The common assessments of state of civil society in contemporary Russia describe it as rather weak, stagnating and unable to resist the government pressure (Evans, 2005; Freedom House, 2008). All accessible data – statistics (including NGO contribution in GDP, in 2007 – less than a half from 2002), sociology and case studies (like the evaluation of negative effects of new NGO law) – shows that in 2000s as compared with 1990s, when it was one of the most innovative and leading sector, civil society became the backward one, which at most try to save status-quo.
Most of scholars and insiders see causes of such poor situation only in the unbenevolence of government, other criticize people for not supporting civil society. Western scholars (Sundstrom, 2006; Henderson, 2002) find the mistakes of foreign aid to Russian NGOs.
This paper tries to find some internal causes for weak state of Russian civil society. The interviews with broad range of experts and sociological data are used to show, that the current situation is not only the result of government’s monopoly on legal violence, but is a logical result of lack of consolidation in the sector, which leads to inability to use the resources of the whole sector to defend every NGO from repression and lobby for favorable laws.
Application of Djankov&Shleifer’s institutional possibility frontier (IPF) (Djankov&Shleifer, 2003) to the consolidation patterns of Russian third sector provides the insight into the explanation of its weaknesses. In 2000s, when the government become stronger and more authoritarian, high costs of disorder (i.e. the low level of consolidation) of 1990s were replaced by extremely high costs of dictatorship (i.e. the government consolidation structures that restrict civil society). The optimal point on IPF (self-consolidation) was not reached in 1990s, when NGOs were comparatively strong and government – comparatively weak and more democratic. As we claim, the responsibility for this partly lies on the leaders of the sector – major human rights NGOs. Their behavior in 1990s was determined by path dependence from their ancestors – soviet dissident groups, which did not aware the importance of consolidation, being united by the common enemy – totalitarian system.

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4. Djankov, Simeon, Shleifer, Andrei, Glaeser, Edward, La Porta, Rafael, and Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio. 2003. “The new comparative economics”. Journal of Comparative Economics, 31: 595–619.
5. Freedom House. 2008. Freedom of Association Under Threat: The New Authoritarians’ Offensive Against Civil Society.