title: Why Russia’s Democracy Broke
abstract: Abstract This chapter characterizes Russia’s democratic breakdown in the early 2000s as a slide into authoritarianism with a strongman at its center. Vladimir Putin leveraged close relationships with the nation’s security services to destroy the oligarchs’ hold on Russian politics. By eliminating his political competition, Putin rebuilt the one-party state around himself. Before Putin became president, Russia’s political system was only marginally democratic, but at least elections were competit