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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

The ‘return of the state’ and the circumventions of the reforms in today’s Russia. The case of universities

Résumé

This paper aims to shed light on the day-to-day functioning of the Russian regime since Vladimir Putin’s accession to the Presidency in 2000. In the 1990s, the regional authorities, public services, strategic branches of the economy, and whole sectors of society had taken a broad autonomy from the Central state. It was due both to the regime democratisation and to the powerlessness of the central authorities owing to the economic crisis that followed the collapse of the USSR. Putin’s arrival coincided with that of the oil windfall, which replenished the state coffers and gave the federal authorities an unexpected lever to regain control over the various social sectors. This ‘return of the state’ leaned partly on coercive practices (arrests of elites’ representatives, Kremlin's control over media, intimidation of NGOs...). However, this vision of a system entirely managed from above, in keeping with the image of the ‘power vertical’ claimed by Putin’s entourage and used by many specialists of Russia, may be questioned. For it does not account for a substantial dimension of the process: i.e., the decision-makers of the federal state are brought to make major concessions to the social actors they intend to keep their grip on, and even to legitimate some circumventions of their own reforms. I would like to illustrate this point by examples from the higher education sphere, and to show how bargaining between central authorities and university bureaucracies largely reshapes and distorts the content of the reforms initiated by the federal state. The empirical basis of this research is a series of surveys in 27 universities, official and grey literature of the Ministries, annual statistical reports, the press, and interviews with university lecturers and administrators.
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Dates et versions

hal-04315023 , version 1 (29-11-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04315023 , version 1

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Carole Sigman. The ‘return of the state’ and the circumventions of the reforms in today’s Russia. The case of universities. Bridging National and Global Perspectives, International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES), Aug 2021, Montreal Virtual, ON LINE, Canada. ⟨hal-04315023⟩
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