“The political economy of oligarchic stagnation: Russia – In transition to where?”

Investigated since the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the case of regime transition in Russia has attracted a constantly growing number of studies from comparative politics, international relations and international political economy literatures. This chapter looks at the evolution of the Russian political regime, from the years of the Soviet collapse (1987-1991) to recent times (2009). By taking stock of the studies in the transition literature, it highlights elements of conformity, as well as of idiosyncratic specificity, to situate the evolution of the Russian regime in the complex space of multidimensional typologies on institutional change and consolidation. While answering to key questions on the peculiarity of the ‘Russian hybridism’ (its definition, its origins and evolution), it also critically discusses the arguments behind the ‘incompleteness’ thesis, to ground an explanatory framework of the anti-democratic revirement that has occurred since 2000. Finally, it maintains that the future of Russia will crucially depend on three sets of interrelated factors: top-down political-economy determinants (that are both elite- and system-driven), the role of powerful external actors (namely the US and EU) and, ultimately, bottom-up inputs from Russian civil society.