With the limited space, this paper will focus on one particular theory: the factors of political scientist Michael McFaul. Based on an analysis of democratic transition in three former communist countries, he distinguishes five necessary conditions to make a successful transition possible. Because of its communist background, the theory of McFaul could offer a possible explanation why Russia did not change into a proper democracy so far. By using the five factors that McFaul distinguishes, this paper will analyse to which extent Russia meets these conditions. The main question in this paper will be:.
To what extent does Russia under Putin anno 2014 meet the conditions established by McFaul to undergo a democratic transition? .
By testing Russia to the conditions mentioned by McFaul, we can better understand on which factors Russia falls short. Hopefully this paper will also offer a better insight into which conditions are important to establish democracy. A better understanding of the situation in Russia will maybe improve our knowledge about which conditions are necessary to build a democracy. This paper is structures as followed: first a theoretical framework will be presented, in which the conditions that McFaul distinguishes will be explained. Thereafter, these conditions will be tested on the situation in Russia, to determine to which extent it fulfils them. At the end there will be some concluding remarks about the findings in this paper. .
Theoretical Framework.
First, the question should be asked what a democratic transition means exactly. Within the literature there is ambiguity about when a country has successfully undergone a democratic transition (Munck, 1994). In this paper the conceptualization by Przeworski will be used. In this view, a democratic transition is a shift from an authoritarian to a democratic regime. He distinguishes four features of democracy: 1) free and fair elections, 2) outcome of election is not fixed in advance, 3) individuals cannot change the outcome of the election and 4) elections should be held at a frequent basis.