M. Steven Fish is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge (2024).
Vladimir Putin aspires to be a classic authoritarian modernizer, but in today's globalized world Russia faces challenges that bureaucratic centralization and a traditional strong hand cannot meet.
Taking advantage of broad global respect for regionalism, authoritarian regimes are using their own regional organizations to bolster fellow autocracies. These groupings offer a mechanism for lending legitimacy, redistributing resources, and insulating…
Read the full essay here. Of all of the national republics that emerged out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has had the most profound difficulties in determining…
