The resources and limits of power
Personalistic regimes in Russia and Turkey
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Personalistic politics frees politicians such as Putin and Erdoğan from the bother of having to negotiate decisions. This goes hand in hand with a lack of transparency in the selection of the political leadership, centralism and informal government. The regimes in Russia and Turkey have one weakness: the loyalty of voters who continue to support the regimes and of protégés in the business world and the state apparatus risks to erode when clientelistic benefits are no longer available. A potential crisis looms as a result of the charged relationship between the interests of the holders of power themselves, the privileged status of bureaucrats and oligarchs loyal to the regime and the orientation to social groups that support the regime.
(Osteuropa 10-12/2018, pp. 107–118)