The limited agency and life-cycles of personalized dominant parties in the post-Soviet space: the cases of United Russia and Nur Otan

Abstract

Vladimir Putin's United Russia and Nursultan Nazabayev's Nur Otan represent a distinctive type of dominant party due to their personalist nature and dependence on their presidential patrons. Such personalism deprives these parties of the agency to perform key roles in authoritarian reproduction typically expected of dominant parties, such as resource distribution, policy-making and mobilizing mass support for the regime. Instead United Russia and Nur Otan have contributed to authoritarian consolidation by securing the president's legislative agenda, stabilizing elites to ensure their patron's hold on power, and assisting in perpetuating a discourse around the national leader. However, because these parties lack the agency to reproduce themselves, to entrench their position, and to play more than a supportive role in regime consolidation, the lifespan of such personalist dominant parties is likely to be significantly shorter than that of dominant parties.