Has there been "rollback" of democracy in Russia under Putin?

... to say. Democratic reality is pretty thin on the ground." (1979: 1-2). Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and Its Enemies, writes that nowhere do “The People” actually rule themselves. Everywhere, he writes, they are ruled by elites and bureaucrats, "our civil servants or uncivil masters ... whom it is difficult, if not impossible, to make accountable for their actions" (1988, 20). Robert Dahl, one of the most distinguished theorists of democracy in the United ...