Leaders, Rules, and Personalist Politics

Abstract The central argument of this book is that politics at the apex of authoritarian regimes is not inevitably arbitrary but is structured by a series of rules which members of the ruling oligarchy generally obey. This applies in those regimes where personalist politics, reflected in the existence of an individual leader, exists just as it does in those with a more collective leadership. The argument is prosecuted by showing how these rules developed and changed over the life of the Soviet Union. It shows how the shift between leadership types, from the individual dominance of Stalin to the highly collective nature of Brezhnev, was accommodated within those rules, but also how those rules shaped the different leadership styles. By showing how the rules changed over the life of the regime, it lays bare the mechanisms whereby personalist politics operates in authoritarian regimes and contributes to explaining why such regimes endure.