March 18 in Russia is more a coronation than an election

Brian Taylor, professor and chair of the political science department at the Maxwell School, is available for comment about the upcoming Russian elections that will likely earn Vladimir Putin his second consecutive and fourth overall term as president.

Taylor is the author of the forthcoming book The Code of Putinism (to be published in June by Oxford Press) and director of the Center for European Studies at Syracuse University.

“March 18 in Russia is more a coronation than an election. Although he holds the title of president, Vladimir Putin is really more like a tsar or a boss.  He is like a tsar because for Russians he is something seemingly eternal, a symbol of the country whose rule is preordained and inevitable,” says Taylor. “He is like a boss in that he is the ultimate decider in the ongoing battle between competing economic and political clans. Regardless of whether we think of Putin as a president, a tsar, or a boss, his next period of rule promises to be his most difficult yet. Putin’s mentality, with its focus on control and order at home and restoring Russia’s great power status abroad, has resulted in a Russia that is stagnating internally and viewed with increasing alarm in the West.”

Taylor is available to speak to media before or after the Russian elections on March 18. Please contact Ellen James Mbuqe, director of news and public relations at Syracuse University, at ejmbuqe@syr.edu or 315.443.1897 or Jessica Smith, director of communications and media at the Maxwell School at jsmith13@syr.edu or 315.443.5492.