The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia

Front matter

The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia

Vladimir Gel’man idl UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

THE POLITICS OF BAD GOVERNANCE IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA in Contemporary Russia

CHAPTER 7 The Politics of Bad Governance: Russia in Comparative Perspective 136

Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11621795

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

FIGURES FIGURE 1. Rule of Law in Russia, 1996-2018, World Bank 3 FIGURE 2. Control of Corruption in Russia, 1996-2018, World Bank 4 FIGURE 3. Regulatory Quality in Russia, 1996-2018, World Bank 4 FIGURE 4. Government Effectiveness in Russia, 1996-2018, World Bank 5 FIGURE 5. GDP Per Capita and Rule of Law, 2018, World Bank 7 FIGURE 6. GDP Per Capita and Control of Corruption, 2018, World Bank 7 FIGURE 7. GDP Per Capita and Regulatory Quality, 2018, World Bank 8

FIGURE 8. GDP Per Capita and Government Effectiveness, 2018, World Bank 8

FIGURE 9. The Genesis and Effects of Bad Governance 14

TABLES Table 1. Why Russia Is Not Burkina Faso 6 Table 2. Antinomies of Features of Good and Bad Governance 11 Table 3. Factors of Success of Policy Reforms 77

Table 4. Features and Outcomes of Policy Reforms in Russia in the 2000s 89

PREFACE and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Since the classic statement by Samuel P. Huntington, who observed that “the most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government,”' scholars of comparative politics have focused to a great degree on the politics of governance across the globe. While major historically oriented analyses trace the evolutionary logic of governance from ancient times to the present day,” and numerous experts develop highly sophisticated datasets with long batteries of indicators addressed to governance-related issues,’ we still know little about the factors behind various patterns of governance and their dynamics in different states and nations. Answering the questions of why governments govern better in some countries than in others is essential for political scientists and policy analysts, politicians, and policymakers, as well as for civil activists and citizens in various countries. Certainly, accomplishing such a daunting task would require long-standing collective multidisciplinary efforts by the international scholarly community, something that lies beyond the scope of a single academic book. However, I believe that there is a need to address these questions based on analyzing the politics of governance in one country, namely post-Communist Russia. According to many accounts and assessments, present-day Russia is governed much worse than it should be and explaining its patterns of governance by putting this country-level analysis into a broader theoretical and comparative perspective may shed some light on the phenomenon of governing states beyond a single case study of a certain outlier. Therefore, I wrote this book with some hope that it might be of interest both for scholars of Russia and for experts in comparative politics of governance.

In this book, I would like to challenge a conventional wisdom that dominates the research of governance and development, namely the assumption that all countries, at least in theory, aim to improve their performance in order to achieve prosperity, and exceptions from this rule can be considered deviations. Such a view is typical for academics who teach their students with the mission of promoting scholarly excellence—we all want to be proud of our A-students with excellent grades, great knowledge, and outstanding skills. However, I grew up in communities of C-students within the late-Soviet educational establishments, xi xii Preface and Acknowledgments where almost nobody cared about gaining knowledge, where the scholarly cheating was nearly ubiquitous, and where the skills of making good informal connections“ paved the way for high grades and better jobs. Those A-students who behaved otherwise (myself included) were regarded as outsiders in these communities, to say the least. Over time, I realized that communities of C-students—in Russia and elsewhere—are the norm, and A-students are almost an exception, rather than the reverse. C-students may convert themselves into A-students (similarly to the conversion from Saul to Paul the apostle) only under serious pressure that may provide strong incentives for improving their performance. Without these incentives, C-students will not pursue academic excellence (even though many of them could perform much better) but rather will prefer some manner of muddling through to minimize their scholarly efforts, showing little care about their future. In the worst-case scenario, they may demonstrate educational decay and deterioration in various political and institutional contexts and even irreversibly turn into F-students. Even though we all prefer A-students to their C-counterparts, understanding the rationale behind poor performance requires additional in-depth analysis of the causes and mechanisms of mediocrity, carelessness, and dishonesty to a larger degree than those of excellence, high motivation, and integrity.

In a way, states and nations are similar to students’ communities. Without strong domestic and/or international incentives, they may not strive toward better performance and may not be interested in improving the quality of their governance. Similar to C-students, the rulers of these states and nations govern their countries much worse than they should, and at the same time may receive certain short-term benefits from their mediocre performance at the expense of their fellow citizens and of generations of their successors. I would argue that the persistence of patterns of bad governance is primarily driven by politics because of the combinations of ideas, interests, and incentives of rulers and elites. In other words, I consider bad governance to be an agency-driven phenomenon, and therefore a scholarly focus on the causes and mechanisms of the politics of governance is necessary for addressing the questions of good and bad governance. This focus may help not only to explain the peculiarities of Russia’s underperformance but also to explore how and why practices of bad governance emerged, persisted, and evolved over time in various political and institutional contexts. My book is aimed at such an exploration.

This book resulted from several academic endeavors. First and foremost, I was extraordinarily lucky to work in two universities, two cities, and two countries—at the European University at Saint Petersburg (EUSP) in Russia, and at

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii the University of Helsinki (UH) in Finland. Being part of two different scholarly communities enormously benefited this book project and other research ventures. I would like to thank my colleagues from both EUSP and UH for the great intellectual atmosphere and for our fruitful exchange of ideas. Kaarina Aitamurto, Sari Autio-Sarasmo, Daria Gritsenko, Boris Firsov, Anna-Liisa Heusala, Marina Khmelnitskaya, Ivan Kurilla, Katalin Miklossy, Ella Paneyakh, Katri Pynnöniemi, Mikhail Sokolov, Anna Temkina, Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, Pavel Usanov, and Veljko Vujacic provided me with great food for thought in various ways over the years. Special thanks go to my superiors at the EUSP and the UH, who made it possible for me to be a servant of two masters and move back and forth between Russian and Finnish environments, similarly to a dolphin who jumps back and forth between the fresh waters of the sea and the open air. I am greatly indebted for this unique opportunity to Grigorii Golosov, Markku Kangaspuro, Oleg Kharkhordin, Markku Kivinen, and Vadim Volkov—all of them supported me both in intellectual and in administrative terms. My coauthors of various scholarly pieces, Hilary Appel, Andrey Starodubtsev, Dmitry Travin, and Andrey Zaostrovtsev, greatly contributed to some chapters and paragraphs of this book and offered me invaluable experience of successful academic collaboration. In addition, former students, who later became scholars themselves, helped me to formulate and crystallize some of the elements of my writings—many thanks to Aleksey Gilev, Kirill Kalinin, Anton Shirikov, Andrey Shcherbak, Anna Tarasenko, and Tatiana Tkacheva. Two other former students, Egor Lazarev and Margarita Zavadskaya, were the first readers of the book manuscript, and their friendly yet critical suggestions and recommendations provided many valuable insights. The financial support received from the Academy of Finland and the Department of Political Science at the EUSP enables me to cover many costs related to this book project.

Drafts of various chapters were discussed in academic seminars and workshops held at the EUSP, the UH, Columbia University, the Higher School of Economics at Saint Petersburg, Perm State University, Princeton University, Sciences Po Paris, the University of Dundee, the University of Michigan, Uppsala University, and Yale University. Major conferences of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security (PONARS Eurasia) and ASEEES annual conventions served as key milestones in crafting the building blocks of this book. There is no way to thank all the participants and discussants, whose questions and comments were important. I owe special debts to Mark Beissinger, Irina Busygina, Anna Dekalchuk, Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, Timothy Frye, Sam Greene, Sergei Guriev, Henry Hale, Alexander Libman, Leonid Polishchuk, xiv Preface and Acknowledgments

Kirill Rogov, Cameron Ross, Andrey Semenov, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Maria Snegovaya, Konstantin Sonin, Regina Smyth, Lucan Way, and Susanne Wengle. The efficient administrative support from Anna Gasanova, Tatiana Khruleva, Eeva Korteniemi, Anna Korhonen, and Ira Osterberg made this project feasible. Aleksei Pobedonostsev and Sergei Kim provided significant technical assistance with some data and visualization. The friendly, detailed, and nuanced linguistic assistance by Alexei Stephenson was essential for making the manuscript readable. I truly appreciate the great interest and excellent encouragement of Elizabeth Demers from the University of Michigan Press, who endorsed this book project and made it possible—without her it would probably not have happened—and the whole publishing team deserve many warm words for their help. Three anonymous reviewers of the book manuscript made several useful comments and critical points. Last but not least, my wife Oxana supported me over all these journeys, constantly demonstrating many instances of good governance in our family: my outstanding debts to her will probably never be fully paid. Needless to say, none of the above persons and organizations are responsible for any errors and flawed interpretations. All arguments in this book solely reflect my own viewpoints, which may not coincide with their opinions.

The early versions of some parts of this book previously appeared in the form of articles. Elements of chapter 1 are based upon “Political Foundations of Bad Governance in Post-Soviet Eurasia: Towards a Research Agenda” (East European Politics 33, no. 4 [2017], © Taylor & Francis), and elements of chapter 2 use parts of “The Vicious Circle of Post-Soviet Neopatrimonialism in Russia” (Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 5 [2016], © Taylor & Francis). Chapter 4 is based on “Opportunities and Constraints of Authoritarian Modernisation: Russian Policy Reforms of the 2000s” (Europe-Asia Studies 68, no. 1 [2016], © University of Glasgow, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. on behalf of the University of Glasgow), coauthored with Andrey Starodubtsev. Chapter 5 is based on “Politics versus Policy: Technocratic Traps of Russian Policy Reforms” (Russian Politics 3, no. 2 [2018], © Brill). Chapter 6 is based on “Exceptions and Rules: Success Stories and Bad Governance in Russia” (Europe-Asia Studies 73, no. 6 [2021], © University of Glasgow, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. on behalf of the University of Glasgow).

This book deals with many difficult issues of bad governance, analyzing rent-seeking and corruption as cornerstones of a certain politico-economic order, and the reader might become depressed because of the gloomy pictures of these practices and their effects. However, one should not fall into the deadly sin of sloth—the most useless, fruitless, and hopeless of all deadly sins. This is

Preface and Acknowledgments xv why I wrote this book with something of a “bias for hope”? that it will make a small contribution to overcoming pathologies of bad governance in Russia and elsewhere. I dedicate this book to the many activists, journalists, scholars, civil servants, and ordinary citizens who resist the politics of bad governance in one way or another and who struggle for good governance in their respective countries and all over the world.

Saint Petersburg—Helsinki September 2021

THE POLITICS OF BAD GOVERNANCE IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA

CHAPTER I A Framework for Analysis

T IS A GIVEN that the quality of governance makes a difference. It deter-

mines the developmental trajectories of states and nations, as well as the

everyday lives of its citizens. Why are some countries governed worse than others? In particular, why is contemporary Russia governed so much worse than one would expect, judging by its degree of socioeconomic development? In the comparative perspective, contemporary Russia represents an example of a high-capacity authoritarian state that exhibits the main features of bad governance, such as a lack and/or perversion of the rule of law, near-universal rent-seeking, ubiquitous corruption, poor quality of state regulation, widespread abuse of public funds, and overall ineffectiveness of government. These features have been demonstrated in numerous recent assessments of Russia vis-à-vis many other countries, conducted by various reputable international agencies. The evidence presented there is endorsed by investigative journalists,” policy analysts,’ political activists,* and filmmakers,’ and the combination of different sources portray a rather gloomy picture of patterns of governance in Russia—this country performs worse than some of its post-Soviet neighbors‘ and the other countries that belongs to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group.’ However, one should go beyond these critical assessments and address more fundamental questions about the sources and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond. Why did bad governance emerge and persist in certain countries, and to what extent can the quality of governance be improved over time by certain policies?

Scholars and observers have addressed these issues since ancient times but have not provided comprehensive answers as of yet. Perhaps the first full-fledged vivid exploration of issues of quality of governance appeared in visual arts. In 1338, the city council of Siena, then a medieval oligarchic republic, commissioned two sets of frescoes to decorate the council hall (Sala dei Nove) in its residence, Palazzo Pubblico, from the local artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The following year, Lorenzetti produced the series of frescoes, known as The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, which are still located in Palazzo Pubblico today. These artworks, justly considered masterpieces of early Renaissance secular painting, presented six scenes of contemporary Siena and its neighboring areas, and through images, reflected normative ideas of good and bad governance that are still important almost seven centuries later. Art historians,’ and political theorists such as Quentin Skinner,’ have mostly focused on the set of three frescoes that represent the Allegory of Good Government (Allegoria del Buon Governo). Such a focus is driven not only by the fact that this set has been portrayed extensively and preserved in better shape as a piece of art, but mostly because it represents the major civic virtues, such as Peace, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity, Temperance, and Justice, guided by symbols of Faith, Hope, and Charity. All of these symbols and features were essential for an understanding of good governance in the fourteenth century and have not lost their relevance in the present day. In a sense, they are not much different from a twenty-first century approach to good governance, where, for example, the highly reputable Quality of Government Institute (the QoG Institute) at the University of Gothenburg has placed a major emphasis in its research on “trustworthy, reliable, impartial, un-corrupt and competent government institutions.”"”

However, what about the Allegory of Bad Government (Allegoria del Cattivo Governo), which was so vividly presented in the paired set of Lorenzetti’s frescoes and is presented on the cover of this book? One should pay attention to its central character, a devious-looking figure adorned with horns and fangs, and apparently cross-eyed. This figure is identified as Tyranny, who sits enthroned, resting his feet upon a goat (a symbol of luxury) while holding a dagger. Below the tyrant, the captive figure of Justice lies bound and swaddled, while the figures of Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War flank him, and above the tyrant float the figures of Avarice, Pride, and Vainglory. These symbols and features, according to an advice book for the city magistrate of that time, were considered the “leading enemies of human life.”" Since the frescoes came as a pair, the whole scene demonstrated a mirror opposite of that of the Allegory of Good Government, creating a powerful reminder to the members of the city council of what they should and should not do in governing the city.

A viewer, or a reader of this book, who is familiar with politics in contemporary Russia may find a striking similarity between the image of the tyrant in Lorenzetti’s fresco and the appearance of Russia’s long-standing ruler,

Year

FIGURE 1. Rule of Law in Russia, 1996-2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

Vladimir Putin. Besides the apparent visual resemblance, there are important substantive parallels between the interpretation of the nature of bad governance in fourteenth-century Siena and an understanding of this phenomenon in twenty-first-century political science. The common point is that unconstrained autocratic rule is considered the main source of bad governance both then and now, and numerous vices that result from it—be they related to deceit, fraud, avarice, cruelty, or war—cause harsh and often insuperable obstacles to justice and contribute to numerous pathologies for the development of states and societies. The question of the causes and effects of bad governance has not lost its relevance since the medieval period, and in the twenty-first century, the time is ripe to reconsider these issues from a scholarly perspective.

This is a book about how and why Russia, a highly developed, urbanized, well-educated, and relatively wealthy country, which demonstrated a promising potential for further advancement after the collapse of Communism and a series of complex post-Communist transformations,” became a country with a trajectory of durable bad governance over the recent decades. Even though calls to improve the quality of governance in Russia have been made many times by political leaders and top officials, during the period of the 2000s and the 2010s there was little (if any) progress in many important dimensions of governance, regarding the rule of law control of corruption and especially, regulatory quality, as figures 1 through 4 demonstrated.’

-0.60

Control of Corruption (World Bank)

| [$e ea 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 Year FIGURE 2. Control of Corruption in Russia, 1996- 2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5) Regulatory Quality (World Bank) T = — ALi — a | Lie 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 Year

FIGURE 3. Regulatory Quality in Russia, 1996-2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

Government Effectiveness (World Bank)

o

o

a J

Q

= J

Q

o

o]

fo) = T T T T a

FIGURE 4. Government Effectiveness in Russia, 1996- 2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

What are the sources and mechanisms of governance in Russia? Should bad governance be expected to persist endlessly under authoritarian rule, or can the quality of governance be improved over time by certain policies? The recent discussions attempting to explain good and bad governance in various countries, regions, and policy areas have been quite extensive.'* The question is: How can we place present-day Russia on this global governance map? Should we consider Russia to be an outlier or, rather, a laggard vis-a-vis many other developed and developing states?

Indeed, in 1984, a Financial Times journalist noted that Russia’s predecessor, the Soviet Union, should not be regarded as “Upper Volta with missiles.” However, such a statement soon lost its initial meaning of juxtaposition and instead became a sort of label for the country during the period of Soviet collapse. At that time, it sounded deliberatively offensive, and most probably unjust, given the fact that Upper Volta (renamed in 1984 to Burkina Faso) was one of the poorest African nations. Almost four decades later, however, this statement has, in a sense, proved to be correct. Judging by the data from the Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project, the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International, and the World Bank’s Governance Matters, Russia has exhibited worse performance than Burkina Faso (still one of the poorest African nations) in five out of six key parameters of quality of governance (see table 1).

TABLE I. Why Russia is Not Burkina Faso

Indexes Russia Burkina Faso

Rule of Law Index (World Justice Project),2020 0.47 (rank 94 0.51 (rank 70 out of 128) out of 128)

Corruption Perception Index (Transparency 28 (rank 137 40 (rank 85 International), 2018 out of 180) out of 180) Rule of Law Index (World Bank), 2018 -0.82 -0.45 Regulatory Quality Index (World Bank), 2018 -0.54 -0.39 Government Effectiveness (World Bank), 2018 -0.06 -0.58 Control of Corruption (World Bank), 2018 -0.85 -0.11

SOURCES: World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2020 (Washington, DC: World Justice Project, 2020) https://worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/documents/ W JP-ROLI- 2020-Online_0.pdf range from 0 (min) to 1 (max)

Corruption Perception Index (Berlin: Transparency International, 2020) https://www .transparency.org/cpi2019 range from 0 (min) to 100 (max)

Worldwide Governance Indicators (Washington, pc: World Bank, 2020) http://info .worldbank.org/governance/wgi/ range from -2.5 (min) to + 2.5 (max)

Although the validity of these and other cross-national rankings of states is the subject of numerous heated discussions, ® they may be used at least as a proxy for positioning certain countries on the global map of governance. While there is a high degree of correlation between the level of socioeconomic development (measured as GDP per capita) and the quality of governance in many countries, Russia seems to be an important, if not the only, major outlier from this tendency, especially regarding the rule of law and control of corruption, as figures 5 through 8 demonstrated.

This is why an in-depth focus on analysis of Russia’s “deviant case” may not only be useful for an understanding of the causes and effects of bad governance in this particular country, but also may shed some light on this phenomenon in a broader comparative perspective—which is essentially the goal of this book.

This introductory chapter is focused on setting the scene for the further exploration of issues of bad governance in Russia and beyond. After a short excursion to cover key concepts and definitions, it will explain the framework for analysis used in this book, present my main arguments, and outline the trajectory of bad governance in post-Communist Russia and its dynamics. The structure and contents of the following chapters will be briefly outlined in its concluding paragraphs.

Rule of Law (World Bank)

Rule of Law, 2018

FIGURE 5. GDP Per Capita and Rule of Law, 2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

Control of Corruption (World Bank)

Control of Corruption, 2018 eee, @ Russia e ee.

T 00 100000 150000 GDP per capita (US dollars), 2018

FIGURE 6. GDP Per Capita and Control of Corruption, 2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

Regulatory Quality, 2018

Government Effectiveness, 2018

Regulatory Quality (World Bank)

50000 100000 GDP per capita (US dollars), 2018

FIGURE 7. GDP Per Capita and Regulatory Quality, 2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

Government Effectiveness (World Bank)

150000

50000 100000 GDP per capita (US dollars), 2018

FIGURE 8. GDP Per Capita and Government Effectiveness, 2018, World Bank (range from-2.5 to +2.5)

What Is Bad Governance?

One influential political scientist has defined “governance” as the “government’s ability to make and enforce rules, and to deliver services, regardless as to whether that government is democratic or not.”! From this viewpoint, governance as a category of analysis is different both from state capacity, which is related to the state’s coercive and infrastructural potential to implement certain policies, and from state autonomy, which is related to the ability of the state apparatus to adopt and implement policies irrespective of political influence. Explicitly or implicitly, such an approach lies behind numerous studies on the subject, both theoretically and comparatively oriented ones and those focused on particular countries, regions, and policy areas.” Although the causes and mechanisms of bad governance have been analyzed by political scientists since the times of Machiavelli, modern discussions of this phenomenon are fueled not only by a major rise of scholarly interest in various aspects of governance” but also by the emergence of new research tools and databases assembled by various institutions and teams of analysts.*! However, the very notion of “bad governance” has to a certain degree remained an elusive term, one constructed as an antonym to “good governance’; the latter, in turn, is also based on multidimensional criteria and lacks a universally accepted definition.”

The most widely used approach in the field is related to the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators program,” where the understanding of good governance is based on six major pillars, or dimensions: (1) Voice and Accountability; (2) Political Stability and Absence of Violence; (3) Government Effectiveness; (4) Regulation Quality; (5) Rule of Law; and (6) Control of Corruption. While categories 1 and 2 relate to the quality of political regimes rather than to the quality of governance as such, the other four parameters, categories 3—6, establish the features of various dimensions of good governance. Scholars of the QoG Institute greatly expanded the understanding of good governance, adding to this list some other important dimensions of governance, such as accountability, efficiency, impartiality, and legitimacy, and employed this framework for analysis in several important scholarly contributions.” However, such a comprehensive approach may contradict the good old Occam’s razor principle, or the law of parsimony, and go beyond necessity. This is why in this book I will mostly rely upon the minimalist definition of good governance offered by the World Bank because it better fits the purposes of my analysis. Thus, the four constituent elements of good governance are: effective government performance, decent regulatory quality of the state, adherence to the basic principles of the rule of law” and political and institutional constraints on corruption.

If one perceives bad governance as an alternative juxtaposed to good governance in the manner of antinomy (such an analytic approach was, for example, employed in a recent study of Russian modernization”*), then the key features of bad governance can be constructed as opposites of the principles of good governance in all of these four dimensions. Thus, bad governance can be understood as a combination of these attributes: (1) a lack of the rule of law and/or perversion of its basic principles; (2) a high degree of corruption, which penetrates all layers of governance; (3) a combination of high density, poor quality and selective implementation of state regulations (labeled here as the phenomenon of the “overregulated state”);”” and (4) general government ineffectiveness, except for certain crucial policy areas and/or priority projects and programs (often conducted under special conditions).

These attributes are related to governing the state in a narrow sense. Meanwhile, although lack of democracy and weakness of political rights, as well as political instability and violence, could be considered elements of bad governance in certain political and institutional contexts, these qualifications merely describe the qualities of political regimes, and cannot be attributed as features of bad governance by default. While some studies have demonstrated a conditional 38 their impact is often indirect and not always straightforward. The antinomy of feaimpact of democracy and authoritarianism on the quality of governance, tures of good and bad governance is summarized in table 2.

Although in substantive terms such a negative definition of bad governance based on antinomies may be far from satisfactory, this approach is a logical consequence of the normative bias inherent in the perceptions of many social and political scientists. This normative bias in analyses of bad governance has also contributed to the extension of its attributes far beyond the aforementioned list, not only with regard to governing the state, but also in various aspects of social policies and state-society relations, such that the term has become a byword for a set of diverse negative tendencies.” This broad interpretation is highly questionable, because it combines in the same category various phenomena that do not always relate to the quality of state governance and/or may stem from different causes; such an approach is dubious, being a form of “conceptual stretching.”*? At the same time, however, equating bad governance solely with widespread corruption, as some scholars argue, would be a wild oversimplification.*’ Although corruption is an unquestionable element of bad governance, it should be regarded as a symptom (rather than a cause), and not the only symptom. Moreover, such an

TABLE 2. Antinomies of Features of Good and Bad Governance

Pillar of Governance

Good Governance

Bad Governance

Government Effectiveness

Regulation Quality

Rule of Law

Control of Corruption

Generally effective and efficient government

A decent regulatory framework, maintained by strong institutions and unbiased state bureaucracy

Adherence to basic principles of the rule of law

Low level of corruption, which is limited by political and

Government may be effective mostly in certain crucial policy areas and priority projects and programs, conducted under special conditions

”Over-regulated state,” which combines high density and poor quality of state regulations with their selective implementation

Lack of the rule of law and/or perversion of its basic principles

High level of corruption, which penetrates all layers of governance institutional constraints equation may result in an imperfect diagnostic of bad governance as a phenomenon being attributed to many very different yet highly corrupt governments in a similar way. If one were to compare political diagnostics with medical ones, it is as ifa doctor equated a banal flu with pneumonia judging solely by patient symptoms like high temperature, fever, and cough, without relying on a lung X-ray or other tests. This is why I rely upon a different definition of the syndrome of bad governance that is based on the four major characteristics of governing the state presented above: lack and/or perversion of the rule of law, unconstrained corruption, poor quality of state regulations, and general ineffectiveness of government (some exceptions to this rule will be discussed in detail in chapter 6). These characteristics need to be clarified for a better understanding of their role in governing the state: To what extent do they serve as symptoms of certain pathologies or, rather, to what extent may they be considered norms of bad governance? In other words, the mode of study of bad governance should be switched from normative assessment to a positive analysis. This also means that one needs to shift from the above-stated description of symptoms of bad governance as a specific syndrome to a causal explanation of why it emerges and develops and how it can be overcome (and indeed, whether it can at all). From this perspective, one must admit that bad governance is not only the opposite of good governance, but also a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices, quite different from the norms of governance. In turn, this politico-economic order, although it may be perceived as one of the many instances of a “limited access order” and of the prevalence of “extractive” political and economic institutions,” demonstrates several political foundations that make it a peculiar subtype of such orders. To put it bluntly, among the many countries belonging to these categories in the past and in the present, there are some countries that are governed intentionally badly because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self interests. These political foundations are identified hereafter as a “constitution” of bad governance, or its informal institutional core.*4 In other words, they are treated as de-facto