Сытый бунт. Итоги 2011
Причины и последствия декабрьских митингов оппозиции обсуждают журналист Максим Шевченко, депутат ГД РФ Роберт Шлегель и философ Андрей Ашкеров.
The organizers of the Moscow demonstrations are planning an even larger public rally on February 4, one month before the presidential election. The protests have already presented Vladimir Putin with an unprecedented challenge - not least because the political upheaval has been spearheaded by well-educated urban professionals and entrepreneurs. So far, Putin has not chosen meaningful outreach to this group, reaching instead for the familiar political tools of populism and nationalism.
The Putin leadership is accustomed to resolving political problems by buying support - on a mass level through distributional programs funded largely by hydrocarbon taxes, and on an elite level through implicit guarantees of property security and business opportunities.
However, the representatives of the protest movement present a new sort of challenge: they demand not hand-outs of this sort, but public goods - such as infrastructure, healthcare and small business services - that only a functioning state can provide. Demonstrators were overwhelmingly highly educated with incomes sufficient to secure a middle-class lifestyle, so they are in a position to concentrate on issues beyond immediate material concerns.
Therefore, their demands cannot be readily ‘bought off’. Calls for systemic political liberalization and the cancellation of the parliamentary election results have the same character.
The Putin leadership is accustomed to resolving political problems by buying support - on a mass level through distributional programs funded largely by hydrocarbon taxes, and on an elite level through implicit guarantees of property security and business opportunities.
However, the representatives of the protest movement present a new sort of challenge: they demand not hand-outs of this sort, but public goods - such as infrastructure, healthcare and small business services - that only a functioning state can provide. Demonstrators were overwhelmingly highly educated with incomes sufficient to secure a middle-class lifestyle, so they are in a position to concentrate on issues beyond immediate material concerns.
Therefore, their demands cannot be readily ‘bought off’. Calls for systemic political liberalization and the cancellation of the parliamentary election results have the same character.