WCED Lecture. Cooperate or Resist? State-Society Relations and Authoritarianism in Russia and Beyond

This talk will outline a theory of state-society relations in weak and strong states and connect it to two types of authoritarianism. It suggests that in countries where the state serves as the primary collective identity, people tend to cooperate with state representatives and make it easy for the ruler to build efficient centralized state structures while failing to create institutions of accountability and prevent the abuse of power. In the countries where the primary collective identities are non-state ones, people tend to resist state initiatives and only agree to short-term deals which creates a fruitful ground for clientelism and hinders building state capacity. At the same time, these societies are better equipped to build institutions of accountability and prevent a large-scale abuse of state power. Examples of grassroots-level state and civil society organizations from four Russian regions (Kemerovo region, Rostov region, the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Republic of Altai) will illustrate the different patterns of state-society relationships. The talk will also discuss several implications of the proposed theory for the study of political regimes.

Natalia Forrat is a 2018-20 WCED postdoctoral fellow. She received her PhD from Northwestern University in 2017. Before coming to Michigan, she was a predoctoral fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her research has appeared in Post-Soviet Affairs and Comparative Politics along with a number of Russian-language venues. At Michigan, Natalia Forrat will be working on her book manuscript on the relationship between state-society relationships and authoritarianism.

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