Presidential power and institutional change: A study on the presidency of the Russian Federation

PhD project of Fabian Burkhardt (supervisor: Prof. Heiko Pleines), concluded in 2018

The thesis “Presidential Power and Institutional Change: A Study on the Russian Presidency” challenges the widely-held assumption both with regard to authoritarian regimes in general and Russia in particular that institutions do not matter, and that persons take prevalence over procedures. In the thesis, it is argued that by investigating the presidency instead of presidents, relevant advances can be made both for comparative politics and Russian studies alike. Theoretically, the thesis draws upon three strands of literature: the emerging discipline of comparative presidentialism, recent work on institutions under authoritarianism, and theories of institutional change. The main two concepts are disentangled for further analysis: presidential power is subdivided into institutional, relative and administrative power. Furthermore, a distinction is made between institutional origin and gradual, longitudinal institutional change. This initial stage of concept-building guided the research design of the cumulative dissertation subdivided into three main articles.

The first article¹ revisits theories of institutional origin and provides a novel take on the crafting-process of the 1993 presidency. It is argued that the strict assumptions of rational-choice institutionalism are often hard to meet in reality. Instead of intentional institutional design, the paper conceptualizes designers as do-it-yourself-bricoleurs – craftsmen who work with the ruins of the old system and rearrange and recombine institutional material. Moreover, path dependencies constrain choices of these bricoleurs.

The other two papers explore gradual, slow-moving change in the period between 1994 and 2012. In the second article², an original method based on conventional presidential power indexes is proposed that allows for measuring subconstitutional expansion of presidential power by means of laws, decrees and Constitutional Court rulings. It is argued that this accumulation of powers leads to an institutionalization of relative advantage in favor of the presidency. Expansion, it is shown, occurs more frequently in periods when the political opportunity framework is more pluralistic and competitive. The third article³ attempts to open up the black box of the Kremlin – the presidential administration. In the paper, an analytical framework is employed that has been used to analyze other administrations around the world. By means of the four indicators autonomy, adaptability, complexity and coherence and original data⁴, it is argued that the presidential administration has partially institutionalized over time. Uncertainty was reduced by the stabilization of structures and procedures. On the other hand, patronage and weak compliance with presidential decisions persist. This is called the paradox of power. The main contribution of the thesis and its findings is an attempt to further the integration of authoritarian regimes in general, and Russia in particular, into the emerging paradigm of comparative presidentialism.  
 
1) Do-it-yourself bricoleurs, not engineers!  Revisiting theories of institutional design of the Russian presidency (under review)
 
2) Burkhardt, Fabian. "The institutionalization of relative advantage: formal institutions, subconstitutional presidential powers, and the rise of authoritarian politics in Russia, 1994 - 2012." Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 6 (2017): 472-495.

Link to paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1060586X.2017.1388471

Link to online supplementary material: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.1080/1060586X.2017.1388471/suppl_file/rpsa_a_1388471_sm7831.docx
 
3) Burkhardt, Fabian. "Institutionalising Authoritarian Presidencies: Polymorphous Power and Russia’s Presidential Administration." Europe-Asia Studies, online first

Link to paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2020.1749566

Link to online supplementary material: https://elib.suub.uni-bremen.de/peid=P00106869
 
4) Burkhardt, Fabian, and Alexander Libman. "The Tail Wagging the Dog? Top-down and Bottom-up Explanations for Bureaucratic Appointments in Authoritarian Regimes", Russian Politics 3, no. 2 (2018): 239-259.

Link to paper: booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/2451-8921-00302005

Link to online supplementary material: https://figshare.com/s/3843d05b7ee2985f2311

How should presidential power be conceptualized from an institutional perspective? How do presidencies emerge in periods of regime change, and how and why do they gradually change over time? And finally, what is the role of formal institutions in authoritarian regimes? This PhD project attempts to answer these questions with a longitudinal study on the Russian Federation at the intersection of the literatures on comparative presidentialism and authoritarianism. So far, research on presidentialism has mainly focused on democracies such as the US or Latin American countries. President-centered leadership approaches usually prevail in the literature on authoritarian regimes. After the institutional turn in authoritarianism studies, scholars mainly focused on the functions of elections, parliaments, parties or courts.
Based on concept-building of presidential power as institutional, relative and administrative power, and the subdivision of the period under investigation into institutional origin (1990-1993) and gradual, longitudinal change (1994-2012) the research questions are dealt with in three main blocks.
A critical juncture framework is applied to analyze institutional origin of the presidency. So far, the emergence of Russia’s powerful presidency was explained with the strategic calculus and actor-centered bargaining approach: After Yeltsin’s victory over the Supreme Council he could capture the constitutional process and design a powerful presidency. This perspective however neglects Soviet legacies and diffusion from foreign models, which did constrain choices available to Yeltsin even after the victory. 
Gradual, longitudinal change of institutional and administrative power of the president is dealt with in the remainder of the dissertation. Except for the increase of the presidential term length in 2008, no relevant amendments were made to the constitution. Therefore, the logic of ‘presidential power indices’ is transposed to the subconstitutional level. The main mechanism of expansion, it is argued, is layering, that is the accumulation and attachment of additional rules and prerogatives by means of federal law, presidential decrees and judgements of the Constitutional Court. This layering on its part contributes to an institutionalized advantage of the presidency and the stabilization of authoritarianism. Lastly, administrative power of the ‘institutional presidency’ also institutionalizes over time due to increasingly stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior. This development is tracked with the help of indicators such as budget, recruiting patterns of staff, the survival of the presidential administrations’ departments and the implementation rates of presidential orders.
Using a mix of various methods such as the longitudinal comparison of cases and periods, time series and indices, the study aims to show that temporal aspects such as legacies, accumulation effects and the reduction of uncertainty by means of stabilization of expectations are crucial for understanding the origin and change of presidential institutions under non-democratic conditions.