Bureaucracy as the Pillar of Stability: Are There Any Real Institutions Inside the Russian Political Regime?

A persistent question over the past two years has been whether Russia has transitioned from an authoritarian state to a totalitarian one. In fact, Russia is a personalist autocracy: one of the most deinstitutionalized forms of autocracy, which also include party autocracies, military juntas, and traditional monarchies. Personalist regimes tend to dismantle, subvert, or imitate institutions with the sole aim of consolidating power in the hands of a leader and his (or—far more rarely—her) closest associates.