(((I'm not sure I'm buying this guy's rather dense and arcane political analysis, but I like the way Ivan Krastev talks bluntly and directly about aspects of the Russian political situation that are new and poorly understood by anyone anywhere. At this point, I'm really not all fussy about how Russians somehow govern themselves... because I'd be thrilled to see most any Russian social arrangement that would keep the Russian people from dying off at the calamitous rate of half a million people a year.)))
(((I mean, yeah, it's pretty much just as is said here: the petrocratic New Russian mogulized elite DOES ignore the Russia population. The Russian political arrangement as described here simply doesn't need any Russian people. The Russian population has no visible function in the power system. The elite don't kill them off, but the people of Russia serve no purpose. The population seems to respond to this treatment by simply and literally dwindling away. It's as if the US corporate elite retreated deep into their gated communities, and watched the rest of America gorge themselves on Fox News and cheeseburgers till their hearts broke.)))
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/sovereign_democracy_4104.jsp
In its social origins, directed democracy reflected the strange relations between the rulers and the ruled in Yeltsin's Russia. Stephen Holmes has acutely portrayed this relationship: "Those at the top neither exploit nor oppress those at the bottom. They do not even govern them; they simply ignore them."
Directed democracy was a political regime that liberates the elites from the necessity of governing and gives them time to take care of their personal business. It was perceived as the best instrument for avoiding a bloody revolution; at the same time, it created room for the "criminal revolution" that transferred much of the nation's wealth into the hands of few powerful insiders. It was the most suitable regime for a "non-taxing state".
When government taxes people, it has to provide benefits in return: beginning with services, accountability, and good governance, but ending with liberty and representation. This reciprocal exchange between taxation and representation is what gives government legitimacy in the modern world. Russia's directed democracy in the 1990s succeeded in perverting this logic. (((You don't have to look any farther than K Street to see Washington's native version of the Kremlin's directed-democracy. That's not "perverted logic," it's just what happens when there's lot's more money in buying the public sector than in having a public sector.)))
There were taxes in Russia, but nobody really cared to collect them; there were elections, but they were not allowed to represent real interests. Post-communist elites discovered the irresistible charm of state weakness. Russia was a weak state, but it was also a cunning state, one that was quite selective in its weakness. It failed to pay the salaries of workers, but was strong enough to redistribute property and even to repay foreign debts when this was in the interests of the elites. The regime's strategy was to keep up the illusion of political representation while at the same time preventing the interests and sentiments of the transition's losers from being represented.
(...)
Yeltsin's "faking of democracy" was replaced by Putin's consolidation of the state power through nationalisation of the elite and the elimination or marginalisation of what Vladislav Surkov calls "offshore aristocracy". (((Every nation-state has got an "offshore aristocracy." They're called investors.)))
The nationalisation of the elite took the form of de facto nationalisation of the energy sector, total control of the media, de facto criminalisation of the western-funded NGOs, Kremlin-sponsored party-building, criminal persecution of Kremlin's opponents (the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky) and the creation of structures that can secure active support for the regime in the time of crisis (such as the Nashi [Ours] movement). (((The American parallels are left to the reader here.)))
In the view of the Kremlin, sovereignty is not a right; its meaning is not a seat in the United Nations. For the Kremlin, sovereignty is a capacity. It implies economic independence, military strength and cultural identity.
The other key element of the sovereign state is a "nationally-minded" elite. The nature of the elite in the view of the Kremlin's ideologues is the critical component of the sovereign state.
(...)
The Kremlin is not in a defensive mood. The concept of sovereign democracy embodies Putin's Russian nostalgia for the power of ideological attraction enjoyed by the Soviet Union. The search for soft power is what characterises Russia's return to the world stage.
The dynamism of the energy sector and the attractiveness of sovereign democracy are the two weapons of choice in Russia's current march on Europe. Contrary to the assertions of Putin's critics, the concept of sovereign democracy does not mark Russia's break with European tradition. It embodies Russia's ideological ambition to be "the other Europe" - an alternative to the European Union.
(...)
Could Russia's political model - the combination of elite control and classical state sovereignty - become a pole of attraction for the people and elites of Europe disenchanted with the magic of the post-modern state embodied in the European Union?
The politically correct answer is that democratic Europe could not be seduced by the model of Putin's sovereign democracy. The right answer is that time will tell.
(((Maybe Russia wants to become the "Other Europe," but why would Europe want to turn into the "Other Russia?" It seems much more likely that America would find itself transformed into the "Other Russia." Except for one major problem. America doesn't sell fuel. America is not a modern petrocracy. America has to war for fuel, it's got to send in the tank columns, Brezhnev-Doctrine style. And oh my goodness me.)))
