March 07, 2008
WEIHAI, China, Dmitry Medvedev, elected the new president of Russia last Sunday with 70 percent of the vote, was clearly the choice of President Vladimir Putin, who was quick to congratulate him on his victory.
This news somehow reminded me of an interesting story about Russia revealed in the biography of the late British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell's grandmother was the wife of the British prime minister toward the end of the tsarist era in Russia, more than 100 years ago.
One day the wife of the prime minister received the Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom in her home. As British parliamentary elections had just concluded, the topic of the elections naturally came up.
"May God bless Russia! Let Russia take the path to parliamentary democracy at an early date," she wished sincerely.
"My honorable Madam, the god Russia believes in may be different from the one the United Kingdom believes in; the god we Russians pray to may not necessarily approve of parliamentary democracy. We pray Russia will not go that way," said the Russian ambassador with smile.
Now more than 100 years have passed. The Russian god has neither helped the country move toward parliamentary democracy as Russell's grandmother wished, nor protected the tsarist state the ambassador prayed for. In fact, a unique Russian democracy has emerged, which I would like to call "succession democracy."
The characteristics of this system can be easily described -- the voters simply choose what the predecessor has chosen. This allows the people to conclude that Medvedev won the election, rather than claiming it as Putin's victory.
One look at a video used in Medvedev's election campaign tells it all -- Putin is holding Medvedev's hand and walking in the snow, like a father taking care of his child. Even if Putin's strong recommendation and support was not the only factor in Medvedev's election, it was certainly the most significant one.
The late Boris Yeltsin, another father-like Russian president, did a similar thing several years ago. Yeltsin actually announced his retirement before the end of his term in office and had Putin assume the throne without going through the election procedure. This colored the selection process of the Russian president and set the tone for "succession democracy."
My purpose is not to analyze the motive behind the behavior of these two retired Russian presidents. What interests me is why the Russian people not only accepted, but apparently appreciated, this kind of arrangement. The answer cannot be found in Russia's despotic or tsarist history.
Russia is one of the biggest countries in the world, and it has a large number of minority ethnic groups. According to my hypothesis, the bigger a country is and the more diverse groups it includes, the stronger the need for stability. As a result, this kind of Russian succession democracy appears to create a balance between freedom and peace as well as authority and stability.
What deserves praise is that the Russian leaders have become more and more confident as the country has built up its economy and recovered its political stability. From Yeltsin's direct succession to Putin's indirect succession, the element of democracy has increased, and that is the merit of this presidential election in Russia. It has removed the shadow of diminishing political freedom.
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(Wu Jiaxiang is a senior researcher of China Research Center for Public Policy at the China Society of Economic Reform. He is a renowned economic and political scholar and a former visiting scholar at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His research areas include economics, domestic and international politics, business strategy, and Chinese traditional strategy and thought. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at http://blog.sina.com.cn/wujiaxiang and www.ncn.org . ©Copyright Wu Jiaxiang.)
http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Politics/2008/03/07/russias_unique_succession_democracy/3228/
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