Russian parties and the political internet

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes S. Coleman, ‘Online Campaigning’, Parliamentary Affairs, 54, 4, 2001, pp. 679–688. J. Roper, ‘New Zealand Political Parties Online: The World Wide Web as a Tool for Democratization or for Political Marketing?’, in C. Toulouse & T. W. Luke (eds), The Politics of Cyberspace (New York and London, Routledge, 1999); R. Gibson & S. Ward, ‘Virtual Campaigning: Australian Parties and the Impact of the Internet’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 37, 1, 2002, pp. 99–129. S. Coleman (ed.), Elections in the Age of the Internet: Lessons from the United States (London, Hansard Society, 2001); R. Gibson, M. Margolis, D. Resnick & S. Ward, ‘Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK: A Comparative Analysis’, Party Politics, 9, 1, 2003, pp. 47–75. H. Semetko & N. Krasnoboka, ‘The Political Role of the Internet in Societies in Transition: Russia and Ukraine Compared’, Party Politics, 9, 1, 2003, pp. 77–104. R. Gibson, J. Newell & S. Ward, ‘New Parties, New Media: Italian Party Politics and the Internet’, South European Society and Politics, 5, 1, 2000, pp. 123–142; Gibson et al., ‘Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK’; Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge, CUP, 2001). A. Korotkov, E‐Russia in 2002–2010, presentation on website of Russian Ministry for Telecommunications and Informatisation (www.minsvyaz.ru), accessed November 2002. F. Ellis, From Glasnost' to the Internet, Russia's New Infosphere (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999), p. 179. S. Oates, ‘Tuning Out Democracy: Television, Voters and Parties in Russia, 1993–2000’, paper for the workshop ‘Political Communication, the Mass Media and the Consolidation of Democracy’, ECPR, Turin, 22–27 March 2002. Richard Rose, Neil Munro & Stephen White, The 1999 Duma Vote, a Floating Party System (Glasgow, University of Strathclyde, 2000). Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 1st edn (London, Routledge, 1993). Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 3rd edn (London, Routledge, 2002). Alexander Lukin, Political Culture of Russian Democrats (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999); Robert Moser & Zoltan Barany, Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization (Boulder, Westview, 2001). Korotkov, E‐Russia in 2002–2010. Putin, quoted in Dmitrii Ivanov, ‘Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii sub''ektami rossiiskogo politicheskogo protsessa v kontse 1990‐kh‐2001 gg.’, Dissertatsiya na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata politicheskikh naukh, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, Fakul'tet istorii, politologii i prava, Moscow, 2002. G. Belonuchkin & E. Mikhailovskaya, ‘Politicheskii segment rossiiskogo Interneta’, in I. Semenov (ed.), Internet i Rossiiskoe obshchestvo (Moscow, Moskovskii Tsentr Karnegi, Gendal'f, 2002), pp. 70–90. Such methods include the notorious SORM‐2 plan (Sistema operativno‐rozysknykh meropriyatii—system of operative‐investigative measures), which allows the FSB to monitor internet traffic (including email) through devices attached to Internet Service Providers at their own expense, as well as government efforts to include the internet in more restrictive media legislation and the use of email in applying administrative pressure on civil activists. See for example D. Schmidt, ‘Controlled Democracy in Russia? Civil Society and Internet Communication—New Opportunities and Restraints’, paper prepared for the ECPR joint sessions, Edinburgh, 28 March‐2 April 2003. R. Gibson & S. Ward, ‘U.K. Political Parties and the Internet: “Politics as Usual” in the New Media?’, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 3, 3, 1998, pp. 14–38. Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media’; A. Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’, Party Politics, 9, 1, 2003, pp. 7–20. For a view of the democratic potential of the internet see for example J. Abramson, C. Arterton & G. Orren, The Electronic Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1988). The main literature on party use of ICTs includes S. Coleman, ‘Can the New Media Invigorate Democracy?’, Political Quarterly, 70, 1, 1999, pp. 16–22; P. Depla & P. Tops, ‘Political Parties in the Digital Era: The Technological Challenge?’, in W. van de Donk, I. Snellen & P. Tops (eds), Orwell in Athens: A Perspective on Informatization and Democracy (Amsterdam, IOS Press, 1995); Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media’; M. Margolis, D. Resnick & Ch‐T Tu, ‘Campaigning on the Internet. Parties and Candidates on the World Wide Web in the 1996 Primary Season’, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 2, 1, 1997, pp. 59–78; W. Rash Jr, Politics on the Nets: Wiring the Political Process (New York, W. H. Freeman, 1997); Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’; Roper, ‘New Zealand Political Parties Online’. Rash Jr, Politics on the Nets; Norris, Digital Divide. Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’. Coleman, ‘Online Campaigning’, p. 679. See also Norris, Digital Divide. Coleman, ‘Online Campaigning’; Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media’. K. Lofgren, ‘Danish Political Parties and New Technology: Interactive Parties or New Shop Windows?’, in J. Hoff, I. Horrocks & P. Tops (eds), Democratic Governance and New Technology: Technologically Mediated Innovations in Political Practice in Western Europe (London, Routledge, 2000). Coleman, ‘Can the New Media Invigorate Democracy?’, p. 17. R. Gibson & S. Ward, ‘The Politics of the Future? UK Parties and the Internet’, in S. Coleman (ed.), Elections in the Age of the Internet: Lessons from the United States (London, Hansard Society, 2001). Roper, ‘New Zealand Political Parties Online’. S. Ward, ‘Political Organisations and the Internet: Towards a Theoretical Framework for Analysis’, paper prepared for the ECPR joint sessions, Grenoble, 6–11 April 2001. Rash Jr, Politics on the Nets; P. Norris, ‘Preaching to the Converted?: Pluralism, Participation and Party Websites’, Party Politics, 9, 1, January 2003, pp. 21–45. M. Margolis & D. Resnick, Politics as Usual—the Cyberspace ‘Revolution’ (Thousand Oaks, CA and London, Sage Publications, 2000). Rash Jr, Politics on the Nets; Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media’. Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’. P. Mair, Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997). Ward, ‘Political Organisations and the Internet’. Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’. P. Kopecky, ‘Developing Party Organisations in East‐Central Europe: What Type of Party is Likely to Emerge?’, Party Politics, 1, 4, 1995, pp. 515–534; D. Olson, ‘Party Formation and Party System Consolidation in the New Democracies of Central Europe’. Political Studies, XLVI, 1998, pp. 432–464; I. Van Biezen, ‘Building Party Organisations and the Relevance of Past Models: the Communist and Socialist Parties in Spain and Portugal’, West European Politics, 21, 2, April 1998, pp. 32–62. M. Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (London, Methuen, 1964). R. Katz & P. Mair, How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies (London, Sage, 1994); Mair, Party System Change; O. Kirchheimer, ‘The Transformation of Western European Party Systems’, in J. Palombara & M Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, NJ, 1966), pp. 177–200. Kopecky, ‘Developing Party Organisations in East‐Central Europe’; A. Szczerbiak, ‘Party Structure and Organizational Development in Post‐Communist Poland’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 17, 2, 2001, pp. 94–130. H. Oversloot & R. Verheul, ‘The Party of Power in Russian Politics’, Acta Politica, 35, Summer 2000, pp. 123–145. See also Semetko & Krasnoboka, ‘The Political Role of the Internet in Societies in Transition’. H. Kitschelt, Z. Mansfeldova, R. Markowski & G. Tóka, Postcommunist Party‐Systems: Competition, Representation and Inter‐Party Co‐operation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). See also L. March, The Communist Party in Post‐Soviet Russia (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2002). Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’. Mair, Party System Change. I. Zasursky, Rekonstruktsiya Rossii. Mass‐mediya i politika v 90‐e (Moscow; Izdatel'stvo MGU, 2001). See also Ivanov, Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii, p. 32. Zasursky, Rekonstruktsiya Rossii, p. 106; Oates, ‘Tuning Out Democracy’. Rommele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’. A. Wilson, ‘Ukraine's New Virtual Politics’, East European Constitutional Review, 10, 2/3, 2001, pp. 2–3. Ivanov, Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii, p. 44. Wilson, ‘Ukraine's New Virtual Politics’, pp. 2–3. Ivanov, Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii. The site www.elections99.com published similar exit polls in the parliamentary campaign. His two sites were an official site dedicated to his governmental position (nemtsov.ru) and a personal site dedicated to broadening his personal appeal (boris.nemtsov.ru), opened on 16 March 1998. Mikhail Smetanin, ‘Boris Nemtsov‐pervyi politik v rossiiskom Internete’, Russkii zhurnal (russ.ru), 20 March 2002; Smetanin, ‘Virtual'noe partstroitel'stvo’, Russkii zhurnal (russ.ru), 28 March 2002. Author's interview with chief editor of lenta.ru Anton Nosik, 10 December 2003; A. Baganov, ‘Kak golosoval Internet’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 28 December 1999. For more on the campaign of Kirienko's ‘Moscow Alternative’ (Moskovskaya al'ternativa) see Ivanov, Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii, pp. 55–68. ‘Internet‐auditoriya Rossii: strikhi k portretu’, survey from Comcon market research company at www.comcon‐2.ru/default.asp?artID = 47, accessed 20 May 2003. Belonuchkin & Mikhailovskaya, ‘Politicheskii segment rossiiskogo Interneta’. N. Krasnoboka & K. Brants, ‘Old and New Media, Old and New Politics?’, paper for the workshop ‘Political Communication, the Mass Media and the Consolidation of Democracy’, ECPR, Turin, 22–27 March 2002; D. Ivanov, ‘Rossiiskii Internet kak sredstvo politicheskoi kommunikatsii’, Russkii zhurnal (www.russ.ru), 13 March 2002. Ivanov, Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii. Nezavisimaya gazeta, 19 August 2000. Rash Jr, Politics on the Nets, pp. 80–81. Belonuchkin & Mikhailovskaya, ‘Politicheskii segment rossiiskogo Interneta’. Ivanov, Ispol'zovanie Internet‐tekhnologii. Ibid. The only candidate not to have a website was Stanislav Govorukhin. R. Gibson & S. Ward, ‘A Proposed Methodology for Studying the Function and Effectiveness of Party and Candidate Web Sites’, Social Science Computer Review, 18, 3, 2000, pp. 301–319; Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media’; Gibson & Ward, ‘Virtual Campaigning’, Gibson et al., ‘Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK’. Norris, Digital Divide; C. Bieber, ‘Revitalising the Party System or Zeitgeist‐on‐line? Virtual Party Headquarters and Virtual Party Branches in Germany’, Democratization, 7, 1, 2000, pp. 59–75. Gibson & Ward, ‘Virtual Campaigning’; Gibson et al., ‘Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK’. Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 3rd edn. Semetko & Krasnoboka, ‘The Political Role of the Internet in Societies in Transition’. A. Dugin, Evraziiskii put' kak natsional'naya ideya (Moscow, 2002). Gibson & Ward, ‘A Proposed Methodology’. Ibid. Author's interview with member of Yabloko press service Evgeniya Dillendorf, 24 September 2002. March, The Communist Party in Post‐Soviet Russia. Gibson & Ward, ‘A Proposed Methodology’. For these criticisms of Western parties see Coleman, ‘Online Campaigning’; and Coleman (ed.), Elections in the Age of the Internet. Author's interview with administrator of Yabloko web site Vyacheslav Erokhin, 16 September 2002. Römmele, ‘Political Parties, Party Communication and New Information and Communication Technologies’. Nezavisimaya gazeta, 27 December 2001. March, The Communist Party in Post‐Soviet Russia. The communists' ‘upgrade’ was facilitated by the recruitment of a well‐known Internet journalist Yaroslav Grekov to edit the party website and the director of the ICT company International Network Connections (INC), Il'ya Ponomarev, to head the party's new Information Technology Centre. See ‘Mos'ka runeta budet trudit'sya vo slavu KPRF. Vsem zver'kam zapisyvat'sya v kommunisty’, Internet.ru, 25 February 2003. A. Kostyukov, ‘Kommunisty poshli v narod s shapkoi’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 18 April 2003 (www.ng.ru). Ibid; and see also L. March, ‘The Pragmatic Radicalism of Russia's Communists’, in Joan Barth Urban & Jane Curry (eds), The Left Transformed in Post‐Communist Societies: The Cases of East‐Central Europe, Russia, and Ukraine (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). Johnson's Russia List, 5114, 24 February 2001. Parlamentskaya gazeta, 16 November 2001. Izvestiya, 7 August 2002. Author's interview with chief editor of rambler.ru Ivan Zasursky, 18 December 2003. Author's conversation with KPRF press secretary Andrei Filippov, September 2002; author's interview with KPRF Central Committee Secretary for Information Policy Oleg Kulikov, 24 September 2002. Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media’. For example, according to the internet search engine www.rambler.ru, the most popular party website on 20 May 2003, www.kprf.ru, was the 33rd most popular political web resource, and was placed 1,543rd of all the websites monitored. B. V. Ochvinnikov, ‘Virtual'nye nadezhdy: sostoyanie i perspektivy politicheskogo Runeta’, Polis, 1, 5, 2002 (www.politicalstudies.ru/fulltext/2002/1/5.htm). G. Gill & R. Markwick, Russia's Stillborn Democracy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000). N. Petrov, ‘United Russia: A Fast‐build Party Structure for the Kremlin and the Governors’, from site www.carnegie.ru/en/print/67787‐print.htm, accessed 29 December 2003.