elections that swept across Russia in the summer of 2019 may have captured international headlines, but many other Russian grassroots groups have been actively organizing over the last decade. What types of civic movements exist in today’s Russia? What are the risks that civic activists face? How do they interact with the state or state-protected interest groups? Finally, what role could grassroots groups play in democratizing Russia? Russian activist Evgeniya Chirikova will shed light on these questions through her personal experience as an environmental activist and as a coordinator of Activatica.org, an online news platform covering grassroots activism across Russia.


Speaker's Biography:

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Evgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist, primarily known for opposing the building of a motorway through the Khimki forest near Moscow. She also played a prominent role in the 2011-2012 Russian protests following disputed parliamentary elections in Russia. In March 2011, she received the Woman of Courage Award, handed over by US Vice President Joe Biden. In 2012, she was a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. In November 2012, Foren Policy named Chirikova one of its 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2015 Chirikova organized the portal activatica.org, and she is currently organizing media support for grassroots groups.

Evgeniya Chirikova Russian Environmental Activist
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