This essay looks at the power model Putin has developed domestically, how it is being deployed abroad, how other neo-authoritarian and hybrid regimes are adopting similar tactics, and the sorts of solutions liberal democracies can adopt to deal with these challenges.
About the Author
Peter Pomerantsev, senior fellow at the Legatum Institute Transitions Forum, writes extensively on twenty-first-century propaganda. He is the author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (2014).
Why are the unfree regimes of the former Soviet world proving so durable? A lack of ideology and—perhaps surprisingly—a degree of openness are proving to be not so much problems…