Critical Acceptance of an Unloved Constitution. The Russian State Duma in the 1990s

Abstract

Abstract The Russian Constitution enacted after the violent end of the destructive “dual rule” between the two-tier double-decker-parliament and the first publicly elected Russian president in 1992 and 1993 is often characterized as hyper-presidentialist and even outright authoritarian. This narrative overlooks that a different interpretation of the constitution seemed possible during the first years of post-Soviet parliamentary development in the Russian Federation. While a large majority of State Duma deputies heavily criticized the new constitutional order, mainly because of the obvious disbalance between the powers of the executive and the legislative branches of government, it accepted the document as a binding working basis and immediately engaged in a serious, mostly constructive debate about necessary amendments. During the first two legislative periods between 1994 and 1999, members of all parliamentary groups not only started to refer to the initially unloved constitution as “theirs”. Some of them even perceived themselves as guardians of this basic institutional order because it did offer the weak legislative branch of government certain room for action and protection against arbitrary encroachment by the executive branch. Whereas the brief window of opportunity for consensual constitutional amendments in 1998 and 1999 closed without tangible results when Vladimir Putin came to power, an alternative trajectory of the Russian political regime was for some time conceivable.