Richard Sakwa

Instead of overcoming the division of East and West after 1989, the West embarked on a programme of expansion and Russia began to create an alternative world order. Yet as economic power shifts from the Atlantic to the Pacific basin, this is just one aspect of the current clash of world orders.

The interaction between the legal-rational and neo-patrimonial state provides the key to interpreting developments in post-communist Russia, argues Richard Sakwa. This tension precludes assigning Russia simply to the camp of authoritarian states, but it also means that Russia’s democracy is flawed.