Running To Stand Still: Aggressive Immobility And The Limits Of Power In Russia

The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of mundane' policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts - involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy - in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality - usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure - creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of aggressive immobility - the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state - has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.