T H E POLITICAL R E G I M E O F MOSCOW - CREATION O F A NEW URBAN MACHINE?
M I C H A E L B R I E
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB) Reichpietschufer 50, D-10785 Berlin
comparision of the actual processes occurring in the East European and CIS countries with highly normative and often ahistorical models of democracy.
Textbook definitions are the tools used for charting the new lands of democratization. Specific historical legacies, incompetent or pro-communist actors, and the lack of sufficent help from the West were made responsible for the observed deviations from the ideal. The concept used in this paper is that of a realistic model of urban machines as a specific local political regime which can be found under very divergent circumstances of rapid social change. It is a regime where a political organization under conditions of universal (at least male) suffrage is able to control the 'input' and 'output' dimensions of a local political system over a longer period of time. Its most important feature is a system of mass patronage which is the key instrument used in forming a winning coalition.
Differences between North American and southern Italian urban machines are examined by isolating some variables to explain the opposite outcomes of such regimes as political forms of a dynamic or stagnant modernization.
In the main part of the article, the urban machine concept is applied to post-Soviet Moscow. Following a short history of this regime, the institutional and cultural environment and the political and economic formations are analyzed, with attention also given to the federal context. The main actors of this regime and their exchange system are then presented. In a concluding chapter, some hypotheses about the future prospects of the Moscow political regime are put foward. The formation of different types of urban machines and the corresponding institutional frameworks are explained as being the result of intertwining strategies of rational actors forming very specific exchange systems as an answer to the concrete challenges of different cases of social reconstruction and rapid social change. This approach could help to improve the ability to identify the real political regime types and their actors and make realistic forecasts.
# # #
Die Analysen der postsowjetischen politischen Transformation werden durch den Vergleich der realen Prozesse in den osteuropaischen Landern und den Staaten der GUS mit hochnormativen und oftmals ahistorischen Modellen von Demokratie gepragt. Textbuchdefinitionen spielen die Rolle von Vermessungsinstrumenten fiir die neuen Landstriche der Demokratisierung. Spezifische historische Erblasten, inkompetente oder prokommunistische Akteure bzw. die mangelnde Unterstiitzung aus dem Westen werden fiir die beobachteten Abweichungen vom Ideal verantwortlich gemacht. Der vorgelegte Beitrag nutzt dagegen ein realistisches Modell von urban machines als spezifischer lokaler politischer Regime, die unter sehr unterschiedlichen Bedingungen schnellen sozialen Wandels anzutreffen sind. Dieses Modell beschreibt eine politische Organisation, die in der Lage ist, unter den Bedingungen des allgemeinen Wahlrechts (zumindest der mannlichen Bevolkerung) Input- und Output-Dimensionen eines lokalen politischen Systems iiber langere Zeit zu kontrollieren. Ihr wichtigstes Merkmal ist ein System der Massenpatronage als Hauptform der Gewinnung einer fiir einen Wahlsieg hinreichenden Zahl von Wahlerstimmen. Es werden
Im Hauptteil des Artikels wird das urban-machine-Konzept auf die politische Entwicklungen im postsowjetischen Moskau angewandt. Es werden die institutionellen und kulturellen Umweltentwicklungen des politischen Wandels analysiert, der foderale Kontext betrachtet sowie die wichtigsten Akteure des Regimes und ihr Austauschsystem dargestellt. AbschlieBend werden einige Hypothesen tiber die Zukunft des politischen Systems Moskaus formuliert. Die Formierung differenter Typen von urban machines und korrespondierender institutioneller Rahmenbedingungen wird als Resultat sich iiberlappender Strategien rationaler Akteure erklart, Austauschsysteme herauszubilden, um eine Antwort auf die konkreten Herausforderungen verschiedener Falle sozialer Rekonstruktion und schnellen sozialen Wandels zu finden. Diese Herangehensweise konnte die Fahigkeit verbessern, reale politische Regimetypen und ihre Akteure zu identifizieren und realistische Voraussagen zu treffen.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction 7 2. The Urban Machine Concept 8
3. Various Origins, Paths of Development and Outcomes of the North
American and Southern Italian Urban Machines - A Comparison 13 3.1. The Path Dependency Hypothesis: Institutional and
Cultural Prehistory 13 3.2. Changes in the Institutional Environment and the National Context 16
4. Moscow's Post-Soviet Political Regime 22
4.1. The Origins 23 4.2. Institutional Environment and Political Culture 26
4.3. The Institutional Backbone 33 4.4. Moscow Municipal Capitalism as a Variation of a Social and
Nationalistically-Oriented Transitional Political Economy 38 4.5. The Mayor as the Khoziain - The Ideology of Patrimonial
Power and Reform Management 47 4.6. Ally and Rival - The Mayor of Moscow in the Federal
Power Structure 55 4.7. The „Moscow Group" 58
5. An Outlook on the Prospects of the Moscow Regime 64 6. Appendix: A Short Overview of Distinct Features of North
American, Southern Italian and Moscow Urban Machines 68
Literature 70
1. Introduction
Organized crime, corruption, lawlessness and social polarization seem to have become synonyms for day-to-day life in Moscow. In the case of Moscow, the
"third wave of democratization" is accused of being a transformation from a partycracy to a cleptocracy. Though this widespread complaint reflects some pressing phenomena, it is hardly new. On the one hand, throughout most of its long history Moscow has been famous for precisely these social phenomenona. On the other hand, there were and are a lot of other cities around the world no less affected by these problems than present-day Moscow. And the complaints in the past have been the same. New York and Chicago at the turn of the last century up to the thirties, Palermo and Naples after 1945 and many cities of the Third world are most similar on that score. The similarity of these phenomenona is tempting. It suggests a similarity of causation and predicts a similarity of consequences. The question remains open as to whether Palermo or the prosperous megapolis of New York represent the future of Moscow, or whether neither of them do.1 And why should they? Simple analogies won't get us anywhere.
The analyses of the post-Soviet political transformation are dominated by the comparison of the real processes in the East European and CIS countries with highly normative and often ahistorical models of democracy. Textbook definitions are the tools used for charting the new lands of democratization. Insofar as important actors of the political transition were driven by these models, they are indeed relevant for explaning the real process. Specific historical legacies, incompetent or procommunist actors, and the lack of sufficient help from the West were made responsible for the observed deviations from the ideal. After the initial stage of the transition, it became clear that the transition from state socialism in
1 „The fate of the Mezzogiorno can be taken as a lesson for the Third World today, and the former Communist lands of Eurasia tomorrow, moving uncertainly toward self-government. The 'always defect' social equilibrium may represent the future of much of the world where social capital is limited or nonexistent. For political stability, for government effectiveness, and even for economic progress social capital may be even more important than physical or human capital. Many of the formerly Communist societies had weak civic traditions before the advent of Communism and totalitarian rule abused even that limited stock of social capital. Without norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement, the Hobbesian outcome of the Mezzogiorno - amoral familism, clientelism, lawlessness, ineffective government, and economic stagnation - seems likelier than successful democratization and economic development. Palermo may represent the future of Moscow." (Putnam 1993: 183)
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the aforementioned countries resulted in very different types of stable political regimes.
A comparison with earlier developments in other parts of the world can be beneficial in helping to explain these results and make realistic forecasts. Regional and local studies within a more simplified context than that of a nation state can also be helpful.
This article will attempt to analyze the political regime of Moscow as a system of political exchange and identify its different actors, the primary matters of exchange, and the patterns of interaction. It will ask how stable this regime can become and what its future prospects are. The concept used here is not that of any ideal-type democracy which elaborates on the various deformities and defections of post-Soviet regimes, but that of a workable, realistic model of urban machines.
In the first step the actual concept of an urban machine type of political regime will be analyzed. Then some differences between North American and southern Italian urban machines will be examined by isolating certain variables in order to explain the opposite outcomes of these regimes. In the main part of the article, the urban machine concept will be applied to post-Soviet Moscow, followed by a short history of this regime. The institutional and cultural environment and the political and economic formations will then be analyzed, with attention also given to the federal context. The main actors of this regime and their exchange system will then presented, and in the concluding chapter some hypotheses about the future prospects of the Moscow political regime will be put forward. A n appendix summarizes some of the most important distinctive features of the North American and southern Italian urban machines and the Moscow political regime.
2. The Urban Machine Concept
The term "urban machine" emerged out of public discussions about political reforms in American cities at the end of the 19th century, later expanding to urban centers in Southern Italy and the Third world. It describes a regime where a political organization under conditions of universal (at least male) suffrage is able to control "the 'input' and 'output' dimensions of the local political system" (Erie 1988: 26) over a longer period of time. This ensures that the organization is able to successively maintain control over executive power. A self-perpetuating cycle of winning elections and the use of metropolitan power to fashion (minimal)
winning voter coalitions and ruling alliances with economic (and intellectual) power elites comes into being, preventing the formation of any alternative. Thus, notwithstanding a guaranteed formal functioning of the main democratic institutions, the free competition of rival political groups for the democratically elected municipal offices is superimposed through the monopolistic exploitation of municipal resources by the ruling organization exclusively for its own electoral aims. Political and economic transactions become indistinguishably intertwined.
The lasting power of urban machines lies in their ability to transform larger parts of the electorate into groups of mass patronage and form a clientelistic power bloc with decisive factions of the economic elite. Universal suffrage is not used as a system to elect representatives for the "common good" of the city around programmatic cleavages, but as a mechanism to keep patrons in power to care for the much more particularistic interests of a fragmented electorate and to supply it with divisible material benefits. The municipal budget is spent on binding economic elites, bonding core groups of the urban machines - the functionaries and some crucial parts of the electorate - and committing others by delivering some less expensive "club" or private goods. Beyond these features of urban machine politics, in order to stabilize the self-perpetuating mechanism of power holding its proponents have also generated such common strategies as a centralistic organization, the personalization of power (the role of the boss), and stressing the importance of informal as opposed to formal interaction.
The crucial condition for the emergence of urban machines is the formation of a party apparatus with a high level of independence from the local notables and superimposition on the city administration of a dominant party-apparatus (the
"machine") and its interests. It is part of a broader process of the transformation of notable parties into modern mass parties2. Party machines and machine politics have proven to be a transitional stage in this process. They are fostered by plebiscitarian elements of the electoral process and the spoils system - the excessive appointment of party followers to public jobs by the winning party apparatus and its leaders after the election.
2 For early analyses of "machines" see Ostrogorski (1902 and 1910), Low (1904) and Hobson (1909). For an early reception in Germany see Weber (1976: 842 pp.). For analyses of more modern examples of urban machines see Scott (1972), Dix (1967), Legg (1969), Weiner (1967).
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Local regimes of an urban machine type are both political and economic systems.
They are deeply embedded in the fundamental patterns of local governance and day-to-day life. Given an electoral defeat of the ruling urban machine, the successor will be forced either to generate a new urban machine or transform the local political economy completely - at the risk of future defeat. As long as the . costs of this machine politics do not exceed the benefits for the economic elites,
and no investment is therefore made in any political and economic alternatives, as long as larger groups of the electorate (sufficient to ensure a winning coalition) remain dependent on the irreplaceable patronage of this special urban machine, and so long as the national elites don't interfere, the urban machine remains invulnerable.
Urban machine regimes include political and economic actors at both the federal and the local level. They regulate the social exchange between national leaders, the urban machine itself with the boss, the functionaries and the public employees, the mass electorate and its different groups, and important parts of business and organized crime. It creates a "contractual" network of interdependency nobody can easily cancel without losing something of importance (Figure 1).
The absence of legislative and judiciary power as actors in the urban machine regime must be explained. Urban machines are characterized by a superposing of the executive branch on the legislative branch. This can be done in different ways, something we will look at later. But, in all cases the executive power is able to control the decision-making process without interference by some legislative assembly. Law-making and governmental functions are embodied in one political institution. The particularistic forms of political exchange and arbitrary interactions, the privatization of public goods, direct interference of private interests in politics, and the indistinguishable intertwining of economics and politics cannot coexist with both a strong legislative branch of power insisting upon the rule of law, and an effective judiciary regulating the public sphere. A weak body of public law and an even weaker implementation are necessary conditions for a prosperous urban machine.
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Different theories exist to explain the emergence and persistence of urban machines. The most famous developed by Robert Merton states that "the functional deficiencies of the official structure generate an alternative (unofficial) structure to fulfill the existing needs somewhat more effectively" (Merton 1984:
30). According to Merton, the American urban machine realizes the important social function of humanizing and personalizing all manner of assistance to those in need much better than the impersonal, socially distant and legally constrained welfare worker, provides political privileges which entail immediate economic gains to large (and small) businesses and regulates economic competition for them, creates alternative channels of social mobility for those otherwise excluded and, lastly, safeguards the interest of the economically and politically important
"illegitimate" businesses. This corresponds with other theories which, on the one hand, refer to the ethnic values of core groups of the urban machine (Dahl 1961:
32-62; Cornwell 1964) and a population dependent on public assistance (Banfield/Wilson 1963: 121-125) as the demand side of urban machine politics, and, on the other, the ability of political entrepreneurs with the assistance of national elites to create a local political machine which can supply the goods in demand and stay in power (Shefter 1976).
This leads us to the proposition that the establishment of urban machines depends on three variables: (1) They can emerge when larger parts of the population and some influential business groups depend upon public assistance and are accustomed to some kind of patronage. A dependent population (including a dependent business class) in a modernizing context is the most important social precondition. (2) There will be efforts to build urban machines when the local elites are dependent on the electoral support of the masses. Universal suffrage is the most important political precondition. (3) Urban machines will come into being when the local elites in cooperation with local economic elites and the national power elite are able to block any alternatives, thereby keeping the population in this state of dependency on the mass patronage of the urban machine and enabling the urban machine to supply this patronage in a monopolistic way.
This is the decisive condition for the establishment of lasting urban machine regimes. A population exchanging its democratic vote for mass patronage in a context lacking alternatives - together these are the necessary components which are sufficient for an urban machine to emerge.
3. Various Origins, Paths of Development and Outcomes of the North American and Southern Italian Urban Machines - A Comparison
Notwithstanding their common features, urban machines emerged in different historical settings as a reaction to contrasting challenges and brought about different outcomes. The same structure proved to be a workable solution under the most different conditions. This is not the place to make a thorough comparative analysis of a broader variety of urban machines, but it would be useful to take a closer look at some differences between the North American and southern Italian urban machines for despite their dissimilarities, they are both archetypal cases. In the United States, urban machine politics proved to be a transitional stage of dynamic modernization to a political regime much more in accordance with the normative views of Western democracy than the urban machines. Manhattan became the world-wide symbol of prosperous capitalism, reducing the ills of organized crime, corruption and poverty of some sixty years ago to phenomena of secondary significance. By contrast, in southern Italian cities, Palermo being the most famous example, urban machines existed through the end of the 1980s. The new situation after the post-war party system fell apart will not be addressed here.
The southern Italian urban machine established a kind of stagnation and exploitation behind the facade of modern metropolitan centers. Palermo became the Italian "capital of the mafia, a national symbol of venality and corruption in local government" (Chubb 1982: 1).
For heuristic reasons, in the following section I shall briefly examine two "classic"
and contrasting cases - Palermo and New York4- to find some clues about how to classify the Moscow political regime. There are at least three hypotheses to explain the differences between these cases. They alternatively stress either (1) the importance of historical legacies, (2) the impact of the changed institutional environment, or (3) the decisive role of the national context.
3.1. The Path Dependency Hypothesis: Institutional and Cultural Prehistory
The North American urban machines have a dual institutional and cultural prehistory. On the one hand there was Puritanism and local self-government with
4 A more detailed analysis would have to distinguish between the various North American and southern Italian cases.
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its British roots and New England imprint. On the other hand, there were the Irish catholic peasant communities with their orientation towards land reform on behalf of egalitarian equality and national self-determination. The former heritage culminated in the immediate institutional setting of "Jacksonian democracy" with its introduction of universal white-male suffrage, direct election of the members of the electoral college, party appointment of presidential candidates and the perfection of the patronage or spoils system through the distribution of public jobs among supporters of the winning party. This gave the parties an effective, publicly paid instrument to create disciplined organizations. The egalitarian spirit of this age, a stronger, more direct democracy, and the central role parties played in getting officials elected to public office strongly impacted on the further development of the political regime. The system of primaries in which voters, under the control of ward bosses, selected party candidates for political office became the centerpiece of the urban machine.5
The first effective urban machines were Irish. Irish village life with its group solidarity in the face of a common foreign (British) enemy, the strong role of the priest and his leadership, (Moynihan 1964: 223-226) and the Catholic Emancipation in 1829 with its mass organization, local electoral manipulation and the first Irish mass political organization (Larkin 1975: 1248-1251) are parts of a legacy which were instrumental in the new context of the rapidly growing and mostly alien American cities. Clearly these legacies did not determine the outcomes, but they did prove to be resources upon which the political entrepreneurs could draw . It was a culture with a strong embeddedness of social interaction in networks of far-reaching "weak" personal ties which crossed families and clans (Granovetter 1982) and where trust was placed in local ethnic organizations - built from the bottom up - and in local leaders through a combination of traditional egalitarianism and hierarchical patronage.
5 After legal changes to this system of primaries had been made, in 1905 the Boss of New York's famous Democratic Tammany Hall, George Washington Plunkitt, demanded the former rules be reestablished. "Then will return the good old times, when our district leaders could have nice comfortable primary elections at some places selected by themselves and let in only men that they approved of as good Democrats. Who is a better judge of the Democracy of a man who offers his vote than the leader of the district? Who is better equipped to keep out undesirable voters?"
(Plunkitt 1984: 24)
6 "In the context of an agrarian economy, Ireland produced a nationalist politics organized around the causes of land reform and home rule. In the context of an industrializing urban economy, Irish- Americans produced a mass politics of party, organization, and patronage." (Erie 1988: 30)
The institutional and cultural prehistory of the southern Italian urban machines was much more monolithic. Overriding features of rural life in Southern Italy prior to 1945 were a glaring polarization between landowners and a poor traditional peasantry, a very low level of manifest social conflict resulting from the extreme
pulverization and diversification in patterns of land tenure7, and the displacement of group solidarity between the peasants through a system of patronage which isolated them from one another. The "amoral familism" (Silverman 1968) which restricted reliable social relations primarily to strong ties among family, the clan, and the personal patron and which prevented more far reaching channels of informal interaction is one of the legacies of this prehistory.
Against the backdrop of restricted suffrage, a politically passive population, the traditional role of the local notables and the system of transformismo , the political system and, not least of all the elections, became a spoils system for personal patronage-clientele networks. Inasmuch as the Mezzogiorno was the critical source for the national elites for the control of Northern Italy, they were eager to buy the southern deputies and notables and stabilize the patronage system.
Fascism did not change the social system but rather extended state activities, putting the party from above in the role of "the major dispenser of political patronage - jobs, public works, personal favors, and privileges - with the party functionary replacing the local notable (in title i f not in person) as the key intermediary in the patronage chain" (Chubb 1982: 27). A highly fragmented and polarized social structure, a hierarchical political system of personal and state patronage, a culture of amoral familism and political passivism, and the dependency on resource transfer from the nation-state shaped some of the most important features of the historical legacy in Southern Italy on which later activists of the emerging urban machines could rely.
7 After the liquidation of feudalism in Southern Italy, the typical peasant "became a mixed figure, combining ownership of a few fragmented 'handkerchiefs' of land, a variety of sharecropping or rental arrangements on other scattered plots, and finally day labor - all of which enabled him just to eke out a bare subsistence. Severe population pressure and scarce resources, combined with the extreme fragmentation of landholding, diversity of agrarian contracts, and the insecurity of land- tenure relationships effectively impeded the development of class solidarity among peasants, pitting them instead one against the other in fierce competition for access to the land." (Chubb 1982: 18)
8 This was a "parliamentary strategy, initiated by Agostino De Pretis in 1876, by which opposition deputies were induced to shift their votes to the government majority in exchange for personal benefits and, above all, access to state patronage" (Chubb 1982: 19).
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3.2. Changes in the Institutional Environment and the National Context
Changes in the institutional environment shift the comparative costs of the given modes of governance, compelling social actors to change their behavior and look for more effective modes of interaction. Both the North American and southern Italian urban machines developed during times of thorough institutional transition.
It can be said that the years from 1880-1920 were the gestation period of modern America. And from 1945-1965 the modern Italian state was formed. Although they have some features in common, the processes of these two transitions differ in many ways.
Up to the middle of the 19th century, the United States was a mostly agrarian nation of relatively autonomous communities with a high degree of security, certainty and self-sufficiency. The technological revolution in transportation and communication, rapid industrialization, the phenomenon of urbanization and emergence of metropolitan cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia accounting for more than 10 million people, and, last but not least, the waves of unlimited immigration changed the very heart of American society. With the impact of these processes "the last half of the nineteenth century witnessed the advent of the industrial metropolis, spread over a large territory, spatially divided into specialized industrial, commercial, and residential districts, and fragmented along ethnic and class lines" (Brownwell/Stickle 1973: XI). Between just 1846- 1855 1.4 million Irish famine immigrants arrived. Unlike the native-born English, they settled mostly in the big cities. In 1870 some 20 percent of the population in cities like New York, Jersey City or Albany were Irish-born (Erie 1988: 18, 25). In the early 1880s a new and greater wave followed, with immigrants coming mostly from Eastern and Southern Europe and concentrating ever more in the cities. The immigration reached its peak when from 1904-14 ten million people arrived. As Lerner noted, "the immigrant became an object, caught with forces over which he had no mastery, having to convert his strength on the market into dollars with which he could get what he needed for life" (Lerner 1987: 87). Politics thus became a part of the market.9
9 "Basically unfamiliar with American political institutions and democratic ideals, the immigrant was bewildered about what to do with his vote. The political machine gave him the answer: they treated the vote as a form of currency. They paid him for it or, in return for following the precinct worker's instructions at election time, the immigrant received various welfare services" (Tarr 1984:
66)
These changes caused an immense strain on the traditional institutional framework of the American communities and on the habits of its inhabitants. A "search of order" (Wiebe 1968) began, first in the big metropolises10, troubled on the one hand with social and ethnic disintegration and, on the other, with a city government equipped to handle nothing more than small urban communities through face-to-face contact. The legacy of Jacksonian democracy transformed into an urban chaos: "The lines of political authority were lost in the bureaucratic scramble of boards, councils, and commissions that characterized nineteenth- century city government. Frequent elections, perhaps even annually, the lack of defined responsibilities and the emergence of city officials with limited, 'private' constituencies (due to direct election) resulted in government inefficiency, duplication, stagnation, and a lack of cooperation between officials and continuity between administrations." (Brownwell/Stickle 1973: 1). Immigration from abroad and the shift of a part of the native-bora population to the big cities overwhelmed the traditional leadership of the gentry and fundamentally changed the conditions for political competition. Firstly, the success of a political party depended upon its ability to meet the demands of the new urban poor and the new business class better than the others. Secondly, it became a competition for the sake of stability and "good government", terms with opposite meanings for different groups. The need for governmental coordination, as Seymor Mandelbaum put it, allied the bosses of the urban machine even with those groups of normally hostile businessman who were anxious to bring order and efficiency to the chaos (Mandelbaum 1984: 58). For the wards and the lower and middle income groups, it was an effective instrument to influence the central city government (Hays
1984: 151). And it was the beginning of professional control and administration of American cities (Calvert 1984: 46).
Starting from the existing community-based democratic system with universal white-male suffrage, North American urban machines adapted this system to a new social and institutional environment of industrialization, urbanization, and migration. Legal changes lagged behind the rapid ones occurring in how the system actually functioned. In an age of turmoil, urban machine politics proved to be a transitional stage in which to integrate and organize metropolitan centers
As Charles Horton Cooley, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, observed in 1899: "Our time ... is one in which, old structures gone to pieces, we are slowly and tentatively building up new ones. In the meantime the social process is at once intensified by the extraordinary call upon it and somewhat confused and demoralized by the failure of the structures which normally control and direct it. Our cities, especially, are full of the disintegrated material of the old order looking for a place in the new ..." (quoted from Brownwell/Stickle 1973: XII).
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within the framework of traditional democratic institutions. The political machine was fed on the expanding resources of the rapidly growing and dynamic city business life it served.
Local alliances with party leaders at the state and federal levels played a pivotal role during the urban machine's fragile incubation period by excluding opponents from state patronage (Erie 1988: 9). Under otherwise conducive conditions, hostile state and national administrations could doom to failure any attempt to build up an urban machine. But once in power, a successful urban machine could more or less easily survive any changes at the state or national level, given that the other conditions remained unchanged. Above all, the North American urban machines emerged out of the local needs of the big cities and their strength rested on local support.
Compared to the North American metropolises, differences in the institutional environment of southern Italian cities were striking. First of all, it was the national power structure that determined the emergence of local urban machines. Facing strong competition from two other mass parties - the Communists (PCI) and the Socialists (PSI) - the Christian Democrats had to gain the support of the southern local notables and a generally conservative southern electorate in order to become the governing party in Rome. Through a self-enforcing mechanism which ensued later on consisting of the rapid development of northern Italy and a modernization without development, an urbanization without industrialization in the Mezzogiorno serving the interest of the political and economic elite in Northern and Southern Italy was established. The famous Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (an autonomous committee of the Italian government which organized a highly subsidized regional policy) initiated in 1950 "while failing in its proclaimed objective of industrializing the South, did perform important political functions:
on the one hand, it undermined the opposition through a massive program of industrial investment in the South, while on the other hand it preserved in large part the traditional economic and social structure upon which the DCs clientelist local power bases depended on and, not coincidentally, at least throughout the
1960s, sustained a flow of low-cost migrant labor to northern factories" (Chubb 1981: 110).
Strong party apparatuses were formed and became personal fiefdoms of the regional bosses. The traditional individual patron-client ties were transformed into the mass clientelism of the party bureaucracy, replacing the individual client with
such secondary associations as trade unions, associations of shopkeepers, artisans, and industrialists allied more or less closely with the DC. The theretofore unknown expansion of state intervention liberated the DC from its initial dependence on external forces like the Church, big business, and local notables and "gave the party the means to construct a totally new clientela system, combining the paternalistic management of the new welfare state with direct party control over an unprecedented outpouring of public resources for public works and economic development projects" (Chubb 1982: 74). The state was transformed into the main instrument of the monopolistic rule of the DC as the seemingly everlasting "party in government". The society became fragmented into a multitude of different individual and corporate interests competing for welfare benefits, state subsidies, public jobs and contracts which only the urban machine could deliver.
There were striking differences between the systems of social exchange in North American and southern Italian urban machines, the former resembling a kind of web, with the boss as one locus of power amongst others, the latter more a pyramid of power with a clear hierarchy (figure 2). The most important difference was the extent to which they were closed or open for voice and exit options (Hirschman 1970). In the North American case, the majority of the actors involved in the urban machine exchange system could also either rely on other exchange relations, or hope to establish an alternative one. For some time the urban machine seemed to be the most preferred political regime and system of urban life for a majority of the population and certain influential groups. But it coexisted with other possibilities. The boss and his machine were never able to keep the social interactions of the population and business to themselves. The latter were mostly engaged in a lot of other activities and exchange relations. The urban machine faced a great deal of external cleavages it had to deal with simultaneously. The balance of power remained fragile and the exchange system of the political regime remained one system of exchange among many in the city. By contrast, the southern Italian urban machines were a top-down creation consisting of a coalition of the national political elite and local patrons who had been able to bring the whole economic, social and political life of the urban centers under their direct hierarchical control. They established a more or less monolithic regime. The most important cleavages were the cleavages inside the ruling elite itself. As long as their coalition remained untouched, alternatives weren't possible.
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If the social structure of the North American cities which spontaneously emerged out of urbanization, industrialization and migration, was the precondition for the creation of urban machines, the social structure, emerging out of the developmental program of the DC in the Mezzogiorno, was in the main the conscious product of a power-seeking and power-keeping strategy. If in the former the social structure was, at most, altered by the urban machines, in the latter these urban and regional political machines had a formative influence on it. In the former, an (important) minority of the population, white and blue collar public employees, formed a class dependent on the urban machines; others groups merely stayed more or less in cooperation or open conflict with them. The pluralistic and open nature of the socioeconomic and political life was somehow altered, but not superseded. In Southern Italy, one way or another nearly every social group became a client of the party apparatus of the DC. The society became dominated by one group and one principle and for some time had no room for any alternative.
If politics in North America was much more an outcome of economics than the other way around, in Southern Italy interpenetration and colonization of the society by the state ("statalization of society" - Graziano) and politicization of the economy went hand in hand. I f the former were characterized by bottom-up politics, the latter proved to be strong top-down regimes. I f in the former, the support of state and national elite groups could be decisive at a certain stage of development, in the latter this support was crucial for the mere existence of urban machines. Distinct types with different actor systems and different evolutionary tendencies were formed. I f in the North American Case urban machine politics proved to be a dependent by-product of dynamic development, in Southern Italy it was the decisive factor, for a stagnant path of dependent modernization. In different institutional environments and national contexts, relying on divergent cultural and institutional legacies, the urban machine had a distinct impact on the fate of each society out of which it emerged.
4. Moscow's Post-Soviet Political Regime
Transitions offer alternatives. Choices have to be made, opportunities taken. The years 1989-1991 marked not only the end of the Soviet Union, the Soviet communist system, and perestroika as the last attempt to transform this system within the boundaries of state socialism, but also the beginning of the search for a new order in Russia and the other post-Soviet states. Insofar as the formation of a stable political system in Russia remains problematic and open for further development, and because the federal center was occupied with its internal problems for quite some time, the Russian regions received the chance and the difficult task of charting their own path in the economic and political crisis in the years after 1991 (Heinemann-Gruder 1995: 1252)1 2. Most observers in the regions diagnosed the situation as "a war of all against all" (Mjasnikov 1993: 57). Later
The main sources for the following analysis are the Russian and Moscow newspapers Kommersant Daily, Moskovskii Komsomolets, Moskovskiye Novosti and Nezavisimaia Gazeta.
Reliable scientific empirical data is not available. For the most part "facts" mentioned in the articles cannot be checked. Andrei Fadin, one of the best informed Moscow journalists, noted that the relatively high level of press freedom which gives a journalist the right to criticize Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin or even the mafia godfathers more or less unrestrained, does not apply when covering stories dealing with city real estate and the distribution of power and property in the city and its surroundings. Fadin further claimed that no figure in the Moscow mass media was more taboo than Luzhkov, remarking that this was quite natural as all journalists are under Luzhkov's supervision (Fadin 1996) Most interesting is a kind of autobiography written (at least partially) by Luzhkov himself, entitled "Moscow, We Are Your Children". It is part of the official self-portrayal of Luzhkov. Based on some of the materials mentioned, some interesting analyses were undertaken by Colton (1995), Chinayeva (1996) and Razuvaev (1996). These we will return to below.
The evident weakness of using these sources as the empirical basis for the following analysis calls for a very cautious handling of the "data" and "facts" mentioned in the articles and books. Too much reality is hidden behind the scenes and too much on the scene cannot be taken at face value.
Nevertheless, they are part of highly symbolic politics. Firstly, it would appear to be better to rely on information which only reflects the plain public events. All other information has to be understood as gossip, defamation, apology, or interpretation and demands special treatment. To a large degree this will reduce the empirical data available. Secondly, given this specific background of empirical sources, information has to be interpreted on the basis of plausibility. This requires some systematic model of interpretation which explains the empirical sources on the basis of assumed patterns of interaction inside a more or less stable regime. To this end, the concept of urban machines presented above will be used as a temporary heuristic substitute.
1 2 The causes for this can be traced back to the "Leninist legacy" (Jowitt 1992; Silnizki 1990;Teckenberg 1989; Willerton 1992), and the weakness of the reform elites (Lupher 1992;
Evans 1993; Lane/Cameron 1994). The building of new institutions lagged behind the destruction of the old structures, and the main questions about the constitutional system were left open, becoming a topic of lasting political struggle (Cohen 1993; Babst 1994; Mick 1994; Senatova/
Kasimov 1994; Slater 1994; Tolz/Wishnevsky 1994; Bos 1996).
developments confirm the thesis that the political regimes in the majority of the 1 ^ regions have converged into a kind of "delegative democracy" (O'Donnell 1994) . The political development of Moscow seems to be one of the most interesting cases of a regional transition in Russia, anticipating some tendencies of the other regions as early as 1992. Very early on, the population of Moscow, the Moscow political elites and the most influential economic groups were faced with the problem of what to do within the framework of the new opportunity structure of a system of free elections. Simple questions had to be answered: What to do with the democratic vote one got, how to get elected and reelected, and how to represent economic interests under the new political conditions. Different strategies were tested and different actors tried to influence the outcomes.
After a brief look at the period prior to the transition and after providing some general information about the latest elections (4.1.), I will comment on the institutional environment and the political culture with which the actors of the political transition are faced (4.2.). The Moscow political regime as the most important outcome of this process is comprised of a special institutional setting - a party of power (4.3.), a specific socioeconomic system - a municipal capitalism (4.4.), a distinct ideology of patrimonial democracy (4.5.), a special interplay between local and federal power (4.6.) and an alliance between Moscow's political and economic groups (4.7.). The last chapter will provide an outlook on the prospects of the Moscow regime (5.). Insofar as the Moscow political regime is centered around its mayor, Yurii M . Luzhkov, to a large extent we will deal not only with an evolution of institutions but also with the career of a person.
4.1. The Origins
Since 1918 when the first Communist government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, the latter became the monopolistic center of Soviet and is now the present-day center of Russian power. Since then it has been Moscow where the central state administration, the military and the military-industrial-science establishment, and the major institutions of science and culture have been concentrated. It became the heart of the Union-wide infrastructure. It is from here that the contacts of the Soviet Union with the outside world have been controlled.
1 3 For a closer examination see Gelman (1996).
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From 1900-1990 the official number of inhabitants increased from one to nine million, surpassing St. Petersburg (Leningrad) with 4.5 million and outstripping all other regions of Russia in the number of inhabitants, and political and commercial weight and influence. The local power focus - the Moscow party organization - remained under the direct personal control of the Secretary General of the party.
In 1985, in the very first wave of cadre renewal shortly after his appointment to Secretary General, Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Boris Yeltsin - a regional party secretary of Sverdlovsk, a former colleague - to head the Moscow party committee. Given the persistent resistance of the Moscow party apparatus, Yeltsin became a strong populist leader. Using harsh methods, he turned against the system of nomenklatura privileges, corruption and party autocracy. He began to reorganize the structure of city governance by shifting some of power of the party to the city's state executive. At the height of his reign he replaced almost the entire city government with managers of industry. Yurii Luzhkov, at the time a fifty-year old leading figure in the Ministry of Chemistry and member of the Moscow Soviet, became the first deputy.
In his autobiography "Moscow, We Are Your Children", Luzhkov mentioned two important areas of his work as first deputy of the Moscow city administration - licensing the cooperative movement and restructuring the food supply system to Moscow. Both are symptomatic for, on the one hand, the disintegration of the command economy and its shadow market, and, on the other, the emergence of new patterns of governance. Luzhkov's assessments of the cooperative movement are ambiguous. Stressing the dynamism, energy and commitment of its representatives which set them apart from many of the state employees, he criticizes this movement for having destroyed the old system without replacing it, and for having created inflation without providing for a real increase in goods and services (Luzhkov 1996a: 142 f.). But he didn't mention its strong criminal organizations and the role the new laws played in legalizing the black market.
The "perestroika" of the Moscow Agroprom, the giant organization responsible for the supply of food to the Soviet capital (representing nearly 15 percent of the Soviet Union's food products), was an action for which Luzhkov first won esteem in the eyes of Moscow's inhabitants. A year after his appointment he was able to abolish the detested system of temporary assignment to the filthy fruit and vegetable shops by public employees from plants, scientific and cultural
institutions and lower-level administrative organs through the introduction of some kinds of material incentives for the workers and managers of these stores and shops, thereby increasing the real output. These new forms of Moscow governance demonstrated their superiority to party-command methods. Insofar as supply is the most difficult problem to solve in a system of permanent deficits, Luzhkov's ability to stabilize the supply of the most necessary goods to Moscow during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the demise of the command system and the end of party rule earned him a great deal of credibility in the eyes of the Russian elite and the population of Moscow.
In the spring of 1990, a new Russian Parliament was elected as a result of a much more democratic electoral system than that introduced a year earlier prior to the elections to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. At the same time, local elections in Moscow and other parts of Russia fundamentally altered the composition of the Soviets, at least in the central reform-oriented regions.
Gavriil Popov, one of the most famous radical intellectuals and a staunch proponent of the abolishment of party rule and rapid privatization and marketization, became Head of the Moscow Soviet. The Soviet Deputies demanded the replacement of the entire senior staff of the Moscow administration.
But in this instance, Yeltsin interfered personally. He convinced Popov to keep the executive branch of government intact and to propose Luzhkov as the candidate for the head of the executive branch of local power.
On June 12, 1991 - parallel to the first Russian presidential elections - direct elections for a mayor and vice-mayor were held. Popov and Luzhkov received about 67 percent of the vote. The road to a "presidential" system of governance in Moscow had been paved. When Popov finally retired in June 1992, Yeltsin again interfered and appointed Luzhkov. In May 1993, the new Moscow Duma - reduced in number to no more than 35 deputies for a city of about nine to ten million inhabitants and consisting mostly of deputies on whom Luzhkov could rely - was elected for two years. In 1995 the next Duma elections were postponed to 1997. In June 1996 - again parallel to the Russian presidential elections - Luzhkov, running for mayor, received over 89 percent of the vote. His closest rival - a candidate for the Communist party - stood no chance. Numerous opinion polls have shown that Luzhkov has a high standing in Moscow. In 1995, 70 percent of the persons interviewed gave a positive assessment of Luzhkov, compared with 11 percent for Yeltsin and 18 percent for Chernomyrdin (Mushtuk
1995: 27). A mechanism was put into place which gave Luzhkov broad public
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support and secured his reelection. Moscow became a politically stable city. What had happened? What are the most important mechanisms maintaining this stability? On whom can it rely? Where is this regime headed? Can it be regarded as a special kind of a post-Soviet urban machine?
The democratically elected Moscow Soviet of 1990 rode in on a wave of political mobilization. Strong proponents of an anti-Communist policy received an approximate two-thirds majority. They used their democratic platform as an instrument in their political struggle against communist rule and as a tool for lobbying particularistic interests. The democratic deputies lacked any disciplined party organization, representing on the one hand a broad political movement with an anti-systemic orientation and, on the other hand, the political and social demands of a highly fragmented society (Ostalskii 1990). The Soviets were transformed into forums of open discussion unable to find any answers to urgent questions (Stankevich 1990). This left two roads open - (1) the transformation of the democratic movement into (different) parties, the creation, implementation and enforcement of a stable legal system, and the establishment of a government under control of the city parliament or (2) that articulation and aggregation of the interests of the municipal community be left to the executive power and its leaders. The latter occurred. There are two main groups of factors which determined this outcome. The first can be described as preconditions favoring strong charismatic leaders and their interpersonal networks over parties and other intermediary organizations, and formal institutions and regulations established by law. These preconditions are above all the Russian institutional environment and the given political culture. The second group of factors consists of the institutional strategies chosen by the Moscow government to establish the superiority of executive over legislative power. To start with we will look at the first group.
4.2. Institutional Environment and Political Culture
The paths of transitions are shaped by the past. As Nielsen et. al. put it: "... post- socialist trajectories are heavily dependent on a dense and complex institutional legacy such that the (often invisible) remnants of previous economic and political orders still shape expectations and patterns of conduct. This is particularly significant in relation to all those social patterns and networks which generated the flexibility necessary to compensate for the rigidities of centralized planning and nomenklatura governments and which, in a context of uncertainty, i f not chaos, provide important reference points and resources to enable life to go on." (Nielsen
et al. 1995: 4) Institutional innovations introduce some new elements into an existing pool of institutional fragments and recombine them in a new way.
The new political regime did not grow in a vacuum, but in a very special institutional environment, directly affected by changes at the federal level and confronted with the habits and cognitive frames of a distinct political culture. The following five hypotheses about the impact of this environment and culture on the Moscow political transition are briefly explained below - (1) the lasting confrontation of institutions instead of party competition; (2) the concentration of mass expectations shouldered by the executive branch; (3) the personalization of social trust; (4) the low turnover in personnel in the Moscow administration and (5) the mixture of individualistic strategies to get by with the help of friends and one's own initiative, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the collective expectations on the state.
Firstly, the highly politicized and polarized context of Russian politics had its decisive influence on Moscow and paralyzed efforts to build up parties. A l l political energy was concentrated in the confrontation between different institutions - from 1990-1991 between the Russian and Soviet Union leadership and from 1991-1993 between the Russian President and the Supreme Soviet of Russia. During the crucial stage of the initial formation of the political system, institutions played a political role "normally" assumed by parties only. When the new electoral system was introduced in December 1993, a political system was already in place which much more resembled presidentialism than semi- presidentialism. Surrounded by weak parties and strong informal groups, charismatic leaders were located at the center of democratic competition, often controlling state resources and using them for their own political aims.
Secondly, the concentration of mass expectations on top individuals of executive institutions and organizations belongs to the legacy of neotraditional Soviet bureaucratic patrimonialism (Jowitt 1992). As Luzhkov put it nicely when explaining how Popov reverted to executive power (being himself the head of the legislative branch of government) and proposing to introduce the position of mayor legitimated by direct elections: "In this case, I think the logic of responsibility worked. As the head of the Moscow Soviet he was in front of the people, the real khozain (boss - M . B.) of the city. I f war veterans are unable to get
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products in the stores, to whom will they appeal? Who is responsible i f one's water pipes freeze? Certainly not the deputies of the legislature!" (Luzhkov 1996a:
182)
In the spring of 1995, an opinion poll asked Moscow inhabitants to whom they felt the power in Moscow belonged. The results we will turn to later in greater detail show that the vast majority of Moscow inhabitants felt that the power lay in the hands of "mafia-like corrupt groups" and the Moscow government in power, very often identifying both. The Moscow legislature, the City Duma, was completely out of the running (Figure 3). 56 percent of experts questioned considered the Moscow government as the main power center in the city.
Figure 3: Opinion poll - May/June 1995 (Mushtuk 1995:25 -26): "In your opinion to whom does the real power belong in Moscow?"
Thirdly, the lack of trust in stable legal rules and instruments of legal enforcement people regarded as one of the obstacles to democratization and marketization most difficult to overcome (Sztompka 1995), was partially compensated by an ambiguous equivalent - trust in individuals. Describing the role of his predecessor, Popov, and besides implicitly legitimizing his own role, Luzhkov made the point that a foreign investor coming to Russia arrives not only in a different country but in a different civilization: "He can't accept that a civilization exists where nothing is guaranteed - neither the laws defining the status of the investments, nor the norms regulating the solution of conflicts, neither the way to insure the investments, nor the inviolability of the 'rules of the game'... Under these
conditions only an individual can compensate for the deficiencies of this system.
The authority of Popov worked in a way a healthy system of laws and norms generally does." (Luzhkov 1996a: 194) Once established, this replacement of the rule of law with the rule of "trustworthy" persons became a self-perpetuating mechanism. Given the ineffectiveness of the Moscow Soviet which consisted mostly of "democrats", Popov authoritatively decided to begin with the privatization, thereby consciously breaking with the democratic tradition established only months before under his own leadership (Davydova 1991c).
In situations of uncertainty in which larger gains and losses are possible, it may indeed be rational for individuals to unilaterally give up control of resources to someone else who would appear to be better informed (Coleman 1994: 174). The result is that few may influence a situation in which many are voluntarily involved, while at the same time increasing their information advantage. In general, transformations are periods of uncertainty where power and wealth are redistributed. The Russian transformation in particular is characterized by extreme uncertainty on the one hand and huge stakes on the other - a situation out of which a high concentration of information and influence emerges. So it was much more rational to give up control over one's resources and follow the actions of the strictly organized executive power with recognized leaders, as opposed to adhering to the actions of a legislature consisting of 500 persons with no clear party lines, hierarchies or direct influence on anything other than declarations.
Even the most harsh critics of Luzhkov would recognize that he has proven to be a reliable man and a very effective manager who keeps his word. Not until this situation changes would a contraction of influence be rational for the many who earlier gave away control over their own resources. In doing so they would face established power structures disadvantageous to them. Once entrenched, such structures of inequality are often self-perpetuating.
Fourthly, in contrast to many of the other Russian regions where the real power was initially transferred from the party committee to the newly elected regional Soviet, in Moscow the power shifted more or less directly from the Moscow party committee to the Moscow state administration. This was caused by the cadre renewal during Yeltsin's reign by the fact that after his replacement no other party leader could gain enough authority to regain power from the state administration, and by the power vacuum in the capital due to the open political struggle of the late perestroika, concentrated above all in Moscow. The dense interpersonal networks around the Moscow government and around Luzhkov himself were left
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unscathed. Luzhkov encouraged the Soviet to elect the executive board as a whole stating that "we play only as a team" (Davydova 1991a).
When in 1990 after the election of the Moscow Soviet Yeltsin forced Popov, the newly elected head of this Soviet, to put Luzhkov at the top of executive power, Luzhkov made a very special proposal: "Let's stop the involvement of the executive power in party interests altogether. You are the deputies, you are the politicians. You will discuss the problems, defend your positions, formulate new rules. And we are the managers, we will implement these rules. And as long as this isn't done we will protect the city from collapse." (Luzhkov 1996a: 177) Fearing that the chaos of an uncontrollable situation in Moscow would discredit the new democratic Soviet, and lacking his own power base in the executive branch, Popov accepted this position, at times later on by taking over the executive power himself. From the early perestroika to this day, the continuity of the leading staff of the executive power and the institutional continuity of the state administration as being the real center of power is much greater in Moscow than in most of the other regions, where for the most part interruptions by a shorter or longer lasting interregnum of the legislature have occurred.
Fifthly, Moscow was not only the capitol of the Soviet Union but also the most important center of the Soviet middle class. The most important features of this middle class were, on the one hand, its total dependency on the state and the social security and modest welfare guaranteed by this state and, on the other, its fear of repression and its frustration with ideological indoctrination. This middle class looked at perestroika as the last chance to get rid of the ideological schemes of formal behavior and the repressive state, while keeping social security, welfare and the practices and social networks it developed within the "shadow society" of state socialism. The slogans democracy and market economy represented to them a higher level of social security and justice, liberalization, a greater dependency of the elites on the population and the chance to free themselves from ideology and repression.
Extensive empirical research done by Russian scientists over a longer period has proven that the frequently mentioned "authoritarianism" of the Russian population and elites is not an indication that a political dictatorship and indoctrination has returned. On the contrary, "in this case we face a special autonomization of economic ideas, their separation from the political world. The authoritarian sentiments of the post-Soviet individual are nothing but the desire for a strict state
regulation of the economy (to implement the market or, vice versa, to slow down its development) without restricting political freedom" (Kliamkin et al. 1995: 64).
The support for a authoritarian regime without elections is low.
The preference for a liberal and democratic regime goes hand in hand with high expectations that the state will guarantee social security and a strategy to look for individual solutions to pressing problems. It's true that one third of the population definitely regard it as the duty of the state to secure everyone's welfare, and another third at least partially agree with this opinion (Rose 1996: 18). But the real strategies contrast sharply with this opinion. The majority relies almost totally on friends, relatives and themselves (Figure 4). Formal institutions as the state, enterprises, or interest organizations no longer play a significant role. The dominant orientations of the Russian population are order (zakonnost) (97 percent of the population), communication with friends and relatives (obshchenie) (74 percent) and the family (69 percent). Zakonnost isn't a synonym for the German term Rechtsstaatlichkeit. It expresses the expectation of the implementation of such an order of the society by the state which guarantees everyone's security (Lapin 1996: 16).
Figure 4: Opinion poll, June 1996 (Rose 1996:18): "On whom do you above all rely when faced with problems?" (one or two answers are possible)
friends, on yourself
relatives state employers trade unions welfare etc. organi-
zations
church
The results of these opinion polls are proof of the very low level of trust in institutions of the Russian state and its representatives. A vast majority see
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themselves without any "subject competence" (Almond/Verba 1989: 171). To appeal to these representatives to behave according to stated rules would not appear to be a viable option. The population regards its chances to influence the elites through its own collective self-organization as "competent citizens" as being low. Whereas two-thirds of the population entitled to vote have taken part in the presidential elections since 1991, political activity demanding some kind of collective organization and interest representation has declined. In spite of the growing frustration over social issues, the willingness to take part in some kinds of active protest has also declined (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Opinion poll 1994 (Nazarov 1995: 50): The attitudes towards different forms of protest (in percentage of the interviewed)
• I took part
Signing protest notes Participation in Participation in strikes Violent actions demonstrations (against political
enemies)
Given the alienation and the low level of citizen and subject competence, in contrast to paternalistic expectations, participative norms and reliance on the law don't play any significant role. Leaving politics to the elites, the population sees it as the responsibility of the state to secure stability and order (which it is failing to do). Active participation during elections, the instrumental use of the vote - this would appear to be the inexpensive individual resource used to pressure the elites to fulfill their basic obligations to the population.
