PONARS Policy Memo 285 - Leadership Succession in the Russian Federation: After 2008?

In just over five years, Vladimir Putin will be constitutionally obliged to step down as Russia’s president. Although Putin’s popularity rating remains in the 70–85 percent range, and his reelection to a second term in 2004 seems almost assured, the nature of the post-Putin succession is still hard to foresee. This memo argues that given the continuing absence in Russia of reliable institutional mechanisms to ensure a peaceful transfer of power to opposition forces at the ballot box, 2008 will mark a crucial turning point for Russia’s new democracy—the outcome of which may depend on the degree to which currently inchoate anti-American sentiments among Russia’s younger generation can be mobilized by ambitious Russian political elites.
 

Stephen E. Hanson