Rising Powers: Unequal Powers, Authoritarian Powers, Unstable Powers?

俄罗斯和中国加在一起，占金砖四国领土总面积的41%，人口总数的51%，国内生产总值/购买力平价的63%。根据高盛的预测，到2050年，中国将成为世界第一大经济体，俄罗斯将成为第六大经济体；按照同样的预测，按人均国内生产总值计算，俄罗斯将成为世界第四大经济体，中国将成为世界第十二大经济体。这两个国家的一个显著特征不仅是发展速度，而且还有令人震惊的不平等性质--尽管有共同的(后共产主义)遗产。事实上，以最传统的标准衡量，这两个国家现在是世界上最不平等的国家之一。根据俄罗斯官方的统计数据，到2010年，基尼系数已经上升到0.42；对中国基尼系数的最佳估计表明，基尼系数从1983年的0.26上升到2006年的0.45，这是中国引入联产承包责任制后的最后一年。根据世界银行的数据，俄罗斯的基尼系数已经高于英国，中国的基尼系数也高于美国。2011年，中国在福布斯全球亿万富翁排行榜上升至第二位，俄罗斯位居第三，这反映了这些发展。政治学最古老的发现之一是，经济不平等与政治不稳定之间存在关联。正如亚里士多德在他的《政治学》中指出的那样，当人们平等时，他们是知足的；他提请人们注意塔伦特姆的人民，他们通过与穷人分享自己的财产，[获得了]他们的善意。因此，“与寡头政治相比，民主似乎更安全，更不容易发生革命”。这类担忧在后来的许多作家中都很明显，包括约翰·斯图亚特·密尔，他在代议制政府中规定，在合理假设穷人否则将利用他们的选举优势通过“阶级立法”的情况下，为那些行使“高级[管理]职能”的人提供额外的选票。我们试图在这个项目中考察以下命题：(I)这两个金砖四国正变得越来越不平等；(Ii)在这两个国家中，政治权力和经济优势日益紧密地联系在一起；(Iii)它们的政治制度越来越多地被用来确保政府地位和经济优势的组合不会受到有效的挑战，无论是通过‘投票箱’还是其他途径；与更广泛的比较视角相反，一个日益不平等的社会，在这个社会中，政府实际上不受传统挑战的影响，很可能变得越来越专制，或不稳定，或两者兼而有之(对整个国际社会有相当大的影响)。我们建议从国家和国际统计数据、在两国以及西方出现的学术文献、对政策专家和相关政府官员的一系列采访、将重点关注普通公民所认为的社会正义和政治问题的24个焦点小组，以及对两国最大公司的管理层进行详细的实证分析，以建立他们与国家高级官员的联系。分析的最后部分将利用跨国证据(包括总体和个人层面的数据，如世界价值观调查)来检验一系列与不平等和政治不稳定之间的联系有关的假设，将两国置于一个包括(例如)受“阿拉伯之春”影响的国家的背景中。

Taken together, Russia and China account for 41 per cent of the total territory of the BRICs, and for 51 per cent of their total population and 63 per cent of their GDP/PPP. On Goldman Sachs projections China will be the world's largest economy by 2050, and Russia its sixth largest; per head of population, on the same projections, Russia will have the world's fourth largest GDP/head and China its twelfth largest. A striking feature of the two countries is not just the rate but also the strikingly inegalitarian nature of their development - notwithstanding a shared (post)communist legacy. Indeed on most conventional measures, these two countries are now among the most unequal in the world. According to Russian official statistics, the Gini coefficient had risen to .42 by 2010; the best estimates of Chinese Gini coefficients indicate a very similar rise from .26 in 1983 - just after the introduction of the contract responsibility system - to .45 in 2006, the last year available. On World Bank figures, Gini coefficients were already higher in Russia than in the UK, and higher in China than in the United States. Reflecting these developments, China had moved up to second place in Forbes' list of the world's billionaires by 2011, with Russia in third place.One of the oldest findings of political science is that there is an association between economic inequality and political instability. As Aristotle pointed out in his Politics, 'when men are equal they are contented'; he drew attention to the people of Tarentum, who, 'by sharing the use of their own property with the poor, [gained] their good will'. Accordingly, 'democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy'. Concerns of this kind have been apparent in many later writers, including John Stuart Mill, who provided in his Representative Government for additional votes for those who exercised 'superior [managerial] functions' on the reasonable assumption that the poor would otherwise use their electoral preponderance to put through 'class legislation'. We seek in this project to examine the following propositions: (i) that these two BRIC countries are becoming increasingly unequal; (ii) that within them, political power and economic advantage are increasingly closely associated; (iii) that their political systems have increasingly been employed to ensure that no effective challenge can be mounted to that combination of government position and economic advantage, either by 'ballot box' or other avenues; and that (iv) set against a broader comparative perspective, an increasingly unequal society in which government is effectively immune from conventional challenge is likely to become increasingly repressive, or unstable, or both (with considerable implications for the international community as a whole).We propose to draw our evidence from national and international statistics, the academic literature that has appeared in both countries as well as the West, a series of interviews with policy specialists and relevant government officials, two dozen focus groups that will focus on issues of social justice and politics as perceived by ordinary citizens, and a detailed empirical analysis of the management of the largest companies in both countries in order to establish their connections with senior state officials. A final part of the analysis will employ crossnational evidence (including both aggregate and individual-level data such as the World Values Survey) to test a series of hypotheses relating to the association between inequality and political instability, setting both countries within a context that will include (for instance) the countries that have been affected by the 'Arab Spring'.