Convergence with Russia: Sovereign Democracy and the Unitary Executive of Facebook

"Vladislav Y. Surkov, a former advertising prodigy, coined the term 'sovereign democracy' to describe his system, which preserved the electoral process but hollowed out institutions capable of challenging the Kremlin’s power. Asked by a journalist from Interfax on Tuesday why he was leaving, Mr. Surkov first answered, 'Stabilization devours its own children.'"

Trump’s Russia adviser Carter Page criticizes U.S. for ‘hypocritical focus on democratization,’ by Andrew Roth

An American foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump chided the United States on Thursday for an “often-hypocritical focus on democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change” in its dealings with Russia, China and Central Asia. Carter Page, an energy executive tapped by the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign for his business experience in the former Soviet Union, told students and journalists gathered in a Moscow lecture hall that Washington had missed opportunities to work with leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping because it had ignored principles of “respect, equality and mutual benefit.”