Flexible Authoritarianism

Abstract Flexible Authoritarianism challenges the idea that the transnational rise of authoritarianism is a backlash against economic globalization and neoliberal capitalism. Flexible authoritarianism—a form of government that simultaneously incentivizes a can-do spirit and suppresses dissent—reflects the resonances between authoritarian and neoliberal ideologies in the contemporary return of strongman rule. The book conveys the look and feel of flexible authoritarianism in Russia through the eyes of up-and-coming youth. Because politicians use neoliberal techniques to perpetuate authoritarian ends (and vice versa), which accounts only partially for the persistence of a flexible authoritarian regime, my analysis focuses on meaning-making processes, cultural forms, and public stories that lead people to tolerate, accept, or even embrace authoritarian practices and neoliberal techniques. Drawing on field observations, in-depth interviews, and analyses of documents and video clips, the book demonstrates how flexible authoritarianism is stabilized ideologically by the cultural codes of cool start-up capitalism, public stories such as those portraying patriotism as a precondition for development, and familiar cultural forms such as the summer camp. It critically evaluates how loyalty to the regime—the order underlying political and economic life in a polity—is produced and contested among those young people who seek key positions in politics, business, the public sector, or the creative industries. While these potential strategic elites, striving to attain the conveniences enjoyed by the middle classes in economically prosperous states, openly criticize corruption and favoritism, they also accept and amplify the Russian government’s practice of blaming poverty and slow development on passivity, indifference to the common good, and a lack of patriotism among ordinary citizens, rather than on the self-serving indifference among those in the higher echelons of power.