The Castling of Presidential Functions by Vladimir Putin

Abstract

For years, there was speculation as to how Vladimir V. Putin would hold on to power in Russia after his second term in office as state president expired in 2008. After all, the probability that this still very energetic, healthy politician, who at that time was just 56 years old, would play by the democratic rules and withdraw from the nerve centre of political power was generally regarded as being very low. From the numerous ways of retaining power, Putin opted in the autumn of 2007 to castle the presidential offices. He rejected a change in the constitution that would have enabled his re-election as state president, and on 1 October 2007 declared himself willing, as he was being celebrated as the “leader of the entire nation” to be a leading candidate for the “United Russia” (Yedinaya Rossiya) party, even though he did not become a party member. Thanks to the support from the president in the elections on 2 December 2007, which were neither free nor fair, the party achieved an overwhelming victory, with 64.3 % of the vote and more than two-thirds of the seats in the Duma. This victory, alongside the election of a “decent, capable and modern person” to the post of state president, was given by Putin as a precondition for his willingness to take over office as prime minister.

Speculation then arose as to whether Putin, with a constitution-changing two-thirds majority in the Duma, might extend the competencies of the prime minister at the cost of those previously held by the state president, an option that Putin decisively rejected, however. For several weeks, he left it unclear to Russia and the world which “decent” person he would recommend as his successor. The information political system in Russia, already characterised in the lecture of 5 July 2004 as being a “temporary, plebiscitary adoptive autocracy”, provides that the incumbent president effectively adopts his successor, even if they only then enter office by means of an “election”, which has deteriorated to a mere acclamation. For a long time, it remained unclear whom Putin wished to have as his successor. Shortly after the Duma elections, the decision was made in favour of his St. Petersburg acolyte, Dmitri Medvedev, who at that time was 42, and was First Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the board of directors at the powerful majority state-owned company Gazprom.

It remains unclear to this day what informal mechanisms were used to guarantee Putin’s supremacy over the state president Medvedev in the presidential system of power. At any rate, in May 2012, Putin castled again. He returned to office as state president and Medvedev went back to being prime minister without having set in motion the modernisation of the economy and the liberalisation of the political system that some observers had hoped for. It was far more the case that the autocratic elements in the system were further expanded.