Why Not Parties? Electoral Markets, Party Substitutes, and Stalled Democratization in Russia

Abstract

Comparative studies have stressed two fundamental factors that drive the process of political development: prominent social cleavages and state (especially elec toral) institutions. While some have divided theorists into cleavage and institu tional camps, most leading scholars have in fact held that both combine to shape the evolution of parties despite variations in emphasis. Their and other classic works also share an assumption that politicians have incentive to organize collectively in parties in order to achieve political ends and that these activities are conditioned, channeled, and ultimately rendered successful or unsuccessful by social cleavages and institutions. Leading scholars differ, however, on whether strong parties are an equilibrium result in societies first making the transition to democracy. While Duverger and many after him have stressed the power of incentives from cleavages and institutions over time to impel politicians to form dynamic and programmatic parties, others like Kitschelt place more emphasis on transitional factors and sociopolitical institutional legacies that can inhibit the development of strong, pro grammatic parties.1 While both of these approaches to transitional development clearly capture important parts of the story, it is argued here that both can be usefully supplemented in the many countries of the world where law permits candidates to run as indepen dents (that is, without affiliation). In these systems, parties will fully penetrate electoral politics only when virtually all serious candidates for office find it in their interest to run as nominees rather than as independents. In such a situation, candidates are effectively consumers of goods and services that will help them con nect with voters in order to be elected. Parties can be seen as suppliers who emerge to meet this candidate demand. Most theories typically stop here, looking only at parties as potential suppliers. Basic economic theory, however, says that production decisions for any good (an outcome of supply and demand) are not made in a per fectly isolated market involving only that particular good, but in the context of broader markets in which demand for this good can be dampened by competition from substitute goods that can meet some or most of the same needs, if imperfect ly.2 Thus, in the realm of transitional polities, when parties are seemingly stunted in their growth, the reason may lie in the existence of party substitutes that are able