Vladimir Putin's newly designated successor, Dmitri Medvedev, has already pledged to continue his mentor's policies and even suggested that Putin become prime minister to ensure his continued involvement in Russian governance. According to the conventional narrative, since Putin came to power in 2000, order has been restored, the economy has flourished, and the average Russian is living better than ever before. However, Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Director and Associate Director of CDDRL, argue in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that the conventional narrative is wrong, based almost entirely on spurious correlation. The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either.