There are many examples of governments around the world that aspire to be authoritative. They want to ensure that their will—often defined by an ideology but sometimes just a desire for power—is imposed upon its citizenry as widely and as deeply as possible.
On too many occasions, authoritative governments escalate their practices into authoritarianism. A straw short of totalitarianism or absolute power, authoritarianism is a form of government where heavy incentives are applied to encourage compliance from citizens and cooperation by lower levels of government. Authoritarianism stretches the means of government power beyond what a democratic system would permit, but not so far as to violate the individual freedom and integrity of its citizens.
The problem with open tyranny—apart from being morally abhorrent—is that it tends to catch the attention of the international community. In today’s interconnected world, political leaders who aspire to govern beyond the realm of democracy are often forced to stay away from outright totalitarianism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who by any reasonable measure cannot be defined as a totalitarian, is often accused of running his country on the basis of ‘soft’ authoritarian measures. His methodology is based on the peaceful usurpation of powers by the federal government. At the expense of regional governments, Putin has returned Russia to some of the practices that were used with profligacy by the Soviet rulers.
Many of the criticisms directed at Putin are well deserved, but it is also important to note that his authoritarian government practices are not an entirely different species from the forms that are popular in Europe. To see how Russia can be strikingly similar to the West—or the other way around—let us dive into one of the many recent programs where the federal government in Moscow has used authoritarian practices to expand its control over the country.
In a compelling paper for the journal Geoforum (“Governing through stolichnaya praktika: Housing renovation from Moscow to the regions”; March 2021) Vera Smirnova with the Kansas State University, with coauthors Daniela Zupan and Amanda Zadorian, has analyzed how Putin’s government has created a large, nationwide housing program using government methods that justifiably fall under the authoritarian moniker.
The program is officially aimed at replacing blighted housing projects, many of which were constructed around the country in the 1950s under the Soviet government led by Nikita Khrushchev. A central part of the program is to elevate control over the program from the regions to the federal government.
The program is in some ways uniquely Russian, with tensions in the relationship between Moscow and the regional capitals still echoing the transition from the totalitarian Soviet Union into the decentralized form of government that characterized Russia in the 1990s. This housing program is being used as a tool for the central government to return itself to some degree to the status it had under the Soviet Union—and to do so without having to resort to totalitarian measures.
At the same time, the current practice of centralizing control over a big social-benefit program bears a striking resemblance to similar government practices in Europe, and even in the United States.
The housing program studied by Smirnova et al uses Moscow as a role model for a massive effort to renew the housing stock around Russia:
Within contemporary Russia, Moscow is depicted as the breeding ground of authoritative knowledge and practice. In contrast, the regions are rendered as peripheries in need of catching-up by imitation, despite evidence of successful regional innovations in housing and other policy areas.
The city of Moscow was a vanguard in the housing renewal program. It was primarily aimed at renewing the housing stock built in the Khrushchev era. These housing projects began their lives in government hands—after all, this was back in the Soviet Union—but were privatized after the dissolution of the USSR.
From a general viewpoint, it makes sense that housing units that have been standing for more than six decades may be in need of renovations. It also makes sense to replace them entirely to elevate standards. What does not make sense is the centralization of the program. The purpose is not to find the most appropriate solution for each part of the vast Russian federation—a country that spans eleven time zones—but to increase regional dependency on the central government:
The federal powers not only support, but actively mobilize, the export of Moscow’s practices to the regions. As a government technology, stolichnaya praktika recreates the image of a paternalistic, caring state. Targeting the Khrushchevki for renovation is significant in this regard, since they are widely perceived as a generous gift of the Soviet welfare state.
Funding for the housing program is partly private, partly the responsibility of the regional governments. This seemingly liberates the federal government of the fiscal responsibility for the housing program, but as Vera Smirnova explains in another paper (“From Systemic Underdevelopment to Basic Urban Maintenance“, Changing Societies and Personalities, 2022; co-authored with Ekaterina Adrianova), the regional governments in Russia depend to a large degree on federal funds to stay afloat fiscally.
An IMF paper from 2021 adds similar, valuable insights into Russia’s fiscal federalism.
As a method for the centralization of government powers, the housing program serves its purpose well. Or, in the words of Smirnova et al:
the attempt at a federal expansion of the program opens up new avenues along which to explore the recent reconfigurations of authoritarian power through the mobilization of new technologies of government aimed towards recentralization.
The authoritarian element is in itself never defined with precision, but the authors appear to define it as suggested above, namely as a national government imposing its will upon lower-level governments beyond the realm of a democratically limited government, yet short of the open use of force.
A more precise definition could be that a one-size-fits-all solution to a policy problem replaces the diversity of solutions that springs from the jurisdictional competition between lower government entities.
This more generalized definition extracts the analytical value added by Smirnova et al, and it gives that value a generalized form. Simply put, we can apply this definition of authoritarianism to governments outside of Russia. The centralized delivery of social benefits—of which housing is a prominent example—is an integrated part of the EU’s plan to transform Europe.
Unlike the Russian housing program, where an already existing model in Moscow is simply sized up and distributed across the country, the so-called European Pillar of Social Rights uses an abstract model as its template for member-state reform. However, much like the Russian program, the EU expects its member states to implement the Pillar of Social Rights, i.e., to reconfigure their welfare state programs and other relevant laws in the image of the centralized model.
In an action plan to put the Pillar to work throughout the 2020s, the European Commission wants to see “progress … to reach high levels of employment, skills and employability, and robust social protection systems.” Among its long list of policy goals, the Commission mentions the reduction of poverty as the prime goal under “social protection and inclusion.” This section of their action plan is particularly interesting, given that it spells out the goal behind social benefits programs:
Fostering social inclusion and combating poverty are core values of our European way of life. While levels of poverty have been decreasing in the past decade, inequalities have not followed the same trend. The relative income situation of the most vulnerable has not improved.
In other words, the purpose of the European welfare state, as defined by the EU, is to practice economic redistribution. Its entitlement programs—the fiscal vehicles for delivering social benefits—are supposed to reduce differences between citizens in terms of income, consumption, and wealth.
This may seem like an obvious goal for a welfare state, but it is far from universal. Hungary is a prominent exception from the rule: their welfare state has strong conservative characteristics. It is designed not to make the poor richer by giving them tax-paid benefits; instead, it is designed to encourage the formation, growth, and sustainability of traditional families—regardless of what income level those families live at.
With one of the strongest economies in Europe, Hungary offers its families abundant opportunities to support themselves. The roster of family-promoting benefits and tax incentives form a platform for households to grow from. By contrast, the inequality-oriented welfare state that the EU has in mind would give benefits to individuals and families based solely on their economic status; the goal would be to elevate their standard of living, not to encourage them to grow as a family and become financially successful.
If the European Union had the muscle to do it, they would in all likelihood force Hungary to change its welfare state per the EU’s ideological directive. This would force Hungarian taxpayers to fund the socialist goal of redistribution of income instead of conservative encouragement of family formation and growth. So far, the EU does not have the power to exercise such ideological enforcement, but as the new profits-tax idea suggests, Brussels is working hard on building a bully pulpit from which it can ‘encourage’ member states to comply with its ideological directives.
American fiscal practices have advanced much further in this arena. As I explained already 15 years ago (“Federal Funds and State Fiscal Independence”, Heritage Backgrounder No. 2136, May 2008), U.S. states have grown increasingly dependent on federal funds over the past 60 years. According to the most recent state expenditure report from the National Association of State Budget Officers, in 2021, federal funds paid for 40% of all spending by state governments. That share fell to 38% in 2022, thanks only to an 18% increase in general-fund spending by the states.
For every program that the federal government supports with state-directed funds, it attaches strings directing how the programs are supposed to be run and what their goals are. States are then forced to contribute so-called matching funds to secure a continued inflow of federal funds. Of the $537 billion that the states spend on education for kids from kindergarten through 12th grade, 22% comes from the federal government. Medicaid, a health insurance program for lower-income families, is run by the states but 68% of the funds come from the federal government.
Formally, all the programs that are co-funded by the federal government are voluntary for the states. In practice, not a single state has made any effort to pull out of the programs. Instead, they have gradually become more dependent on federal money to provide social benefits that their residents have come to take for granted. Yet, due to the profuse presence of federal funding, these programs are designed and executed according to templates drawn up by policymakers and government administrators in Washington, D.C. Local innovation is limited and discouraged by the construction of the programs; a reform model that I developed ten years ago resonated in important legislative circles but never gained any traction.
When government appropriations are used explicitly for authoritarian purposes, it is valid to speak of ‘fiscal authoritarianism.’ The authoritarian component is reinforced by the fact that in all three examples given here, a one-size-fits-all model is used to govern a welfare state. Inevitably, this results in the loss of policy innovation through ideological monopolization. It ends or minimizes local influence, making it difficult to adapt programs to local needs.
Last but not least, there is an unsound centralization of powers in the hands of distant bureaucrats. Combined with the lack of jurisdictional competition—there is only one authority that can define the programs—this build-up of centralized power easily expands the authoritarian nature of these programs.
