Sarah Sokhey, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the paper "Social Spending and Putin's Popularity"
Yuval Weber, Global Fellow, The Wilson Center, and author of the paper "Russia's Debate about Economic Growth"
Chris Miller, Assistant Professor of International History, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Eurasia Research Director, Foreign Policy Research Institute
Vladimir Putin is expected be reelected to a new six-year term in Russia's presidential elections on March 18. What will he do next? This next term as president is supposed to be Putin's last, given constitutional term limits. Will he change the constitution, step down, or find some other means of retaining power? Even as Putin faces this political dilemma, he must also address Russia's stagnant economy, still dependent on oil exports and under harsh Western sanctions. Russia's economy is growing slower than rivals such as the U.S. and Europe, falling further behind the West in economic terms. Can the Kremlin fix its economy? Will Putin's new term as president lead to policies that revitalize Russia, or is the country stuck with many more years of economic stagnation and political repression?
This research presented by the panelists has been supported by the Russia Political Economy Project at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Chris Miller is the Research Director in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program. He is also Assistant Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His research examines Russian history and political economy. Dr. Miller’s first book, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR, was published in 2016, and his second book, Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia, will be published in 2018. For more information, see www.christophermiller.net
Sarah Wilson Sokhey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, a Faculty Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, and an Associate Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. She is a member of the PONARS Eurasia group, a network of over 100 academic experts specializing in Russia and Eurasia. Her recent book—The Political Economy of Pension Policy Reversal in Post-Communist Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2017)—examines the global trend in the reversal of a radical pension policy using survival analysis, survey data, and case studies of the Russian, Polish, and Hungarian experiences.
Yuval Weber is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a Kennan Institute Fellow at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School, both in Washington, DC. He is an Assistant Professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia, from which he is currently on leave.
