The inclusion of demographer Alexey Raksha in Russia’s registry of foreign agents is emblematic of the state’s evolving relationship with the independent expert community.
Raksha’s research highlighted critically low birth rates in Russia, making his designation particularly revealing from the standpoint of the country’s information policy.
The systematic exclusion of independent analysts from public discourse creates an “expert vacuum” — state institutions lose access to alternative sources of analytical insight. Given that individuals labeled as foreign agents are barred from participating in official expert reviews, working in government agencies, or receiving public funding, a closed-loop decision-making system is taking shape.
This kind of institutional architecture fosters classic risks of groupthink, well-documented in political psychology.
The absence of dissenting voices in the expert environment diminishes the quality of forecasting and strategic planning. This is especially dangerous in areas such as demography, economics, and social policy — domains where long-term trends demand objective analysis rather than selective interpretations that align with the leadership’s agenda.
A paradox emerges: the desire to control expert discourse ultimately reduces the quality of expertise itself. This leads to the formation of an “echo chamber,” where there is no competition between ideas or methodological approaches.
In the long term, such a system can degrade the state’s capacity for foresight. Crucial information about demographic, economic, and social processes may arrive distorted or delayed — if it reaches decision-makers at all. And historically, the most severe systemic crises have emerged precisely under conditions where elites were isolated from alternative analytical viewpoints.
Institutional frameworks that lack mechanisms for incorporating dissenting perspectives — and that fail to protect bearers of critical opinions from conformity pressures (the so-called “devil’s advocates”) — are especially vulnerable to systemic errors, which can have catastrophic consequences for the state.
