how nationalism and machine politics mix in russiamachines. And media that publish material critical of the authori-
ties can be sued by ‘ordinary citizens’ in the leader’s network and
found guilty of slander, extremism or other crimes by judges in
networks that are aligned with the president.
This system of patronal presidentialism, where a president
combines strong formal power with extensive informal power
exercised through networks at the intersection of state and
economy, can squelch political competition to a large degree even
when most opposition politicians themselves are not actually
arrested, directly threatened or killed. Indeed, these network-
based resources largely enable patronal presidents to allow oppo-
sition figures and parties to exist and even run in elections while
providing powerful weapons for defeating them in these contests.
Patronal presidentialism thus underpins the existence of many
hybrid regimes, systems that combine elements of democracy with
elements of autocracy, allowing political competition but skewing
that competition in favour of incumbent authorities.
The key to the stability of such systems is that the country’s
most powerful networks, and most importantly the ‘elites’ that
dominate them, expect the president to remain in power long
into the future. When they expect the president to be in power
in the future, they have full confidence that the president will
be in a position to carry out the threats or promises he or she
makes today. But when they start to suspect that the president
may not be in power beyond a certain point, they have reason
to start to doubt that the president will be in a position in the
future to follow through on promises and threats made today.
And that leads them to think they are more likely to be able to
get away with disobedience, which in turn makes them more
likely to be disobedient. To wit, the networks in the patronal
presidential system can become uncoordinated. And since the
president depends on these elites and their networks to actually
carry out his or her threats and promises, his or her ability to
exercise authority can dissipate even before he or she actually
leaves presidential office. In essence, the president can rather
suddenly become a lame duck, unable to govern and incapable
even of ushering a handpicked successor into office as his or her
political machine falls apart.