Articles and Essays

McFaul in the Quad

The following are selected academic articles and policy essays.

December 27, 1997

The Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian Foreign Policy

International Security

Throughout the history of the modern world, domestic regime change - be it democratization, autocratization, decolonization, decommunization, federal dissolution, coups, or revolutions - has often triggered international conflict and war. (...) The protracted regime transformation under way in Russia seems like a probably precipitant of international conflict. 

January 1, 1994

State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia

World Politics

In January 1992 Russia's first postcommunist government launched a comprehensive economic program to transform the Soviet command system into a market economy. Privatization was and remains the heart of this plan. The original program had a clearly defined objective, namely, to create profit-seeking corporations, privately owned by outside shareholders and not dependent on government subsidies for their survival. Two years later, this objective had not been achieved. 

January 1, 1994

Why Russia's Politics Matter | The Nightmare That Wasn't

Foreign Affairs

The results of Russia's first post-communist election in December 1993 sent a shock wave through the world. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist demagogue of the Liberal Democratic Party, captured almost a quarter of the vote. The pro-reform bloc, Russia's Choice, came away with 15 percent. Provoked by this dramatic outcome, Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin promised a new economic course, declaring that the election market "the end of market romanticism". 

April 1, 1992

A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era

International Organization

With James M. Goldgeier | As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed and old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great power or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism (...), some security analysts are predicting that a world of several great powers will return to the shifting alliances and instabilities of the multipolar era that existed prior to World War II.