The economic basis of the legitimacy of the political authority in modern Russia: the state and the problems of its strengthening

Another wave of democratization (that was, in fact, a type of the forcible export of democracy), the universalization of types of political regimes and legitimation models altogether caused the growth of significance of providing the economic stability in the process of maintaining the legitimacy level. There is an evident and strong correlation between the changes of the living standard, the level of the public real revenues in Russia and the fluctuation of the president's rating, which, taking into account the realities of the Russian political system, could be treated as the legitimacy level of the national political regime. Active exploitation of the integrative factors, such as a foreign threat or common national goals, might be very fruitful for government legitimacy but lasts too short. So the most important long-term driver for maintaining legitimacy level is providing economic growth and allowing various strata of society getting benefits of it. In other words, it's providing acceptable living standard. Socially oriented Russian model of economic development, installed by V. Putin in the early 2000s, has been ensuring the stability of the political regime for a long time. Nevertheless, the present-day Russian government faces far more complicated tasks. And many of them come from the forming new world order, which is going to evoke new threats and opportunities for the Kremlin. Future outcome of the actual global confrontation for Russia in many respects depends on the effectiveness of maintaining and developing economic basis of the political legitimacy.