On April 27-28, the Russian Studies Program at the European Studies Council of the MacMillan Center hosted an international conference on “Regime Evolution, Institutional Change, and Social Transformation in Russia: Lessons for Political Science.” The conference was sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation, the Department of Political Science, Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, European Studies Council at the Macmillan Center, and the Jackson Insitute for Global Affairs.
The event started with welcoming remarks from Douglas Rogers, Steven Wilkinson, and the architect of this event, Stephen E. Hanson. Professor Hanson is a visiting professor at Yale University, and he is the Vice Provost for International Affairs and Director of the Reves Center at the College of William and Mary. Each of these men expressed their excitement for the upcoming discourse, as well as their gratitude for all of the participants in attendance, stating that the important role Russian studies plays in political science makes conferences such as these all the more valuable.
The theme of the first panel was the assessment of the state of Russian Studies in political science debates. Jordan Gans-Morse, Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, was the first to present. His piece, “What Russia Teaches Us about Comparative Politics, and Vice Versa,” addressed the problem of the relation between Russian Studies, Eurasian Studies, and comparative politics. Gans-Morse’s research led him to the conclusion that there is a a symbiotic relationship between Russian and Eurasian area studies and political science, rather than one that clashes. However, the less optimistic preliminary findings revealed a developing concern about the restriction of access to data for researches of more authoritarian regimes.
Jeffrey Kopstein, Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, furthered the discussion with his work, asking, “Is Russia really a normal country?” Kopstein’s answer emerged through a cluster analysis to understand where Russia fits in within the global community, and the nature of that grouping. Kopstein’s work showed that Russia was in four different groupings over four major time periods, which illustrates the dynamism of case selection in comparative studies. His findings also revealed that Russia is currently grouped with China, Turkey, Brazil, and Indonesia, as opposed to the the Western developed cluster or the South Asian cluster.. Finally, Kopstein’s work uncovered that Russia is an “extractive state,” meaning that it is able to rent-seek from society, and that the main actors are political, rather than societal.
Andrei Melville, Professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, moved the discussion forward by exploring the contributions of Post-Soviet Studies to the current debates in political science. Melville discussed the selection of criteria and measurements, describing the universal and unique features of these studies. Melville touched on the subject of dominant parties in personalist regimes, which require further analysis on the relationship between the political leader and the party. He also discussed subnational politics, asking how it matters, and noting the work on cross-country regional comparisons, which is still to be done.
More key conclusions of the day came from Brian Taylor, Professor and Chair of Political Science at Syracuse University, whose central question was, “What happened to Soviet Security Studies?” Taylor discussed how the field of Soviet Security Studies, in its transition to Eurasian Security Studies, has become increasingly de-centered, transnational, mainstreamed, comparative, and less strategic. Taylor then questioned the survivability of strategic studies in this field, saying, “The less strategic nature of the literature is potentially a problem,” and that, “if we believe Betts at all, and I do, it’s helpful to have people at North American universities with closer ties to topics on military science.”
Panels later in the day took the discourse into a direction of such topics as mobilization, resistance, political protest, and accommodation. Samuel Greene, Director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London and senior lecturer in Russian politics, gave a talk titled “The Good Russian: Constructing the Authoritarian Citizen.” Greene stated that Russianists need to return to ethnographic and observational research, including new methods and technologies, to understand how and way Russians participate in politics. According to his assessment, primary determinants of Russians’ political behavior are social interactions. “It is the social aspect that gives the politics meaning,” Greene concluded.
Peter Rutland, Professor at Wesleyan University, added his work on nation-building and ethnic management to this discourse. “Twenty-five years later, the ties between nationalism and democracy don’t look so good,” Rutland stated, informing the audience that, “The nation-building process has turned out to be more complicated than initially anticipated.” Rutland explained how increasingly authoritarian and patronal leaders seized on nation-building tools, such as sports events, for legitimacy, adapting different strategies. The major implications of Rutland’s work involve questions of updated concepts of nation-building with diasporas in mind in an increasingly globalized society. “What kind of nation-building are you doing when a quarter of your population doesn’t live there anymore?” Rutland asked, awaiting answers only further research can provide.
The first day concluded with a keynote panel on U.S.-Russian relations in a turbulent era. Professor Hanson moderated this panel, talking with Dr. Celeste Wallander, former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia on the National Security Council. Wallander discussed the term “new Cold War”, which both media and many experts use to describe the current situation. She rejected this frame as appropriate for the current climate because of the increasingly multipolar nature of the international system today, the change from a zero-sum mindset in relations to one with more symbiotic potential, and the change in U.S prioritization of Russia in its foreign policy decision-making process. Wallander also talked about sanctions, saying that they should be just an instrument of a strategy of foreign policy meant to alter the costs of the other state’s choices, but not a foreign policy in itself. “Sanctions tend to be effective when they are targeted, limited, not unilateral, and when they can be easily lifted when the behavior of the [target unit] changes,” Wallander noted. She cautioned against the excessive and broad use of them, which ultimately undermine their credibility.
When asked about the gap between theory and reality when it comes to Russia and political science, Wallander explained that the problem is in understanding the process, not an absence of information. She stressed the restriction of time for policy makers, who often do not have the luxury of waiting for more accurate information, and they have to make decisions based on what they have at hand. She encouraged methods involving process tracing, contingency, or path dependence, which are better suited to account for these issues.
The opening panel for the second day of the conference covered the role of political culture, and was chaired by Ian Johnson, Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University. Juliet Johnson, Professor of Political Science at McGill University, presented her work, “The ‘Momentous Politics’ of Post-Soviet Russia: How the Soviet Collapse Revitalized the Study of Symbolic Politics in Political Science.” Oleg Kharkhordin, from the European University of Saint Petersburg, discussed republicanism and traditions in Russia. He connected the cultural giants with political developments in Russian history, stating that, “We need more storytellers… we need more Plutarchs,” and that Pushkin put all the ideals in Russian literature, which is still there but should be re-actualized.
Marlene Laruelle, Professor at George Washington University, further connected the role of Russia’s culture to its political regime. She discussed Russian bands such as Leningrad and Lyube, Putin’s “favorite band.” Laruelle pointed to the blue-collar aesthetics in these groups and many popular films in Russia, which highlight the restructuring of social classes. The significance in this analysis lies in the reclassification of the 90s as part of the Soviet past, before the rise of Russia’s economy in the 2000s and Putin’s political ascent. She emphasized that “regime” analysis on Russia is too Putin and Kremlin-centric, and that symbolic politics is more successful than “high” politics. “Culture is the frontier if we want to understand the… durability of the regime that has so far been missing in our analysis of Russia,” Laruelle concluded.
Another highly informative panel discussed political discourse, identity, and legitimacy. Dan Mattingly, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, chaired this panel, with experts to weigh in on this topic, such as Olga Malinova, Professor of Political Science at Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Viacheslav Morozov, Professor of EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu, and Valerie Sperling, Professor of Political Science at Clark University. One of the main takeaways from this discussion was Sperling’s comparison of the use of gender norms and homophobia by the political bodies in power and the opposition in Russia to discredit the other and the similar implementation of that in U.S politics by liberals and conservatives. Her analysis demonstrates the generalizable role political science can play in area studies, as well as the contextual insight area studies can provide for political science. Sperling concluded that the recent U.S presidential election was “…not just about making America great again, but also about making men great again… and what Putin is doing in Russia is a lot like that.”
The final panel looked forward to the future of the global order, with Russia and the West in mind. Thomas Graham, Lecturer and Co-director of the Russian Studies Program at Yale University, chaired the concluding discussion for this conference. Speakers from the West, such as Kathryn Stoner, a faculty member from Stanford University, and from Russia, such as Mikhail Troitskiy, Professor at MGIMO University, in addition to other political science and area studies experts provided their assessment of future developments. They discussed Ukraine, power conceptions in international relations, political economy, ambiguity in foreign policy, and more. The final panelist of the night, Joshua Tucker from NYU, ended with a resolute conclusion to the event, recognizing the significance of Russian Studies for political science.
Written By Sarah Holzworth, a graduate student in the European and Russian Studies Masters program