There is evidence that the elite in Russia is rallying around Putin, including those who originally expressed misgivings about the invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war.

Is this unity durable – and how might it impact decision-making?

A thread. 1/?
One plausible goal of sanctions might be to provoke splits within the elite, but it looks – for the moment, at least – that sanctions have, rather, brought elite groups closer together in their opposition to the West. 3/?
And, as @LucanWay notes, this is a dynamic seen in regimes beyond Russia: "Sense of existential threat is a powerful source of regime durability in revolutionary regimes I have studied." 4/? https://twitter.com/LucanWay/status/1510609904364658688
But how long will this last? "Rallying 'round the flag" effects aren't indefinite, even if they can be sustained by a number of factors, including media control and reshaping people's emotional connection to the state and their identities. 5/?
By the way, the book "Putin v. the People" by @samagreene and @gbrunc does a brilliant job, among other things, of looking into the "rallying 'round the flag" effect after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. 6/? https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300238396/putin-v-people/
But back to 2022. Elite consolidation in Russia after the 24 February invasion, and in the face of sanctions, may well both align elite preferences on certain issues *and* incentivise people not to make public their policy differences for fear of being labelled a traitor. 7/?
But what about policy areas less obviously connected to Russia's war on Ukraine? There are a large number of socio-economic policy areas that are not directly connected, even if the shift to a war/crisis footing infuses many areas with the logic of "Fortress Russia". 9/?
... that these sometimes spill over into the parliamentary phase of law-making in the national legislature, the Federal Assembly. And that means that, even if parliamentarians mostly rubberstamp initiatives from the executive (the government and the presidency) ... 12/?
That makes the Federal Assembly a rare window onto often-hidden processes between elite actors. (I should say that Russian journalism on these cases has been crucial for my work. So, given the crackdown on independent media, we may know much less – for the moment.) 14/?
It is plausible, though, that, in the short term, when policy disputes are reduced by the need for a common response to sanctions – or when the optics of policy disputes jar with the desired optics of a unified elite – that we see fewer such disputes. But... 15/?
... I can't see this lasting for too long. And part of that relates to the availability of resources. There is likely an inverse relationship between the availability of resources (e.g., money to be spent by different federal ministries) and the likelihood of disputes. 16/?
As the economic impact of sanctions are more keenly felt – by both the elite and the Russian people – there will be fewer resources available to satisfy competing groups. And that may well begin to challenge the current unity seen within the elite. 17/?
The crucial question, then, will be whether these policy disputes have the capacity to grow into broader regime-challenging disputes. 18/?
And my research on the often-dismissed State Duma – the lower chamber of the Federal Assembly – suggests that we might get clues as to the unity of the elite by looking at the law-making process. 19/?
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