The Power of Frames: Contrasting processes of political selection

Frames decide everything! And there is hardly a person who disputes this axiom. However, it is implemented in different ways. In the big theater of politics, the way leaders come to power can often determine the trajectory of nations. At the heart of this process is the concept of framing, a prism through which societies choose their leaders and shape their destiny. Nevertheless, the implementation of this axiom differs dramatically in Western democracies and authoritarian regimes, which leads to completely different results.

Thus, Western countries have developed a system - transparent, equal elections, allowing for positive selection, thanks to which the worthiest ascend to the top of power. This system requires the applicant to have positive qualities: he must have high intelligence and rich experience, be a strong leader, a true professional and ... sincere.  But in authoritarian societies, such a question is solved in a narrow circle of the elite through palace intrigues. And if the choice is made non-publicly, then completely different qualities are required: proximity to those in power, loyalty to them, family ties, the ability to intrigue and please, deceit, etc. Negative selection works, and predatory, incompetent individuals in economics or politics make their way into power. Eventually, with their light hand, the country begins to degrade and enters a period of cataclysms.

Let us consider the deployment of these provisions in a practical plane using the example of two competing systems of the USA and the Russian Federation (USSR). The American elections are a global event that is being closely watched in all corners of the world. This is a spectacular, but at the same time, a very difficult competition.  First, the candidates go through a sieve of elections within the political organization itself.  To do this, primary elections (primaries) are held in each individual state, where party members vote for the nominated candidates. Further, at the congress, the leader of the primaries is confirmed as the main candidate. After that, the race of the two main leaders – from the Democratic and Republican parties - begins. They travel around the country, meet with its residents, which gives voters and applicants the opportunity to get to know each other better. The future president knows exactly how the people live and what the citizens expect from him. After going through the trials of the election race, the members of the staff develop trusting relationships, and by the end of the election, a well-coordinated country management team is formed. Before voting, national debates of candidates are held online, which are broadcast on all TV channels, and it is difficult to cheat or deceive voters on them, which allows them to decide on their candidate.

In the Soviet Union, a different system was used. When the Bolsheviks came to power, all their opponents, both inside and outside the party, were destroyed. Dissent was harshly persecuted. After the elections, the Soviet leaders were not interested in the internal political life of the country since its population had no leverage over the rulers. The principle was "not how they vote, but how they think."  Then the Soviet leaders began to seek success and recognition in the international arena to satisfy their ambitions. But they did not have the skills necessary to conduct a political struggle, because they came to power without going through the sieve of political struggle, as it happens in democratic countries, but only through internal political intrigues. Therefore, it is not surprising that, for example, N. Khrushchev lost the main battles of J. Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev to R. Reagan. And the current political power of Russia is close to defeat in the international arena.

So, Khrushchev and Kennedy clashed during the Caribbean crisis. The Soviet leader was a typical representative of the party nomenclature, already at the age of 24 he became a member of the Bolshevik Party, had no higher education. However, he graduated from the All-Union Industrial Academy, which, although it was considered a higher educational institution, provided secondary school education, as well as technical knowledge necessary for managerial work in industry (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Union Industrial Academy). While studying at the Industrial Academy, he met his wife and. Stalin, which, according to Nikita Sergeevich himself, turned out to be a lucky lottery ticket for him. Thanks to this acquaintance, he began to move up the career ladder, and after Stalin's death he headed the government of the USSR, because he was strong not in the field of party and economic activities, but in palace intricacies: in particular, he initiated and led the arrest and execution of Beria, the main contender for power. Khrushchev was formed in a country where all the main means for the government to achieve its goals were repression, aggression and forceful pressure. He transferred this style to international politics, which he did not engage in before becoming head of state. Therefore, it is not surprising that at the UN meeting he pounded with his heel, waving his fist, shouted to those who disagree with the position of the USSR, "we will bury you" (See 1, ed.). And such a leader wanted to compete with the President of the United States, J. Kennedy.

Kennedy graduated from Harvard with a degree in International Relations. Unlike Khrushchev (who was a commissar in the military councils), he participated in real combat operations in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. When the boat on which he served as an officer was sunk, Kennedy, despite his back injury, not only swam to shore himself, but also dragged a wounded comrade with him, spending a total of 9 hours in the water. 10 days after that, having recovered, he returned to service. He was elected to the U.S. Congress and Senate. The presidential race was won by Nixon, the future president of the United States, who split China from the USSR. Kennedy became president after D. Eisenhower, a World War II hero. It is clear that it was necessary to have phenomenal personal qualities in order to stand out against such bright personalities and get the approval of the electorate.  And Khrushchev decided to scare such a person, "to put a hedgehog in their pants," as he put it himself. He did not read the dossier specially prepared for him on Kennedy, whom he considered a boy in short pants and thought that he was not solving anything. And behind Kennedy were businesspeople from Dallas, representatives of the power bloc and the military-industrial complex. As you can see, the Soviet system brought to the top of power a man with a narrow worldview, with a distorted view of the American political system and believing that a weakling could become president of the United States. Naturally, he made a mistake and lost the duel with Kennedy, who was not afraid of his nuclear blackmail, but put the US nuclear forces on alert number one. And the Russians had to retreat.

Such a large country and a world power as the USSR was governed by a Politburo of 25 people, and most of them were people of age. The Politburo itself, whose composition changed rather slowly, was dominated by a narrow circle of 5-7 people, whose decisions were approved at a general meeting without much discussion. This system of choosing a leader, more like a transfer of power than an election, was very ineffective:  elderly people whose physical condition did not allow them to perform their official duties (Chernenko and Andropov) were elected to this role.  Due to his illness, Brezhnev has not actually been involved in the management of the state in recent years. After three leaders died in a row from 1982 to 1985, the Politburo decided to choose a young Secretary General, that is, age served as the main criterion, and other important and necessary qualities for a leader were neglected. And it turned out to be Mikhail Gorbachev. Under a normal political system, the rise to power of the man who later led the USSR to collapse would have been impossible. When a leader is determined in a narrow circle of Politburo members, and not on open political platforms, sooner or later this was bound to happen. This is a very important point, since many in Russia consider this period of the history of the USSR not natural, but accidental. Gorbachev graduated from the law faculty of Moscow State University, and although he was sent to the Stavropol Prosecutor's office, he did not work a day in his specialty, but immediately switched to Komsomol, and then to party work. He rose to the position of first secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee of the CPSU.  He moved up the career ladder through the patronage of F.K. Kulakov, a former Stavropol party leader who became a member of the Politburo and worked in Moscow. There were government sanatoriums and rest homes in Stavropol, where top officials of the country were treated and spent their holidays. After becoming the head of the region, Gorbachev had the opportunity to establish personal contacts with the most senior officials of the USSR in these institutions. And very soon he became a member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU for agriculture, although he had the nickname Mishka-envelope (according to the investigator for special cases of the USSR Prosecutor's Office Ilyukhin) because of his commitment to bribes. To attract the attention of the central authorities to his figure, he promotes the Ipatov method of harvesting grain. A lot of programs and documentaries are being filmed. However, later it turns out that this method is harmful, as it contributes to grain loss and equipment wear. As you can see, Gorbachev did not disdain to resort to deception and forgery to achieve his goal. Having reached the top of power, such mediocrity suddenly decided to reform the country and compete with world leaders. But his reforms and leadership style led to the fact that, drowning in blood, the state collapsed. So R. Reagan and J. Bush, who was used to political struggle, had no difficulty circumventing Gorby, as he was called in the West, by persuading him to reduce strategic nuclear forces and withdraw from Eastern Europe without any compensation. They say that when Reagan saw the Secretary General with a Rolex watch and in a Yves Saint Laurent suit, he exclaimed: "This one will sell his homeland."  And this characterizes Gorbachev very well: there is no smoke without fire. And even now, many residents of Russia consider Gorbachev a traitor.

Reagan, insisting on the fundamental immorality of the Soviet regime, considered the USSR an evil empire and saw his main political task in the crushing of the Soviet Union. During his presidency, he adopted the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) Program, transferred the arms race into space, and brought the defense budget to $1 trillion (today, the Pentagon's budget is less than this amount)  and he increased aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan 10 times. How short-sighted a politician must be to concede to a President with such intentions.  The Americans then managed to conduct their own version of the disarmament scheme, which practically did not affect the sea-based missiles, for which they had an advantage. As a result, the Soviet Union rapidly eliminated 2 times more missiles than the United States (1836 and 859, respectively), almost 3 times more launch missiles (851 vs. 283), and most importantly, destroyed Soviet missiles could carry almost 4 times more nuclear warheads than American (3154 vs. 846). The newest promising development, recently adopted into service, the Relief mobile missile systems, which caused particular concern to the Pentagon, also went under the knife. In response, Gorbachev received not only additional guarantees, but absolutely no bonus for compliance, on the contrary, he refused the requirement to link the issue of missiles with the issue of soybeans. The end of the Cold War was set during a meeting between the Presidents of the United States. Bush and Gorbachev in Malta, where Mikhail Sergeyevich agreed to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe and the unification of Germany without linking the dissolution or rejection of NATO expansion. Some members of the Politburo and supporters of the military-industrial complex did not welcome both of these agreements, but authoritarian regimes are so arranged that there is no system of counterweights between the institutions of power. One person can decide the fate of a country. In democratic countries, unpopular presidential decisions can be challenged, which we constantly observe in the United States. Therefore, we agree with the American Sovietologist William Taubman, who stated that "the United States would not have been able to win the Cold War if Gorbachev had not contributed to it."

The system of public administration, which differed from Western standards, then prevented the Soviets, and now Russia, from building harmonious relations with Western countries.  As in other fields, it is impossible to develop and improve one's abilities in politics in the absence of competition.  If there is a political situation in the country, it progresses steadily and does not face events leading to cataclysms that negatively affect its development.  If we trace Vladimir Putin's path to the heights of power, it is not difficult to notice that before being appointed acting head of state, he did not engage in open political activity, although there was such an opportunity. There were only continuous appointments. Being from St. Petersburg, he studied in this city and worked for a long time in its Mayor's Office in high positions, replacing the mayor in his absence. But after Sobchak's loss in the mayoral election, he did not fight for this position, but moved to Moscow, where he got a job in the Presidential Office. The reason for his departure from St. Petersburg could be the appearance of his name in the materials on corruption. However, despite this, he was appointed deputy head of the Presidential Administration. For the American system, this is almost impossible, and such personalities there are removed from the political arena forever. The second reason was most likely that, like any representative of the Soviet nomenclature, he feels better in hardware games than in open political competition.  As in the Soviet years, Putin was recommended to  B. Yeltsin  a particularly close narrow group of people: they needed a tough and loyal hand in power so that after Yeltsin's departure they would not lose their positions and their acquired fortune. As you can see, the political elite is not worried about the fate of the country, but about their future. This is one of the distinguishing features of authoritarian regimes from democratic ones, which ultimately leads to disaster. Putin was unexpectedly appointed acting President of the country on January 31, 1999. And he still leads the country, winning elections at the expense of administrative resources and eliminating his political opponents.  As a result, Russia is fighting a third war and is under sanctions from major developed countries. Now the relationship between Russia and the United States is much worse than during the Cold War. Russia is waging a large-scale war in Ukraine, which is the largest military conflict on the continent since World War II. How inefficient should the electoral system be so that a person who could not calculate the degree of resistance of the former Soviet republic, with whose population Russians lived in the same country for more than 300 years, could get to the top of power. And this suggests that he is unlikely to be able to competently analyze processes and draw the right conclusions in the field of politics with major powers with a different political culture.

The evolutionary development of the state provides for the provision of citizens with the opportunity to participate in the political life of the country. And if the citizens of the USSR had such an opportunity, the collapse of the country would not have been bloody, but peaceful. Both the relations of the newly independent states and their internal processes would be just as peaceful because the high political culture acquired through participation in political processes would allow making the right decisions in crisis situations.

For example, the Baltic countries that were joined to the USSR late, thanks to the preservation of political culture, were able to go their way without excesses, although the central government tried very hard to ignite the confrontation of the Russian minority with the Indigenous population. But in the South Caucasus, it succeeded, because, having lost independence in the 20s of the last century, the countries of the region lost the skills of high political culture, and therefore it was easy to manipulate them. And the fact that civil wars later occurred in these republics is also a consequence of the low level of political culture.

In one of our conversations with MSU teachers, they outlined the economic situation in Moscow and noted that with the current salary it is impossible to keep up with the price increase. When we asked if it was possible to prevent this process, they replied: "We are small people and we do not engage in politics." Statistically speaking, Russians are a less politicized nation than Americans: 48.5 million people belong to the Democratic Party of the USA, and 35.7 million people belong to the Republican Party, that is, in general, 84.2 million citizens or 34% of voters are concentrated in the two parties.  The Russian Federation has a completely different picture. The total number of members of the three main parties – United Russia, the LDPR and the Communist Party – is 2.8 million people, which is 2.5% of voters, which is 13.6 times (!) less than in the USA.  The alienation of citizens from political processes leads to negative selection when choosing a leader, which ultimately leads to sad consequences for the country. 

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1. On October 12, 1960, during a meeting of the 15th UN General Assembly, at which the "Hungarian question" was discussed, N. Khrushchev, to show that he was not interested in the report, took off his shoe ... knocked it lightly on the table several times, as if wanting to knock out a stone that allegedly got there  (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ботинок_Хрущёва).