Freedom at Issue

Another Brilliant Putin Legacy

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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.

Public Health in Russia and Environs: Stuck in a Rut

A decade and a half after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, crises in public health are rife throughout the region. Although the health sector in one fashion or another is bound to touch the lives of many ordinary citizens, reforms of health care – hospitals and related medical services – have, as a rule, not been achieved. Public health education is also woefully inadequate. Any number of ailments, including those of serious and contagious varieties, are epidemic in the region.

For example, a World Health Organization report featured in a New York Times article sheds a light on the alarming rates of multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union.

The Times article notes particular challenges in five countries: Azerbaijan, whose capital city, Baku, has the highest rate; Moldova, Ukraine’s Donetsk region; Russia’s Tomsk Oblast; and Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

Speaking about the cases in these countries, Dr. Mario C. Raviglione, who directs the health organization’s tuberculosis program, said in the Times that the levels of multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis surpassed the highest levels that nearly all experts had once thought were possible.

The WHO survey notes that in certain cases the governments “have not invested enough to build, equip and staff laboratories to detect the disease. The countries also have not made sure there are enough standard drugs and have not monitored patients to ensure they complete a full course of therapy.”

The report, Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance in the World, is based on information collected between 2002 and 2006 on 90,000 tuberculosis patients in 81 countries.

In countries of the former Soviet Union there are two scenarios. Two Baltic countries (Estonia, and Latvia) are showing a stable and flat trend in proportions of MDR among new cases, Lithuania shows a gradual and significant increase but at a slow rate. This is held in contrast to two Oblasts in the Russian Federation (Orel, and Tomsk) which are showing an increase in the proportion of MDR among new cases, as well as increases in absolute numbers.

Another report from the WHO, a rapid health assessment of five hospitals in Tajikistan done in February 2008, had several main findings:

• Primary health care is almost completely paralyzed; no services are delivered to population.
• Shortages of energy, water and food supply has produced sharp increase of inflation rate; higher prices are due also for food, drugs, fuel and portable heaters.
• All hospitals are suffering energy cuts for several hours/day; water supply is also affected and proper heating of hospital wards is impossible.
• Central heating systems of hospitals are almost always not functioning due to lack of maintenance; few medical instruments still operative (diagnostic and curative) are outdated and unreliable, and cannot work without electricity.
• All hospital are therefore unable to deliver assistance and appropriate care, moreover, shortage of resources strongly hamper food and essential drugs supply to patients (on average only 5-10% of their needs is purchased by the hospitals).

Substandard governance is a contributing factor to the performance of the health care sector in Tajikistan but the country is profoundly impoverished. The country’s GDP per capita is just $1,600.

Russia, on the other hand, has enjoyed nine straight years of growth and is benefiting from sky-high energy prices which have filled government coffers. The country’s GDP per capita is over $14,000. Yet the Russian health care system continues to confront its own considerable challenges.

An article in the Chicago Tribune examines the deep-seated problems afflicting the Russian health care system, including entrenched and widespread graft.

The article notes that alcohol and smoking are among the biggest contributing factors to major health problems. Alluding to research done at Columbia University, the piece adds “Both are linked to heart disease, and in Russia, the rate of men ages 30 to 59 dying from heart disease is five times that of the United States.”

The authorities are looking to address the problems:

The Russian government is pumping $6.4 billion into revamping health care; much of that money is paying for the construction of eight high-tech medical centers across the country, new X-ray machines, electrocardiograms and ambulances at hospitals, and raises for family doctors.

These investments may have a difficult time achieving the desired effect in a setting with such monumental corruption and so little accountability and transparency:

Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Open Health Institute estimate that corruption siphons off as much as 35 percent of money spent on health care. Low wages perpetuate the problem; yearly doctor salaries in Russia average $5,160 to $6,120. Nurses make an average of $2,760 to $3,780 annually.

Meanwhile, the Guardian looks at the demographic crisis and the emergence of “women-only villages” in Russia, the result of a confluence of negative demographic trends, including a Russian male life expectancy of only 59 years.

Photo Credit: Flickr user cbmd

The Russian Valentine Everybody Wants

On February 1st, the Russian Federation divided its Stabilization Fund – the pool of financial resources established in 2004 from windfall energy profits to absorb potential shocks to the economy – into two new constituent components, the Reserve Fund and the Fund for National Well-Being. While this may seem a mundane matter of policy making, Russia observers indicate that the decision is no small trifle. At stake within the close inner circle around President (soon to be Premier) Vladimir Putin is control over the purse strings to the funds presently valued at $157 billion – a figure greater than the GDP of all but 37 nations of the world.

The fund, which is intended to balance Russia’s federal budget when the price of oil drops below $27 a barrel, has swelled since its inception. As Russia has become flush with petrodollars, the controversy surrounding the use of the catch-all Stabilization Fund has increased in both public and private. Critics have highlighted the opaque management of the Stabilization Fund, as the Ministry of Finance only reports on the fund’s accumulation, spending, and balance to the Russian public. Thus far, Russia has used a portion of the profits to repay sovereign debt incurred during Soviet times, a strategy lauded by many economists as an important achievement of the Putin administration. However, the lion’s share of the Stabilization Fund remained invested in low-risk bonds of developed Western nations. 

The rapid accretion of wealth in the Stabilization Fund has resulted in an intensifying competition among potential stewards for control of the vast resources. In November, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak was arrested and charged with embezzlement in an Algerian debt deal. Storchak, the highest ranking official in the Putin administration to ever be charged, oversaw the Stabilization Fund, and his ouster was labeled by many Russia observers as a power grab for management of the account. The circle surrounding the Stabilization Fund has continued to close, as the principal architects of the fund – presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref – have been pushed out of the Russian government since the fund’s inception. Illarionov has vocally criticized the Putin government’s handling of the state coffers, hurling corruption charges that accuse members of the ruling elite of siphoning off large sums from the Stabilization Fund (Disclosure: Illarionov has collaborated with Freedom House on Russia analysis.).

In spite of how massive the Stabilization Fund may seem, the pool of capital should ostensibly be worth even more. Russian business daily Vedomosti recently highlighted a study conducted by the Institute for Public Projects and the Institute for Comparative Social Research entitled, “The Nature and Structure of Corruption in Russia,” in which 36 experts provided substance to the allegations of graft.  The report estimates that state pipeline monopoly Transneft writes off two percent of the oil it handles to “leakage,” amounting to $1.5 billion-$2 billion that is stolen annually. 

The wide disputes over the Stabilization Fund have been amplified recently by suspicions aroused regarding President Putin’s private fortune. In a November interview in the German daily Die Welt, well-connected Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky surmised that Putin has squirreled away over $40 billion in various offshore accounts through shadowy personal stakes in Russian state corporations. Belkovsky opined that the Putin succession has been engineered to allow the president to remove himself from the center of Russian politics and sterilize the wealth he has amassed. Noted economist Anders Aslund has observed that, “these shareholdings have been rumored for years, but now a prominent international newspaper has published such allegations made by a well-informed source. If these numbers contain any truth, Putin would be the most corrupt political leader in world history, easily surpassing Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Zaire's Mobutu.”

The recent partition has raised additional questions over the governance of the Stabilization Fund, as individuals with access to the levers of power vie to carve up the resources and invest them on the open market. While the bulk of the old Stabilization Fund has transferred to the new Reserve Fund and continues to serve the same function of sheltering the Russian economy from oil price shocks, $32 billion has shifted into the National Welfare Fund. Analysts anticipate that the latter may soon be invested in overseas firms and riskier assets, effectively serving as Russia’s sovereign wealth fund (SWF). 

Such funds are the source of debate both in the financial and security communities, as possible aggressive acquisitions – such as CNOOC’s failed bid for American petroleum giant Chevron in 2005 – and their lack of transparency create tension between balancing open investment and national security. Last month, SWFs were among the most contentious issues debated at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with observers calling for greater transparency in their management. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted the “legitimate concerns” stemming from the creation of Russia’s new SWF.

It remains to be seen whether Russia’s sovereign wealth fund will rankle foreign governments and global financial markets alike. What is apparent, however, is the enormous potential for corruption presented by the murky handling of $157 billion of government funds. The fight for control of the Stabilization Fund has eroded public confidence in its management, with many convinced that the capital continues to be swindled. As Robert Coalson of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty observes, “the next few months will be a stern test for a government that has ironically eliminated all the institutions – an independent judiciary, empowered auditors, independent journalists, a legislature with effective means of oversight, and so on – that could bolster it in the conflict that seems to be on the horizon.” As the global price of oil hovers at nearly $95 a barrel and both successor funds continue their unabated rise, issues surrounding their governance will only be magnified.

Photo Credit: Flickr user sagabardon

Weekly Governance Links: Spotlight on Media in the Former Soviet Union

Russia’s parliamentary elections and the managed handover of power there have been at the top of the news in the region. A major feature of the guided governance model in Russia is the tight control of news media. The same is true in most of the rest of the former Soviet Union. In Russia, an article in the Washington Post relates how the Kremlin has also been working to increase its influence within the one medium that to date has been open, the Web.

In a number of recent instances the extent of the media repression has reached pitched levels. In Central Asia, the murder on October 24 of journalist Alisher Saipov, an ethnic Uzbek, in Kyrgyzstan stands out as a particularly shocking episode. 

His killing and the investigation that has followed is emblematic of challenges to press freedom in the region but also speaks to the weakness of other critical institutions that are essential to safeguarding freedom of the press. Most such cases are never investigated in a meaningful or conclusive manner. Impunity is the norm in settings where there is little or no judicial or law enforcement independence. In Saipov’s case, he was gunned down assassination-style in the early evening as he was leaving his office. He was a courageous reporter, taking up issues such as corruption and torture in Uzbekistan. Given the sensitivity of these issues in a region where criticism of powerful elites is not tolerated, there is speculation that Uzbek security services extended their reach into Kyrgyzstan to silence him.  An article in the International Herald Tribune examines this potential connection in some detail.

In Azerbaijan, repression of the media has also been on the upswing recently. In April, Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of  the “Realni Azerbaijan” and “Gundelik Azerbaijan” newspapers, was convicted of criminal libel and insult and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Fatullayev was known for his reporting on issues of official corruption. He was also fined the equivalent of about $285,000. The case against Fatullayev began after Realni Azerbaijan published an article that alleged that Azerbaijani troops had been responsible in part for a massacre of ethnic Azeris during the war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Other journalists, including Rovshan Kabrili, editor of Mukhalifat (Opposition) and a reporter from that newspaper, Yashgar Agazade, also recently received 30 month prison sentences in another case of libel.

Today, a total of 9 journalists are in prisons leading Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media to observe that Azerbaijan has “the highest number of journalists in prison in the OSCE space.”

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan a number of opposition websites were closed in late October, presumably as a result of their publication of transcripts of telephone conversations alleged to involve senior government officials.

The following websites were blocked:  kub.kz, zonakz.net, geo.kz and inkar.info. This sort of blocking activity happens on a periodic but regular basis in Kazakhstan, especially with kub.kz. A report issued earlier this year by the OSCE representative on freedom of the media on the subject internet freedom spelled out the examples of blocking by the Kazakh authorities in recent years.

More to come on this subject.

Putinesca

Russian President Vladimir Putin has unveiled the latest phase of the plan for a managed handover of power in Russia. In the chapter that unfolded this week in “Operation Successor,” Putin gave the nod to Dmitry Medvedev, a deputy Prime Minster and Gazprom chairman. Medvedev, in turn, immediately indicated he would support Putin for the position of prime minister.

The recipe for this elite handover has included a tightly controlled parliamentary election process that delivered a large victory to the pro-Kremlin United Russia party on December 2. Putin had indicated before the election that a big win by United Russia would give him a “moral right” to retain influence after his constitutionally-limited term ends in 2008. Added to this was a large portion of media repression and use of state administrative resources to ensure that no surprises emerged. The election process, which emphasized the fact that institutions are largely irrelevant, was a metaphor for the country’s larger governance challenges. Of course, the ingredient that has been most glaringly absent in this process has been democratic accountability.

An article in the Moscow Times by Anders Aslund puts the Kremlin’s extraordinary effort to maintain the political status quo in perspective. He argues the country has made little if any meaningful governance reform in recent years.

For an in-depth assessment of the performance of the Russian authorities, see the 2007 Countries at the Crossroads report on Russia.

Good Governance: Russia’s Achilles Heel?

Today’s Russia faces a paradox. Despite the extraordinary resources flowing into the state’s coffers, Russia’s institutions are not becoming more effective or responsive in delivering political goods to ordinary citizens. Stanford University professor Terry Lynn Karl’s “Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates” explains why oil exporting states tend to have poor development outcomes.  Such energy rich states suffer from a number of pathologies that retard development and good governance.

A meticulously reported New York Times article on November 7 examines an issue that is emblematic of how poor governance in Russia is undercutting basic safeguards that should provide for citizens’ safety. Fires turn deadly in Russia to an astonishing degree in comparison with Western Europe and the United States. The piece notes that:

More than 17,000 people died in fires in 2006 in Russia, nearly 13 for every 100,000 people. This is more than 10 times the rates typical of Western Europe and the United States, according to statistics from Russia’s government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States and the Geneva Association, a Swiss organization that analyzes international fire statistics.

As a recently released Freedom House governance assessment of Russia done by Stanford professor Kathryn Stoner-Weiss notes, President Putin has systematically marginalized key societal actors - including news media, independent business and policy institutes, and broader civil society - all of which keep the authorities honest. Rather than increasing his ability to govern, Putin’s program is eviscerating the very institutions that Russia needs to improve the quality of its governance and public policy decision-making.

The New York Times piece points to a host of factors feeding into the lethality of fires in Russia, among them “aging electrical and heating systems in public housing and rural homes; dilapidated firefighting equipment; and widespread violations of safety codes.”

The piece then focuses on the root of the challenge, linked directly to poor governance:

the effectiveness of reform efforts has been limited by the intractable national problems that have continued throughout Mr. Putin’s administration, including a pandemic of corruption and incompetence by officials, and a weak judicial system. For example, fire inspectors have latitude over how to handle fire code violations, and this authority is often abused, said Elena Panfilova, director of the Russian office of Transparency International, a private anti-corruption organization. “Pretty much nobody follows fire safety standards in Russia, but building owners and tenants negotiate bribes with fire inspectors,” she said. “It is common here. Everyone understands it.”

The big gaps in governance have real implications for ordinary citizens in Russian society. There are no shortcuts to improving the quality of governance. With oil edging toward $100 per barrel, the challenge of achieving sounder governance, paradoxically, is bound to become even stiffer in Russia, along with other post-Soviet petrostates.

Photo Credit: AFP via VOA News