COUNTRIES AT THE CROSSROADS GOVERNANCE BLOG

20 Years After Tiananmen, a Different Form of Undermining Democracy

Freedom House has just released a new report, Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians, describing the efforts of authoritarian states including China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran to sustain their autocratic models and even advance alternatives to democracy in other countries. The report explores how these leading authoritarian regimes are threatening democratic development by promoting repressive policies and manipulating and distorting democratic discourse. Their efforts to redefine – and ultimately empty out – the concept of democracy have not only been pursued within their borders, but have also been exported abroad.

Among the tools that these regimes have used to further their interests internationally, the promotion of “win-win” economic arrangements and “no-strings-attached aid” stand out. In April, we addressed this issue in a blog post about China’s aid policy towards Africa in particular. At the time, we discussed the dangers of championing China’s unique development model, along with the pernicious effects that China’s offers of unconditional aid can have for governance. Because Beijing’s foreign assistance isn’t conditioned on the adoption of reforms and a general respect for human rights, it opens the door for corruption and neglect of the rule of law. Undermining Democracy includes a more comprehensive analysis of China’s foreign assistance efforts, along with those of other authoritarian regimes, analyzing the modern strategies and methods used to project authoritarian influence.

As Undermining Democracy explains, China’s is systematically developing its own brand of “soft power.”  After becoming aware of the necessity of increasing its clout in an increasingly interdependent international system, China began to ramp up efforts to promote its own model of political and economic development in its international relations. Due to China’s impressive economic development, the model is often touted as a superior alternative to Western prescriptions.

As it happens, Undermining Democracy has been released on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. An article in the Financial Times last week traced China’s political trajectory since the crackdown, explaining how China’s Communist Party weathered both extensive criticism and countless predictions of its demise to propel its country to a leading role in the world sphere. As it notes, Chinese officials have ceased to adopt an outwardly apologetic stance towards their more repressive political policies, instead becoming increasingly confident in their model’s superiority over its Western counterpart. Most importantly, it argues that China’s remarkable ability to persevere and prosper can be attributed to its willingness to adapt and modernize. In other words, whereas mere repression might not have been enough to counteract the pre- and post-Tiananmen calls for change, China has survived and flourished due to its policy of economic opening. While these reforms have boosted growth and ameliorated some citizen complaints, more fundamental reforms of accountability and transparency have been absent.

China’s economic success has created a major dilemma for advocates of good governance. This success has obvious appeal as a formula for economic prosperity for struggling developing countries.  Nevertheless, there are some important points to consider. First, by championing the undemocratic Chinese model, the benefits in terms of basic ethics and justice of democratic rule in comparison to China’s oppressive political regime are ignored. The coercive nature of China’s political regime cannot be underemphasized. China is a highly repressive state, which is evidenced by the regime’s dismal human rights record. China has, every year, by far the highest number of executions of any country and has consistently and arbitrarily applied state power to restrict basic freedoms including freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

Secondly, it is important to realize that the Chinese model of adaptation is not the norm. As the Financial Times article notes, China was successfully able to learn from the Soviet Union’s mistakes and to become aware of the need to “adapt and change or atrophy and die.” If any lessons are to be learned from the past, however, China’s adaption method is the exception: authoritarians are often drawn to the repressive part of the model while ignoring the technocratic, adaptive element. Some but certainly not all developing countries will be able to follow China’s trajectory. For example, in the past few months, Hugo Chavez has frequently praised the comparative advantages of the Chinese model over the Washington Consensus at the same time that he has ramped up his efforts to curb trade union autonomy and freedom of the press in the country.  In addition, Kremlin officials have frequently evoked the Chinese success story to justify Russia’s autocratic policies. In addition to providing these leaders with validation for their despotic ventures, the opportunities the model provides for corrupt practices are extensive, as is evidenced by China’s ranking of 72 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Moreover, it is not just the model in conceptual terms that is a threat to the democratic order, but also China’s means of promoting it. Most notably, China has sought to facilitate the model’s advancement by offering “win-win” economic arrangements to foreign countries and coupling its aid provision with a promise of “non-interference” in domestic affairs. Apart from the African countries listed in our previous post, China has provided unconditional assistance to numerous Latin American countries and several Asian countries, most notably Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, many of which have questionable or downright execrable human rights records. As we noted in our previous post, the negative consequences of providing unconditional aid are a real threat to democratic governance.  As Undermining Democracy argues, these arrangements also threaten democratic development on a greater scale. By framing these new economic relationships in “win-win” terms, China seeks to tarnish the legitimacy of the Western development model, and more particularly the traditional Western requirement that aid be conditional upon reform and respect for human rights standards.

Other contemporary authoritarian regimes have used foreign assistance of one sort or another to exert influence. Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, for instance, have used their oil wealth to court developing nations, leading them to ignore governance reform.  While these active efforts are providing new competition to reform-based assistance, the authoritarians’ approach is not perfect. As Undermining Democracy notes, China’s increasingly powerful position – and even more so the other states – has its own inherent flaws. The global economic crisis, along with other factors, could hamper its efforts to propel the new model; alternatively, discontent at home could herald a loosening of the authoritarian reins. In any case, 20 years after Tiananmen, the Chinese authorities have modernized their authoritarianism and, for the time being at least, offer a serious challenge to the notion that economic growth in China would inevitably lead to political liberalization and sounder governance. 

THE LEADER FOR LIFE, CONTINUED

In March of this year, we posted on the subject of presidential succession (The Leader for Life), noting the absence of a meaningful rotation of power in a number of strategically important countries and its negative impact on democratic governance.  Among other things, these countries exhibit exceedingly high levels of corruption. A chart detailing time in office for leaders in 20 states indicated that none of these politically managed systems could perform better than 105 (out of 179 countries examined) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Egypt came in at 105; the next best were Yemen and Iran at 131.

Since that time, several critical countries have made news by virtue of their leaderships’ determined effort to extend their term in office.

In Zimbabwe, discredited President Robert Mugabe said on December 19 that he would “never surrender”.  To emphasize the point, Mugabe added that “Zimbabwe is mine”.  Meanwhile, his beleaguered and impoverished country is suffering from a growing list of severe problems, including an outbreak of cholera that has killed hundreds of people. A BBC video clip explains in horrifying detail the devastating price cholera is exacting on ordinary Zimbabweans.

In Russia, CNN reported that the country’s upper house of parliament on December 22 approved an extension of the presidential term from four years to six, a step that could presage former President Vladimir Putin’s return to the nation's top office. Putin now serves as prime minister but is viewed by many as the country’s paramount leader.  The speedy move to amend the constitution comes at a time when low energy prices are putting increasing pressure on the Russian leadership’s ability to maintain the social and economic model that has been forged under Putin.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is also working diligently to remove institutional checks on his power.  On December 22, Chavez suggested that a referendum could be held on February 15, 2009 that would among other measures lift term limits. A December 2007 referendum that included a host of measures that would have removed checks on presidential power was narrowly defeated. Like Russia’s leadership, Chavez confronts a rapidly shifting and less predictable political landscape, as the energy resources that have been integral to his power dwindle.

A December 19 Washington Post editorial observes that while democracy advocates might welcome a vote of this sort in Venezuela, it carries real risks because:

"elections in Venezuela are no longer free and fair. Mr. Chavez has turned national television into a state propaganda outlet, and the Miami Herald reported [on December 14] that the government spent tens of millions of dollars to buy votes in the recent state and local elections. The state election authority, which is controlled by Mr. Chavez's loyalists, delayed the announcement of his defeat in last year's referendum; reliable sources say the president conceded only after he was told by military commanders that they would not put down protests against a falsified result. The official results, showing the margin of Mr. Chavez's loss, have not been released".

Unlike the Russian petrostate, where opposition has tended to be muted, in Venezuela opposing voices still make themselves heard.

Benighted Russia Waits in Vain for Anticorruption Drive

Russia’s new president, Dmitri Medvedev, placed an early emphasis on anticorruption efforts, calling graft a “systemic problem” that requires a “systemic response.” Earlier this month, he bemoaned the fact that corruption had become “the norm, a daily occurrence in everyday life,” and went on to observe that victims seem “resigned” to this reality, while perpetrators assume they will enjoy impunity. He failed to mention that these conditions persisted, and indeed grew worse, during the eight-year presidency of his patron and now prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who made similar pronouncements about the need to root out lawlessness when he took office in 2000. Given the nature of his own election and his ongoing partnership with Putin, it is difficult to swallow the notion that Medvedev will usher in a new age of transparency in government and society.

Authoritarian Rule Curdles Reforms in Russian Caucasus

The International Crisis Group (ICG) released a new report this month on the volatile Russian republic of Dagestan, finding that the growing Islamist militant movement there is fueled in large part by rampant corruption, massive unemployment, and an abusive security apparatus that persecutes observant Muslims. Government ministers, journalists, businessmen, lawmakers, and scores of policemen have been killed in recent years, and much of the violence is attributed to Islamist groups whose ranks have been replenished by angry young recruits. The unrest has escalated despite some attempts at political and anticorruption reform by federal officials. Similar conditions in neighboring Chechnya and Russia’s other impoverished North Caucasus republics suggest a pattern in which nationwide authoritarian governance effectively thwarts reform efforts and encourages the region’s downward spiral.

Russia Shifts the Deck Chairs

Russia is once again swirling with the political intrigue of the boyars as the new Putin cabinet has reshuffled the imperial court. Kremlin observers are busy attempting to grasp the implications of several key internal moves as the Medvedev-Putin dual administration begins in earnest following Medvedev’s inauguration on May 7th and the May 8th Duma vote confirming Putin as Prime Minister.

After a week-long, precisely choreographed celebration featuring a grandiose display of Russian strength unseen on Victory Day in Red Square since Soviet times, Medvedev’s first act as President was to nominate his patron for the post of prime minister. Putin delivered a speech before the Duma on May 8th that stole the limelight from Medvedev and outlined the priorities of the premier’s new government.

However, Putin’s closely-watched Duma speech had a certain been-there-done-that quality to it, leaving Kremlin-watchers with few clues as to the contours of the new diarchy. Highlighting a number of national priorities, primarily in the economic and social spheres, Putin revisited broader issues previously raised in his February 8th address on Russia’s development strategy through 2020. Recent windfall oil and gas profits have yet to significantly improve Russia’s infrastructure development, and key social sectors such as public health and education continue to decay. Pressured by recent reports of Russia’s stagnant oil production, Putin acknowledged that hefty government duties levied on petroleum companies – upwards of 80% – are discouraging new exploration and promised to cut taxes on crude later this summer. In addition, the enormous reliance on, and use as a cudgel of, state energy firm Gazprom by the Kremlin means political leaders have less maneuverability even as outside investors remain justifiably leery of whether they will have any legal protections when investing in Russia.

Speculation regarding the implications of a minor shake-up in the dominant siloviki group was rampant after Putin introduced his new government on May 12th. Several ministries were restructured as part of a dizzying array of changes to the executive branch. Most noteworthy among these bureaucratic reforms is the bifurcation of the former Ministry of Industry and Energy into two separate units, underscoring the centrality of managing Russia’s energy assets to the new government. However, apart a few notable demotions and the accession of shadowy Kremlin insider Igor Sechin – a key figure in the Kremlin’s dismemberment of the Yukos oil firm – to the post of Deputy Prime Minister, business remains largely as usual in the Putin cabinet. Putin loyalists dominate the power ministries, and the newly anointed premier continues to rule by balancing rival factions and interests competing for his favor.

The fundamental question on the minds of many Russia observers is how long the “tandem” arrangement between Medvedev and Putin will last. According to the letter of the law, the power vested in the Russian presidency is largely unchecked, with the prime minister serving upon the request of the president. Speculation has been widespread on whether Putin will reform Russian law to transfer over key powers – particularly control over security forces and the foreign ministry – from the president to the prime minister. Both the relative stability and the longevity of the Medvedev-Putin diarchy are debatable and perplexing. Needless to say, shifting institutional control to follow an individual leader as he changes jobs is at direct cross-purposes with the institutional strengthening that Medvedev, at least, has at times acknowledged Russia requires. The Russian political system remains over-managed and manipulated, and disputes between ruling clans for power and influence continue to sow the seeds for an eventual systemic governance crisis in Russia.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Neeka

Another Brilliant Putin Legacy

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Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

As President Vladimir Putin’s eight years as titular head of the Russian state come to an end this week, the event will be greeted by some form of protest by the opposition Other Russia party. But one prominent sign of Russia’s increasing authoritarianism under Putin is the fact that hurdles to any sort of peaceful protest – especially action centered on demands for greater political openness – are high, and seemingly becoming ever higher. The denial of Other Russia’s application for a march, along with the reversal of a decision to allow gay rights activists to stage demonstrations throughout the May holidays, suggest that freedom of assembly will continue to be severely restricted after the May 7 handover from Mr. Putin to hand-picked successor Dmitri Medvedev.

Recent May Day demonstrations, which drew more than 2 million citizens into cities across Russia, were dominated by economic concerns over inflation and food prices. May Day also provided a platform for speeches by prominent opposition leaders, including a demonstration by Other Russia in St. Petersburg. This came amid a backdrop of several moves to curtail freedom of association in Russia, however.

On April 21st, Other Russia filed an application for a “March of Dissent” to take place on May 7 in Moscow. The application was denied eight days later on the grounds that space was limited and that an application by the pro-Kremlin Young Russia had been received first. The denial inspired a lawsuit claiming that the government broke its own laws by not suggesting an alternative location and by failing to respond to the request within three days, as the law stipulates.

Previous Marches of Dissent have been flashpoints for confrontation between the opposition and Russian authorities. The first such demonstration, in 2006, inspired raids on the offices of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front. Arrests of opposition activists following a subsequent march in November 2007 led to widespread international condemnation and pressure for their release. Yuri Chervochkin, an activist involved with organizing that protest, was killed in a mysterious beating that took place hours after he called a colleague to say that he was being followed by officials he recognized as belonging to the police. Colleagues were briefly detained on the way to his funeral in December and his fiancé has recently fled Russia for Ukraine following intimidation by the authorities. In March, an unsanctioned protest against Medvedev’s election resulted in more than 100 arrests.

The political opposition is not alone in having its efforts undermined by the state. Legitimate gay rights activists in Russia have also in recent years been subjected to restrictions on their freedom of assembly that have intensified in the run-up to the inauguration. One example: after initially being granted the right to hold a Moscow demonstration in May in conjunction with the International Day of Silence orchestrated by gay rights activists worldwide, the application was denied on the grounds that the European Convention on Human Rights’ Article 11 allows for restrictions on activities likely to have a negative impact on public order. A small group of protesters in St. Petersburg took advantage of the fact that protests by individuals are allowed without a permit, but were assaulted upon leaving the scene of the protest. Late reports suggest that negotiations between activists and authorities in Moscow have produced a compromise in which a rally, as opposed to a march, will be held. More broadly, violence surrounding previous gay rights marches in Russia has inspired lawsuits both domestically and in the European Court of Human Rights, along with widespread criticism of the Putin regime. In another illustrative incident, a Russian journalist reportedly responded to a classified advertisement calling for volunteers willing to pose as gay activists and reported that he was told the purpose of the bogus ad was to distract from the March of Dissent and discredit gays in the country.

Many analysts have ventured predictions about whether Russia under Medvedev will experience a degree of political opening, but there is little consensus on the issue. What is clear is that the over the last several years the authorities have honed and perfected their techniques for limiting public expressions of dissent, whether in the media or on the streets. While academic debate rages about the sustainability of economic progress under authoritarian governments, the Countries at the Crossroads 2007 report makes clear that there are many important governance issues that are not being addressed in Russia’s stifling political environment. Absent a fundamental change in attitude on the part of the government or a full-blown social or economic crisis, dissenting voices will continue to face severe obstacles in their efforts to broaden and deepen the debate about Russia’s future.

Photo of Russian gay rights protester taken by Flickr user bowbrick

Weekly Governance Links: Updates Edition

Many of the posts on this blog are related to structural conditions that are painfully resistant to rapid change, while others relate to fast-moving events. Here are some links to provide updates on issues addressed in prior posts.

All the way back in August we discussed the Chinese government's continued manipulation of foreign media correspondents, despite pledges to allow greater freedom of movement in the run-up to the Olympics. The tragic recent events in Tibet have revealed quite clearly both the degree of control over foreigner reporters and the breathtakingly brazen manipulation of the local press.

A post in September described the political difficulties facing Turkey, the underlying cause of which was continued tension between the ascendent AK Party and the old-line secular elites. That fight continues, with the current focal point a constitutional challenge that could result in closure of the AK. The battle is described here, with an update as of earlier this week in this Turkish newspaper article.

In November we wondered whether, even with a strong record of economic growth, good governance would not prove to be the primary drag on Russian progress in the medium- to long-term. It is too soon to tell what will happen under new president Dmitry Medvedev, but in a lengthy interview this week with the Financial Times he spoke in detail about governance issues, focusing particularly on the rule of law. FT writers also contributed with an analytical description in the article found here.

The fascinating but worrying situation in Bolivia has been the subject of several posts, including this one describing a period in November when tension levels appeared to rising dramatically. The situation has since gone in cycles of rising and falling tension, with the current moment a high point. A good description of the situation can be found in this Democracy Center post, while an IPS article goes into greater detail on the confrontation between the government and soy producers, who are generally aligned with the opposition. Finally, another article gives an interesting broader overview of the situation from a perspective that is socialist but not as dogmatic or naive as much of the international left's coverage of Bolivia.

In early January we offered an update to the post-election cataclysm in Kenya, a situation which seemed to have been resolved last month with the help of Kofi Annan. However, the New York Times notes that while a power-sharing agreement was reached, the government and the opposition remain deadlocked over the details, a dangerous situation considering how on edge the country remains.

Also in January we discussed the often ignored problem of prison policy in developing countries, where grotesquely inhumane and counterproductive conditions remain all too common. Venezuela, which had over 400 deaths in 2007 among a prison population of just 20,000, is a particularly egregious offender in this regard. However, this article talks about ways in which the government is finally demonstrating some signs of a reformist impulse on prison conditions.

Prior to the Pakistani parliamentary elections in February we offered some thoughts on how things might turn out for President Musharraf. The answer, of course, was "very badly." However, the strong performance of secular moderates has offered hopeful signs, analyzed in a particularly interesting New York Review of Books article as well as in the New York Times.

Another February post offered analysis of the manifold failures of the public health system in post-Soviet countries. Soon after, an article in the Washington Post took a close look at one individual case of a hospital in Russia whose problems tied into many of the themes mentioned in the blog post.

Finally, a post earlier this month gave an overview of the state of play in Iran as parliamentary elections were imminent. See two articles (one, two) from the Economist describing the fairly predictable and dreary outcome.

RUSSIA’S RECENT ELECTIONS: A POST-MORTEM

Russia’s recent presidential election has been criticized for the muzzled media environment that preceded it, the marginalization of opposition candidates, intimidation at the polls, and a lack of independent election observers. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty describes the phenomenon of “election season hostages,” the case of Maksim Reznik being the most notable. Such proximate factors played a role in forging a lop-sided outcome, but Dmitri Medvedev’s victory was also the result of a wide-ranging, systematic effort over the course of President Vladimir Putin’s second term to centralize a variety of legal and administrative tools to sharply tilt the electoral playing field.

Of the four main issue areas analyzed in Countries at the Crossroads, the Russian authorities’ performance in Accountability and Public Voice (which includes a sub-indicator on Free and Fair Electoral Laws and Elections) is the weakest.

The effort to control the March 2 Presidential elections stretches back to at least 2004, when legislative amendments made it exceptionally difficult to register new political parties.  The measures raised the minimum number of party members required to register five-fold, from 10,000 to 50,000.

Subsequent changes to the electoral law have further removed power holders from accountability. For example, Kremlin-managed measures have led to presidential appointment of governors, rather than election by Russian voters; the threshold for Parliamentary representation was raised from five to seven percent; and the opportunity to vote “against all candidates” was eliminated, thereby removing one of the more popular protest options on the ballot available to voters.

An article in the Moscow Times citing an intriguing analysis of the December 2007 Duma elections suggests that voter turnout figures and United Russia's percentage of the vote were tweaked by regional officials. This analysis, which appeared on a blog called Podmoskovnik, indicates that results clustered at improbable data points, hinting that local officials may not have appreciated the extent to which the use of round numbers - those ending in 0 and 5 - would suggest a manipulation of the figures.

Moreover, the recently released US State Department Human Rights Report on Russia for 2007 highlights the abuse of “administrative resources” in regional and Parliamentary elections. An article in Novaya Gazeta delves into so-called “special electoral cultures,” where curious quirks of statistics arise in various shapes and forms throughout Russian electoral jurisdictions, in rural areas in particular.

Russia’s Central Elections Commission (CEC) also features in this equation. In March 2007, Alexander Veshnyakov, who had served as head of the CEC since 1999, was moved out of it on the heels of his too-critical comment on the behavior of pro-Kremlin parties and restrictive electoral amendments. After an amendment eliminating the requirement that the post of CEC head be held by someone holding a law degree, Vladimir Churov was selected to succeed Vashnyakov. Churov worked with Putin in St. Petersburg during the 1990s.

Further centralization of the voting process can be seen in GAS-Vybory, the computer system used to tabulate the recent Presidential elections. The vote marked the second time that national elections have been administered through GAS- Vybory, a database originally created in 1995. One domestic observer claimed to witness presidential election results being filed into the system before having been officially certified. While there is no direct evidence that the computers were used to manipulate the election results, the fact that responsibility for the system was transferred from the disbanded Federal Agency for Governmental Communications and Information to the FSB and the Defense Ministry in 2003 is unlikely to allay concerns.

Photo Credit: Flickr user gesus14

Corruption in Education: Russia and the Former Soviet Union

Public education in Russia and other former Soviet countries is not free. Despite what the authorities might claim, hidden costs await any student trying to get into a good university or a prestigious faculty. These costs, which are in actuality required bribes, can take many different forms. For instance, a common practice is apparently for teachers to suggest to students that in order to improve grades or guarantee certain exam scores, they must receive extra tutoring from the instructor. If such tutoring is for an entrance exam, the teacher suggesting the tutoring might well wear another hat as, say, an exam administrator, or otherwise be involved with the examination grading process. In Moldova one teacher encouraged students to do construction and repairs on her house, in an apparent conflict of interest connected to student grading.

An article in Transitions Online describes the practice in universities in Uzbekistan, where there is a sliding payment scale:

Many teachers charge 20,000 soms ($15) for “excellent,” 15,000 to 16,000 for “good” and 10,000 to 13,000 for “satisfactory.” Or a student can simply pay about $200 to a dean or pro-rector to have all the necessary signatures for advancement in his or her exam sheet.

A recent Associated Press article describes corruption in Russia’s education system as “endemic.”  On the scope of the corruption challenge in the education sphere, a spokesman for the Moscow police economic crimes department said "the problem of bribe-taking exists in every sphere - from the sale of vegetables to universities: where there is demand, there is supply."

The pressure to pay bribes comes from both sides. Teachers throughout Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union are severely underpaid. The physical infrastructure of schools is deteriorating. Feeling the pressure of rising costs, teachers are compelled to seek resources beyond their school salaries. From the supply side, parents are compelled to pay because they recognize that if they do not, other parents would, which through this system’s corrupt logic, would place the children of parents who opt out of the payment practice at a disadvantage.

A report, “Anti-Corruption Issues in Education,” produced by the Open Society Institute’s Education Support Program and other organizations, takes a look at the challenges to education posed by corruption and the approaches being used to combat it.

For an overview of the entire region and each country’s reforms, look at the following paper put together by UNICA, a network of 41 European Universities. The paper puts each country into one of three categories based upon their recent progress in implementing reforms into their education sector.

One potentially positive sign is that many countries in the former Soviet Union and Russia have signed on to the Bologna Process. This is a European initiative to reform and standardize criteria for Universities, with an eye towards creating a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010.

In Russia, however, there is an even more pernicious wave rippling through the higher education system. Many academics have been pressured to join United Russia and in the worst cases have been jailed for allegedly spying. It appears that Russia has used the imprisonment of arms researcher Igor Sutiagin to intimidate other academics and researchers who are involved in sensitive sectors. The education system in Russia has also fallen prey to the political cycle, where administrators and students are pressed into "duty" on behalf of dominant political powers.

More troubling in the longer term is the fact that students in the school setting are acculturated to institutionalized corruption in their formative years, shaping attitudes and perspectives as these young people move from the academic to the professional world. Breaking the mold afterwards becomes all the more difficult.

The Leader for Life

The managed nature of the Russian election process has brought into sharp relief a set of countries that are sidestepping a rotation of power and whose systems are not open to the rise and fall of competing political parties and groupings. The leader for life governance model is apparent in a regionally diverse and strategically important set of states, where power is retained indefinitely by an individual or through the managed transfer of power within families or to close associates. Other countries from the Countries at the Crossroads set that fall into this “leader for life” category include Angola, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Kazakhstan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. View the linked Crossroads reports for detailed explanations of the problems wrought by the lack of rotation of power in each country. Looking at set of Crossroads country data from 2007, the correlation between low scores in certain categories and lack of rotation of power is evident.

Among the other large public policy challenges seen above, the sting for ordinary citizens in these settings is felt from the enormous corruption that flourishes in such unaccountable and non-transparent systems. A table showing a number of states that fit the leader for life mold – alongside performance on Transparency International’s 2007 Corruption Perception Index – helps to tell the story. All the states in the table are in the bottom quartile of the survey, with failed states such as Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan, and one party or military dictatorships such as Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

See also this commentary on the subject by Freedom House Director of Studies Christopher Walker.