Russia without Putin?
(Protester holding a sign that says “Russia without Putin”, which has long been a rallying cry for many activists inside Russia)
It is difficult to predict how Putin’s invasion in Ukraine will end. There are a lot of reasons for optimism and for pessimism. One minute I can imagine this being a positive turning point not only in Russia but for the international system. The next minute, I’m thinking of how ways this escalates to nuclear war. The conflict is ongoing and the most important matters are the people caught in the fighting and those who are directly affected by its consequences.
With that said, it seems obvious that this has not gone the way Putin expected early on. This has led to speculation of what this could mean for his future. So what can political science research tell us about the question, is this the beginning of the end of the Putin regime?
1-I will discuss the political science literature below, but as background it is important to understand why Putin is/was popular to begin with. The 1990’s in Russia were a period of turmoil, economic dislocation, political instability and social disorder. All of the instability culminated in the 1998 financial crisis, when there was a run on banks, the ruble collapsed and Yeltsin changed his government. (I was studying in Russia during this financial crisis. If your kids want to spend a semester studying abroad in college let them. It’s a life changing experience!)
Putin offers stability, predictability and financial security (for many). The appeal of Putin is that life is not like the 1990’s. Because there is stability Russians can dream of a better future for themselves and their children. The costs of Putin’s war eliminates the stability, predictability and financial security that he has offered. The scenes in Russia of people waiting to get money out of ATM’s, banks running out of currency, the ruble falling further each day are reminiscent of 1998 and the 1990’s. This is the lens in which Russians will be viewing all of this (in addition to the moral outrage of launching an unprovoked war). If Putin is now only offering a return to the 1990’s, then Russians may determine he is no longer worth trouble. There is a reason that Brezhnev (perhaps the most boring Russian leader of the last 100 plus years) was found to be the most popular 20th century leader in Russia.
2-Regimes collapse in three ways: from below (masses), from above (elites) and from both below and above. As discussed above, the common problem for Putin for both the masses and the elite is that he no longer offers stability and predictability. This changes the decision of whether to offer him support or not for elites (such as the so called oligarchs, government officials, journalists, etc.) and for the masses who now face an increasingly isolated future.
3-The optimism for regime collapse from below comes from two studies. First, in his work on Russian protests Sam Greene argues that Putin has been relatively successful at preventing widespread opposition movements because he has targeted specific groups of people. The danger for an autocrat is creating a sense of identity among a large group with policies or actions from which they all suffer (such as launching a war that leads to economic ruin). I use Greene’s framework in my forthcoming publication to show that protests in Russia are primarily focused on regional issues and this is one reason they have failed to grow larger and directly threaten Putin (in most cases). Putin’s invasion changes this and in some ways “targets” all Russians through economic difficulties and its immorality. If you watch/read interviews with Russians so many of them mention how they are ashamed their country is doing this. This is dangerous for Putin because there is an emerging sense of harm forming around a large group and this enables mobilization.
Second, Timur Kuran’s work on the “surprising” nature of revolutions works in tandem with increased mobilization. He argues that many mass revolutions have a domino effect (or snowball, cascading effect, whatever your metaphor is). Once people protest, and others see that people think like they do, more people are likely to join protests and so on. Because there are costs to expressing your true preference (Putin’s invasion is bad) publicly, people need to see others express it publicly to express that true preference. These hidden preferences are why we are often surprised when authoritarian leaders fall. I applied this framework to Romania’s 1989 revolution in this article. You already see this in Russia, with even more people protesting today even though they know it means arrest. Once people demonstrate they are not afraid of the government’s security forces, that often signals the beginning of the end.
4-Many regimes collapse from above through elite fragmentation. There is a lot of research discussing this but my favorite is Linz and Stepan’s great book. The basic argument is that when the current regime no longer offers rewards to elites, they will search for a new arrangement that does offer them rewards. This could end in a regime that is very similar, just with a new leader (Bulgaria’s initial movement from Communism) or a completely new system of government (Czech Republic after Communism). The factors are too complex to get into here, but the signs that this may be happening are elites speaking out against the action. You see a little of this already in Russia. A few important oligarchs have spoken against it, one member of the legislature (update: now three), an important political figure (Anatoly Chubais) and several children of Russia’s elites. If the elite are fracturing and considering life without Putin, there will be more public defections like these going forward.
The caution to this is that the elite need a viable alternative to Putin and over the last 20 years he has worked to make sure there is no other alternative (Hale argues this in his book). Who would take over for Putin is not an easy question. That is why the most likely scenario if there is an elite fracture is that Putin is replaced with someone who would simply continue the same system (just without invasions and nuclear brinkmanship). This is (kind of) what happened when Khrushchev was replaced with Brezhnev. Governments that lose wars (if that is what happens) often do not survive. Losing wars leads to elite fractures or economic consequences that result in elite fractures (such as the Soviet war in Afghanistan).
5-How they work together is pretty straightforward. Either large protests lead elites to change their calculations about the benefits of the current leader or visible elite fractures lead the masses to change their calculations about protests. In many situations, regimes fall from disaffection by both elites and masses.
Again, who knows what will happen. Many people did not expect Putin to launch an invasion because the consequences of such an action would seem to be politically disastrous for him. Even though many did not predict the invasion, the consequences of it still seem disastrous for Putin’s domestic situation. Russia without Putin seems more possible now than it was a week ago.