Institutionalising Authoritarian Presidencies: Polymorphous Power and Russia’s Presidential Administration

Abstract

This article attempts to open up the 'black box' of the Russian Presidential Administration ('the Kremlin'). Borrowing from the literature on institutional presidencies and institutional approaches to authoritarianism, I argue that the administration institutionalised over the years of study, 1994-2012. More stable and predictable procedures enhanced administrative presidential powers but personalism and non-compliance with presidential orders remained. Original data on budget, staff, units, organisational structure and presidential assignments demonstrate that presidential power ought to be conceptualised as a polymorphous phenomenon that varies depending on the level of analysis. Researchers should refrain from over-personalising accounts of authoritarian regimes at the expense of more structural, organisational elements such as 'institutional presidencies'.'THE KREMLIN' HAS BECOME A METAPHOR ATTESTING TO THE alleged omnipotence of Russia's presidents. At the same time, it has remained an impenetrable 'black box' that supposedly prevents systematic, intersubjectively verifiable analysis. Opacity is a general

Institutionalizing Personalism: The Russian Presidency after Constitutional Changes

“…39 Between 2000 and 2012, only slightly more than half of all presidential assignments (porucheniia) were implemented by the respective addressees. 40 The 2012 May Decrees demonstrate a similar picture. But even when targets are formally met, the overarching aim of the indicators is often missed.…”

“…Lastly, while the tremendous accumulation of presidential power has enabled personalist authoritarian rule, it has also led to a paradox of governance: 9 While the presidency has accumulated more powers, state capacity has been weakened. Even the implementation of the President's own orders, such as national socioeconomic goals, remains patchy as long as they do not relate to core interests of Putin and the ruling elite itself.…”

Leader trait analysis of Vladimir Putin: A translation studies approach to personality scores in translated English to Russian speech

“…Therefore, it was necessary to ensure the two leader samples that this paper analyzed were from leaders of state governmental systems which provide significant continuous or subject-variable international decision making authority to their heads. President Putin enjoys powers which many researchers have labeled as authoritarian, and unilateral decision-making capacity whose scope is largely determined by the president’s interpersonal relations with other members of the domestic government (Burkhardt, 2021; Dyson and Parent, 2017; and White, 2018). As a British Prime Minister, Major was appointed by the most majoritarian election system in Europe as well as able to hold influence over party members and ministries depending on his own personal ability to accrue executive authority (Brummer, 2016; Dowding, 2013; and Heffernan, 2003).…”

“…Prior to and in spite of data indicating that accurate LTA is likely limited to originally Englishlanguage texts, text coding studies have been conducted using translated speeches originally given in Russian. Such studies have demonstrated the lucrative potential of researching Russian state leaders due to their unilateral decision-making capacity in foreign policy matters and their large corpus of verbatim data (Burkhardt, 2021;Dyson and Parent, 2017;Hermann, 1980aHermann, , 1980band White, 2018). However, they have largely failed to ameliorate translation coding disparities between Russian and English.…”

“…The article firstly describes how LTA has used translated Russianlanguage speech to draw conclusions about the leadership tendencies of Russian leaders. Russian leaders' immense influence on the foreign policy of their state and large data corpuses of Russianlanguage verbatim speech provide significant opportunities for insight into their foreign policy behaviors (Burkhardt, 2021;Dyson and Parent, 2017;Hermann, 1980aHermann, , 1980bWhite, 2018). Due to the differences in vocabulary and grammar between English and Russian, whether LTA's translation of Russian language speech is likely to maintain semantic information relevant to LTA assessment will be discussed.…”