| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE TRANSFORMATION OF RUSSIA'S POLITICAL LIFE IN 2003-2007 was profound,
and it did not remain unnoticed by international democracy observers. Freedom
House downgraded Russia's status from 'partly free' in 2003 to 'not free' in 2007; the
Polity IV DEMOC score for Russia decreased from six in 2003 to five in 2007, which
corresponds with crossing a major dividing line between an imperfect democracy and
outright authoritarianism.1 From such scores, one might conclude, what we have
observed is a period of regime change. Indeed, several scholars and analysts have
invested their efforts into the study of a set of incentives and strategies that led
Russia's leadership to an abrupt authoritarian turn (Gill 2006; Hassner 2008; McFaul
& Stoner-Weiss 2008). What is often missing in such analyses, however, is the process
of transformation. Perhaps because they have concentrated on the national level of
politics, the students of regime change in Russia seem to have missed empirical
indicators that could have allowed them to trace the phases of transformation. As a
result, the picture becomes blurred: we have the relatively free 2003 Duma elections,
the obviously not-free 2007 Duma elections, and a black box in between.
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