Russia’s economy doesn’t get a lot of love. Even former President Dmitri Medvedev called it “primitive,” and high profile US-based Russia analysts have said that it is “seriously deteriorating” “uncompetitive” and “third-world.” In a recent article co-written with Bobo Lo, an article I will write more about in the near future, Lilia Shevtsova, the chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that the Russian economy was, “deindustrializing,” “archaic,” “decaying,” “fragile,”  and that is “leaves no room for innovation.”

To a large extent these criticisms of Russia’s economy are rooted in criticisms of its brittle and autocratic political institutions; Shevtsova in particular very explicitly links her criticism of Russia’s economy with her overall criticisms of Putinism:

The reason is simple: genuine post-industrial modernization of the economy needs  a free individual, which means deep-rooted liberalization and the introduction of the rule of law and competition

It’s hard to argue with Shevtsova’s position on an intellectual level. I highly doubt that anyone, even the most robotic Slate-like contrarian,  is prepared to say “actually, arbitrary courts and sclerotic monopolies are the route to prosperity!” But while Russia’s post-crisis economic performance is hardly overawing, though I do think that Shevtsova severally overstates its weaknesses,  it actually looks quite decent in comparison to another BRIC, Brazil.

Brazil and Russia are, broadly speaking, the most similar of the BRIC countries*: they are roughly comparable in size (143 million vs. 195 million) they have reasonably high GDPs per capita, and their economies are extremely dependent on the export of natural resources.

There are, however, some very obvious and striking differences, particularly regarding their political systems. While Brazil’s history has been replete with democratic breakdowns and various kinds of coups, it has been a consolidated democracy for the past several decades. Russia, of course, has had an almost uninterrupted history of autocracy and dictatorship. Over the past  12 years the Brazilian and Russian political systems have been rapidly moving in opposite directions: Brazil has become significantly more representative, democratic, and stable, while Russia has become more authoritarian and repressive. I will grant that the precise degree to which Brazil and Russia have diverged is open to debate, quantifying a concept as nebulous as “democracy” is extremely difficult,” but I don’t think anyone can seriously argued that there hasn’t been any political divergence between the two countries.

Since economic modernization is supposedly linked with democratization and is supposedly prevented by authoritarianism, we should expect to see that Brazil is developing more quickly than Russia, or, at the very least, is  developing at the same rate.  What has actually happened? After an extremely impressive performance in 2010, Brazil’s economy has performed abysmally and is on track to grow at a mere 1.6% in 2012 even after significant government efforts at stimulus. Russia, after getting hammered during 2009, has had a sustained if not overly rapid recovery, and is on track to record  2012 GDP growth of around 3.5%. Here’s what things look like over the past 12 years:

Russia dramatically under-performed Brazil  in 2009 and 2010, but has outperformed it since then. Current IMF projections are for Brazil to modestly outgrow Russia in 2013, but Brazil’s 2012 numbers have been repeatedly revised downwards and it would not be the least bit surprising if the 2013 numbers are also moved lower.

But simply looking at a growth rate doesn’t tell you very much since it doesn’t explain the actual level of wealth in a given country. Georgia, for example, is growing extremely rapidly, but since it’s GDP per capita is still less than $6,000 this isn’t quite as impressive as it might appear at first glance. Here’s how Brazil and Russia stack up (data from the World Bank) if you graph their purchasing power adjusted per capita GDPs:

If Russia’s economy is decaying, sclerotic, primitive, and fragile, what the heck does that make Brazil’s? What sorts of adjectives would we need to use to adequately describe it? “Rotten?” “Paralyzed?” “Stone-aged?” “Shattered?” I know that Brazil still has a large number of serious economic problems, and, even in the most optimistic of analyses, is desperately in need of certain structural reforms. But I don’t think it’s remotely fair to paint Brazil as some sort of uniquely horrible country or to suggest it faces an imminent existential crisis. But if Russia is actually on the verge of economic apocalypse, why isn’t Brazil (which is much poorer on a per capita basis and is growing more slowly) similarly vulnerable?

What is absolutely fascinating is that if you dig a little deeper and look at the structural failures that are really holding back the Brazilian economy they are very (almost shockingly) similar to those that plague Russia: high taxes, insufficient investment, government spending, over-reliance on consumer spending, excessive government red-tape, unreliable courts, poor transport infrastructure, rent-seeking, persistent inflation, high interest rates, and (potential) de-industrialization. The point I’m trying to make isn’t that “democracy can’t solve these problems” or that some sort of “developmental” autocracy is necessary in order to modernize, it’s that creating the institutions necessary for broad-based sustainable economic growth is extremely difficult regardless of what kind of political system a country has. After all, if it were easy to create representative governments and liberal economic structures, the world wouldn’t have nearly as much poverty and repression.

If Putin disappeared tomorrow and Russia became much more democratic, there is absolutely no guarantee that it would be able to push through the complicated and exacting reforms that most economists think are necessary. Does this make democracy bad or superfluous? No. I’ve repeatedly argued, and deeply believe, that democracy is important not because it allows a country to create more stuff, but because citizens should have a say in how they are governed. Period. But “democracy” does not guarantee economic success any more than “autocracy” guarantees economic failure: this is shown not only by a Russia-Brazil comparison but by a comparison between Russia and almost any other country in Central Europe (or if you want to go further afield, a comparison between India and China).