This article was originally published on 21 October 2014 by EUROPP, a blog run by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Many western scholars commonly present Russia’s ‘strong state’ system as something dysfunctional that must be replaced by a western-style competitive system to be effective. They argue that such a system has a built-in tendency to become a form of personal rule, which silences the voices of important population segments, and deepens divisions within the ruling circles. As a result, the system is prone to being internally unstable and breeding future political crises.