Читать книгу The Putin Predicament - Bo Petersson - Страница 7

It is a main argument of this book that the legitimacy of the regime still largely hinges on Putin’s personal popularity and charisma. The default position of his incumbency creates a problem for future successors and renders it problematic for the regime to sustain itself, unless a cure is somehow found to restore the charisma that by many signs seems to be in the process of evaporating.

It has become a political priority for the Putin regime to follow approval rates attentively and keep them on a high level (Frye et al 2017). The significance that the Kremlin attributes to the study of the development of popular sentiments is underscored by the fact that substantial amounts of funding go into the regime’s own classified surveys administered by the FSO, the President’s Federal Protective Service (Pertsev and Solopov 2020). One, slightly anecdotal, piece of evidence of the ascribed importance was when the Russian Embassy in the United States called upon the Bloomberg news agency to apologize for misleading the US public by referring to VTsIOM poll data that indicated remarkably low levels of trust for President Putin (Tass 2020).2 The logic was simple: since the data reflected badly on the president, they were bound to be wrong. Whereas the episode may seem amusing, it has serious general implications. Polls widely interpreted as truthful and representative have the potential to construct the reality that they represent (Yudin 2020). This fact goes a considerable way towards explaining the Russian regime’s interest in the polling industry. Ultimately it makes polling figures a matter of security concern for an increasingly authoritarian regime.

The regime’s preoccupation with approval rates is, however, not a unique thing for Russia; other world leaders share the intense desire to maintain ratings on a high level (Frye et al 2017). Such rates are, albeit rough, indices of legitimacy. High approval rates make matters easier for political leaders, regardless of whether they function in democratic or authoritarian contexts. Good showings facilitate the consolidation of power and implementation of policies that the leaders cherish (Andrews-Lee and Liu 2020). The ratings signal whether legitimacy is sustained or whether it needs mending. Trends revealed by the ratings indicate shifts in the societal relevance of the regime and speak to the sustainability of the social contract (Laruelle 2021: 85). It can thus be argued that the ratings are instrumental per se for the construction of legitimacy (Yudin 2020, Frye at al 2017, Rogov 2017). Solid figures may provide people with easily accessible arguments for why they should put faith in their leaders.

To what extent, then, can polling data be trusted when they emanate from authoritarian or hybrid (i.e., authoritarian with some democratic traits) settings? Would it not be easy for such states to cook the data and present fake figures as the truth of the matter? How do the authoritarian characteristics of the political system impact on the responses given in the polls (Yudin 2020, Wilson and Lee 2020, Rogov 2017)? Will respondents not refrain from giving answers from fear of repression, instead articulating the responses that the regime wishes to hear (Nathan 2020, Frye at al 2017)? Or, if the latter is not the case, is it not reasonable to assume that refusal rates will be higher among those invited respondents who have a critical or negative mindset in relation to the regime? This would make the proneness of regime sympathizers to participate in polls greater than that of critics, reinforcing a bias in poll results. It has also been pointed out that refusal rates for the Russian polling industry are very high, around 65-70 percent, and that one therefore should be very cautious in accepting the figures stated at face value (Yudin 2020, Rogov 2017).

These are all highly pertinent questions that need to be taken seriously. However, even if the Levada Center certainly works in an authoritarian or hybrid setting and has since 2016 been labelled “foreign agent” according to the infamous piece of Russian legislation which limits its range of activities (Flikke 2020: 163-165, Yudin 2020: 7)), its series of monthly polls about the president’s popularity is very valuable for researchers. The time series display the peaks and slumps of Putin’s popularity for every month during more than a 20-year period. It gives a solid foundation for conclusions about his public support during these vicissitudes. Even if, due to the high refusal rates, caution is recommended when it comes to the specific percentages of approval indicated, the trends and changes over time depicted by the series of monthly polls provide a valuable basis for analysis (Rogov 2017).

Throughout this book I maintain that Putin during his first twenty years in power has been largely successful at upholding the main pillars of his legitimacy. Like no other contemporaries, he has been able to get the message across to the electorate that he is the only one out there who is credible and trustworthy enough to hold chief executive power in Russia. The suggested narrative has been that no one else is simply up for the job. Also, Putin’s political communication skills have become increasingly honed over the years. Overall, he has managed to tell a convincing story, using a blend of great-power arrogance, pledges to order and stability, and personal charisma (Huskey 2013). According to some, the latter ingredient has above all been added during the third and fourth of his presidential tenures, during “high Putinism”. If this picture is now starting to crack, we may be entering a new era in Russian politics with highly unclear implications.

Putin has not created the powerful public discourses about the need for great power assertiveness, stability, and order. Rather, these discourses have created him. They have for a long time had a prominent position in Russian society. Even so, Putin has been markedly successful in making use of master discourses out there, appropriating them and bending them to fit his political purposes (Willerton 2017). His platform of political ideas, Putinism, was not created by him alone, but has emerged out of historical trends, cultural desires, and socially constructed myths (Langdon and Tismaneanu 2020). Again, as if by a sleight of hand, Putin has, for many voters, appeared as the originator and the driving force behind the creation of these societal beliefs. For more than a decade he has been outstandingly successful in this.

This is where we approach the real crux of the matter. The point that prompts careful consideration is that Putin’s long-time success may turn out to be a major liability for Russia since the legitimacy of the regime has been, and still is, so intimately tied to his person. What would happen if he were suddenly to pass away? Whoever tried to step in to take his place would encounter major problems of legitimacy, regardless of whether Putin’s old magic has started to recede or not. This is the nature of the Putin predicament, the very problem which prompted me to write this book. I shall strive to discuss it further in the following chapters.