Russia Profile
www.russiaprofile.org
December 27, 2007
The Ghost of Administrations Future
There Are Three Possible Scenarios for Power-Sharing in a Medvedev-Putin Administration
Comment by Vladimir Frolov
A year ago at the ExxonMobil Russia seminar, I predicted that Putin had already chosen his successor and that the chosen one was Dmitri Medvedev. Three weeks before Putin agreed to lead United Russia in the Duma elections and hinted at he might become Prime Minister, I wrote in my Russia Profile column that Putin saw himself as the Russian FDR. He wanted three terms and planned to move from president to prime minister, the only legally acceptable way for him to stay in power and accomplish his mission – making Russia a first-rate world power.
Since both predictions came true, it might be foolhardy to try one’s luck any further. After all, the road to analytical glory is littered with predictions and forecasts that never materialize.
Still in the spirit of the holiday season (at this time of year, no one reads political columns and your gaffe could easily be missed), I am inclined to venture another guess, to predict how Medvedev and Putin will govern this country….together.
Here are a few questions that are essential to answer.
How will they share power? What are the risks of shared power?
Power will not be shared. Real power will be where Putin is, at least for a while. It is obvious that Putin will not fade from the political scene and will remain the principal player – the Leader of the Team and Leader of the Nation. He will not be a Russian Den Xio Ping. He will be a Russian FDR.
Putin has already said he will not initiate constitutional changes to shift the executive powers from the Kremlin to the White House. That is largely unnecessary – the office of the prime minister under the Russian Constitution is very powerful and endowed with all the necessary responsibilities and powers.
The only crack in the armor is the Russian President’s ability to fire prime-ministers at will and without notice, as Yeltsin and then Putin both did. This provision will be altered to require consent of the Duma. And indeed, according to a recent press report, the Kremlin has already ordered its lawyers to draw up legal remedies to this problem. To usher Prime Minister Putin out of office, the remedies would require a four-fifths majority in the Duma and a two-thirds majority of the Federation Council – an unimaginable scenario under PM Putin. The change would only be for the better; the ability of Russian presidents to fire their governments at any time is a destabilizing factor that needs to be eliminated if stability is the watchword of a Putin administration.
The executive powers will naturally drift to PM Putin owing to his personal authority and popularity with the Russian people. The precedent exists in Soviet history. Brezhnev, as the Party’s General Secretary for many years, did not hold any state positions, but it was evident to everybody, including foreign leaders, who the real boss was in the country.
It is also likely that Putin will become the formal leader of the United Russia Party and will have even more control over the political landscape. We now know why United Russia cast the Duma election as a referendum on Putin’s rule. Medvedev will definitely win the presidential election in March, but I would be surprised to see him win more than 64 percent of the vote, the tally United Russia got in the Duma elections. This will also underscore that Putin has more legitimacy than the new president.
The security services are formally part of the Russian government and Putin will not relinquish his complete control over them. Putin can establish governmental inter-agency commissions that would incorporate the security services and make them report to the Prime Minister. In my opinion, he and Medvedev will alternate in chairing the weekly Security Council sessions on foreign and domestic policy. Moreover, Putin will continue to exercise decisive influence on personnel decisions made by Medvedev regarding the security services. Medvedev is very likely to defer to Putin on this.
And to keep Medvedev politically in check, Putin will pressure him to appoint a Kremlin chief of staff whom Putin can trust to manipulate the political climate in Putin’s favor. That man is likely to be Vladislav Surkov while Sergey Sobianin moves over to the Cabinet (although Surkov’s appointment as Presidential Chief of Staff would also strengthen Medvedev since the two men enjoy a very close personal relationship).
How long will this arrangement last?
1) Medvedev for real – Putin temporary.
Medvedev will not be a figurehead president or a seat holder for Putin. Rather, Medvedev will play the role of junior partner to Putin studiously preparing to take full control of Corporation Russia. Putin will stay for a while to ensure that Medvedev takes full control and the elites do not upset the orderly transition. Medvedev will prepare the day when Putin may decide to retire. This will only come when Putin feels that Medvedev is up to the job of saving Russia. Were Medvedev to prove his mettle, Putin may well retire as CEO in a couple of years. Medvedev will have the ability to gradually build his own governing team and introduce his own policy initiatives.
The only thing we have to figure out now is who will go to the G8 summits. Can they both go? The answer is yes. The precedent exists. In the late ‘90s during the French “cohabitation” President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin both went to the G7 summits but for different reasons – they did not trust each other enough. Putin and Medvedev may both go exactly because they trust each other completely.
2) Putin for real - Medvedev temporary.
Putin will return to the Presidency in 2012 for another two year term. His position as Prime Minister is temporary and is needed only for the purpose of securing the assured return to the Kremlin. He cannot leave since he wants to complete his mission of saving Russia. He also needs to keep in check the brawling security services that are fighting to secure a better deal in the transition.
The power elites are clearly rattled by his “game of hockey” and Putin perhaps overplayed the orchestration part of his succession. He clearly had different scenarios at play simultaneously sending encouraging signals to different people at once (that is his habit) and people were getting unhinged and disoriented. Siloviki clearly wanted Putin to stay on as president signaling that they might not recognize the authority of someone other than Putin. The war of the services and the arrest of Storchak to undermine Kudrin are clear signs that the services were about to become independent policy actors with their own political agendas. Putin had to stay as Prime Minister to keep his guys in check and will have to return to the Kremlin in 2012 for the same reason.
3) Real President Medvedev – but the country is different.
Putin is elected President of the Union State with Belarus in a couple of years. There are signs that Putin might have been negotiating for this during his official visit to Minsk last week. Putin’s position as prime minister will serve as a good platform for such a transition, but where would it leave Medvedev? A regional governor? And why would Putin do that?
Now an uneducated guess – I would bet money on scenarios two and three, where scenario three could be a combination of three and one.
Will United Russia's constitutional majority and Putin’s leadership of the Party improve governance? Will Putin launch real reforms?
Economic reform will continue. Modernizing infrastructure and social services, particularly health care and the pension system will be top priorities, as well as improving the quality of life in rural areas and small towns which still live third-world conditions.
Diversifying the Russian economy and stimulating innovative industries will be at the top of the agenda, but state capitalism is not on the cards and as Putin indicated yesterday re-privatization will actually occur as the state corporations become globally competitive.
Governance will improve through a more politically powerful Duma and a much more powerful cabinet. Apart from having Putin lead the cabinet, it is now clear that, in September, Putin assembled the current cabinet for himself – it is a Government of the best and the brightest that he can be proud to lead.
The powerful Duma and the powerful Cabinet will become “countervailing institutions” – to use Secretary Rice’s term – to the omnipotent presidency. The system of checks and balances will reappear. Curtailing the powers of the president to fire governments would serve as a powerful stabilizing factor, signaling Russia’s evolution along the lines of the French system.
Most importantly for the Putin system, the “consent of the governed” is essential and measures to manage that consent through propaganda and state controlled media, as the Soviet experience shows, are effective only to a point. Bad governance and incompetence can destroy the legitimacy of Putin and his chosen successor if they fail to ensure a steady increase in the incomes of the governed.
Democracy is a process. It requires hard work of the demos. For now the demos is more focused on inconspicuous consumption, car credits and mortgage rates. It treats the Putin system as the lesser evil that does not interfere much with their lives, but misfortune and incompetence are known to overcome political apathy.
Will the anti-Western rhetoric of the campaign have a lingering effect after the new president takes office, or will it be forgotten as Russia "gets on with business"?
It is true that anti-Western rhetoric has gone somewhat overboard. But this is a reaction to Western misconceptions and a clear anti-Putin bias in Western media and the policy community. When Gary Kasparov is portrayed on CNN as a real rival and an equal to Putin or when Putin is directly accused of ordering Litvinenko’s murder, it makes one wonder whose rhetoric is causing more damage.
The substantive side of Russian criticism of the West, the focus on double standards, the opposition to democracy promotion will be maintained. Russia will continue to defend its interests, but the key characteristic of Putinism is pragmatism, sometimes brutal pragmatism. This will help avoid a rhetorical race to the bottom of the diplomatic ladder. Medvedev will serve as a moderating influence while Putin may allow himself more leeway.
Will Western business interests be affected by the deterioration of East-West relations? How will the future U.S. administration deal with Russia?
Western business interests will be protected. The Medvedev-Putin Government will be a very good government for foreign investors. The future U.S. administrations will work with Russia on issues where cooperation is achievable and desirable, but will seek to contain damage caused in tense areas.