Shock-Resistant Authoritarianism: Schoolteachers, Infrastructural State Capacity & Authoritarian Resilience in Putin’s Russia

Naralia Forrat

When: Thursday, December 3, 4:00 PM

Where: 206 Ingraham Hall

Sponsors: CREECA

About the Lecture: Social policy and the public sector contribute to authoritarian resilience by enhancing the infrastructural state power rather than only through redistribution. Using the example of the 2012 presidential elections in Russia, Forrat demonstrates that Putin’s regime used schoolteachers who were frequently members of local electoral commissions to implement massive electoral fraud. The school system, present in every community and administratively connected to the state apparatus, served as an organizational base for this maneuver that allowed Putin’s regime to withstand the challenge of declined popular support. The proposed distinction between the redistributive and infrastructural roles of the public sector has implications for research on social policy, authoritarian resilience, infrastructural state power, and the relationships between them.

About the Speaker: Natalia Forrat is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Northwestern University; her dissertation title is “Authoritarian Welfare State: Social Policy, Regime Resilience, and Infrastructural State Capacity in Putin’s Russia.” She received a Fulbright Graduate Student Grant for Master’s degree study in Higher Education at the University of Michigan from 2006-2008. Most recently, she published the article “The political economy of Russian higher education: why does Putin support research universities?” in the journal Post-Soviet Affairs. Her research interests include political sociology, social policy and political economy of authoritarianism, and post-communist countries.