“Vladimir Putin and Russian Democracy......are like oil and water”
My latest view (subject to smarter opinions) is that it might be that culture is stronger than ideology and technology, even when they are combined.
(and there is growing discussion of this sort of idea, in think tanks and academia)
Maybe its simply a fact that Russia is Russia - they had their royal Czars, then they had their communist czars and now Putin and his mobocracy simply continue the Russian pattern. And because it fits a very long, very ingrained historic cultural pattern there are not riots in the streets.
This is not offered as a defense of a form of rule, but as possible explanations for why some countries seem to change only the appearance of things, in a remake of an ingrained cultural motif.
Japan adapted quickly to western technology, while its governing system merely changed how it was expressed, not the underlying form - junction of executive and military, enforcing the rule of a strong bureaucracy under moral sanction of the emperor. Now, after two major wars and many smaller ones, the military may no longer call the shots, the emperors blessing is not called for as often and a defacto executive is “elected” under a “democratic” constitution. But, in the day to day world, the central bureaucracy and its regulatory hold on day-to-day life in Japan remains nearly as strong as it was when it supported the Shogun and at a level of “rule” by mere regulation that “democracy” loving Americans would never accept. Japan’s chief executive’s biggest battles do not occur between that chief executive and the legislature, but between that executive and an entrenched and very powerful bureaucracy. The political intrigues evolve from that central bureaucracy - as if they inherited their power from Japanese history - outward to obtain or deflect “representatives” to either support or object to the chief executive’s attempt to steer the ship of state without the approval of that bureaucracy. Americans cannot imagine our chief executive’s cabinet officers installed merely as place holders over bureaucrats with the power to have the appointed cabinet officers removed (not by any “Constitutional” power, but because the politicians in the legislature allow the bureaucrats lobbying of them to operate that way).
Did China actually end its domestic imperial system, or simply establish a permanent bureaucracy with which to maintain a new one, with that bureaucracy itself, not royal blood lines, choosing each new emperor?
It is possible that Russia can only be changed, in democratic terms, marginally and very gradually - or maybe not at all.
I have been thinking the same thing for years. I believe global change will occur and consensus reached at some point due to global communications. Ideas are being shared and expressed on the Internet between the common folk and rulers alike. Sound global ideology that mankind has a right to be free and prosper without being told what to do all the time will emerge but in my opinion it will be decades.