8How nationalism and machine politics mix in
Russia
Henry E. Hale
By some accounts, Russian politics is a realm of cynics, where
everything is for sale, leaders rudely dismiss public opinion and
politicians mainly pursue their own power and enrichment through
a mix of repression and corruption (Gessen 2013; Dawisha 2014).
In others, Russia’s leadership is resolutely principled, driven at
least in part by a nationalist goal of restoring Russian pride and
recapturing the status and perhaps even the territory of the former
USSR and Russian Empire before it (Aron 2008; Trenin 2014;
Tsygankov 2014). If we assume that each perspective at least
partly reflects at least some aspect of Russian politics, an inter-
esting puzzle is framed. How precisely is it that these things fit
together? In other words, how can a strong principle like national-
ism play an important role in a political system where corruption
is rife and elections are the preserve of the political machine?^1
The present chapter argues that we must understand the logic of
what I have elsewhere called patronal presidentialism in order to
explain how and why Russia’s leadership is likely to be influenced
by ideas like nationalism. Patronal presidentialism refers to a
constitutionally strong presidency that exists in a particular social
context, one in which political collective action takes place pri-
marily through extensive networks of personal acquaintance, net-
works that tend to give presidents ‘informal’ power that extends
far beyond the authority formally stipulated in the constitution.
It turns out that even when such presidents use manipulation,
coercion and fraud to win such elections, they run significant risks