Sample Essay In your opinion, can Russia be called a democracy or not?

Explain your answer by using the lecture and the reading materials. In this essay we argue that Russia is a democracy. However, it is a limited form of democracy something that Professor Terry Karl called a hybrid regime in her lecture. In our view, Russia qualifies as a democratic regime because it has both contested elections and voter participation in politics. But its democratic character is seriously undercut by restrictions in civil and political rights, the use of administrative resource, manipulations of elections, inadequate checks and balances, and ineffective separation of powers. Below we explore these issues more in detail. If we had to characterize todays Russia as either democracy or autocracy, we would put it under the first rubric. Why? In our view, the contemporary political regime of Russia suits the notion of democracy as defined by Schmitter and Karl: Modern political democracy is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives. (Schmitter and Karl, p. 50). The political leaders of Russia remain accountable to the citizens through frequent elections, competing with each other by using different parties. Indirectly, the political accountability shows in the fact that all politicians pay a great deal of attention to their public approval ratings. Another argument toward the democratic nature of Russia comes from the fact that the results of its all major elections have been accepted as relatively fair by the Western observers. On other hand, the quality of Russian democracy is quite poor. Using the term of Terry Karl from the lecture, we can call the Russian political regime a hybrid. It combines the features of both democracy and an autocratic regime. From the latter it borrows the following features. First, the citizens do not enjoy the same level of civil and political rights as their European counterparts do. For example, there is no free and impartial media that could provide the public with objective coverage of political news. Second, instead of participating in fair competition with the opposition forces, the ruling elite often attempts to quench that competition by resorting to so called administrative resources. Such practice takes place both at the central and the regional levels. As a result, the voters do not have an opportunity to make a fair choice between the politicians they want to be in power. Third, the Russian elections are heavily influenced and sometimes outright manipulated by the government. When you read the official news from conflict-ridden Chechnya that more than ninety percent of its residents showed up at the elections casting nearly all their votes unanimously in favor of the ruling party, you can get a strong feeling that something is fishy. The result is the deep mistrust of the public in the political institutions. Forth, Russian democracy suffers from inadequate checks and balances between its major branches of power. The president is by far the most powerful figure in Russian politics, overshadowing the legislative and judicial branches of power. As a result, the Russian parliament (Duma) is often viewed as a rubber stamp of the executive initiatives, whereas the courts are perceived as corrupt and inefficient.

In sum, we argued above that Russia is a limited form of democracy, a hybrid that combines both democratic and autocratic features. It is a democracy because, in contract to autocracy, its elected officials are in general accountable to the public. Its democratic nature is weak, however, because of the following circumstances: the limits put by the Russian leaders on human rights, manipulated results of the elections, and inadequate checks and balances. Sources: Philippe Schmitter and Terry Karl, "What Democracy Is...and Is Not," Diamond and Plattner The Global Resurgence of Democracy, pp. 49-62. Terry Karl, Lecture #2, IDL 105 course lecture.