The New Kremlinology: Understanding Regime Personalization in Russia

"The New Kremlinology is the first in-depth examination of the development of regime personalisation in Russia. In the post-Cold War period, many previously democratising countries experienced authoritarian reversals whereby incumbent leaders took over and gravitated towards personalist rule. Scholars have predominantly focused on the authoritarian turn, as opposed to the type of authoritarian rule emerging from it. In a departure from accounts centred on the failure of democratisation in Russia, this book's argument begins from a basic assumption that the political regime of Vladimir Putin is a personalist regime in the making. Focusing on the politics within the Russian ruling coalition since 1999, The New Kremlinology describes the process of regime personalisation, that is, the acquisition of personal power by a leader. Drawing from comparative evidence and theories of personalist rule, the investigation is based on four components of regime personalisation: patronage networks, deinstitutionalisation, media personalisation, and establishing permanency in office. The fact that Russia has gradually acquired many---but not all---of the characteristics associated with a personalist regime, underscores the complexity of political change and that we need to unpack the concept of personalism to understand it better. The lessons of the book extend beyond Russia and illuminate how other personalist and personalising regimes emerge and develop. Furthermore, the title of the book, The New Kremlinology, is chosen to emphasise not only the subject matter, the what, but also the how --- the battery of innovative methods employed to study the black box of non-democratic politics".