Russian Parliamentary Elections Research Articles

Political Goals, Institutional Context, and the Choice of an Electoral System: The Russian Parliamentary Election Law

Theory: Alternative strategic models of party preferences for electoral institutions are identified. One model provides that legislators and parties define preferences for electoral systems over policy outcomes; an alternative provides that legislators and parties define preferences for electoral systems over electoral outcomes. Hypotheses: Based on the results of the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections, members of the Russian State Duma are expected to have favored alternative proposals for the 1995 electoral system according to their anticipated implications for policy outcomes. Methods: The effects of alternative electoral laws are evaluated using the outcome of the 1993 elections. That evaluation yields predictions of party positions on the 1995 electoral law, which are tested against data on the floor behavior of the party factions in the Russian parliament in 1994 and 1995 as the new election law was debated. Results: A policy-based model of party preferences is found to be inadequate. Electoral and other considerations, as well as uncertainty and institutional context, influence parties' choices of new electoral institutions.

Political Geographies and Cleavages in the Russian Parliamentary Elections

Spatial-structural regression models are fitted for the votes of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and for the combined vote of the Communist Party of Russia and the Agrarian Party in the parliamentary elections of 1993 and 1995. Analysis of the regression-model results indicates that sets of explanatory socioeconomic variables, as well as their relative importance in explanation of the anti-reform vote, vary widely across the country. More specifically, the paper documents an emerging European/Asian dichotomization of Russia's electoral geography, and assesses the increasingly important role of region in the democratization process as the spatial impress of the economic transformation of the country becomes more evident. 3 figures, 2 tables, 64 references. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, J18, O50.

The impact of the electoral system on post-communist party development: The case of the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections

This paper uses a case study of the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections to explore the influence of proportional representation and plurality electoral systems on party formation in a post-communist regime. The mixed PR-plurality electoral system used by Russia in the 1993 elections is a particularly useful case for such analysis for it allows the simultaneous study of these two electoral systems under the same set of social, economic, and cultural conditions. This study found that common emphasis placed on the number of parties allowed by PR versus plurality systems is misplaced in the context of Russian politics. The vital impact of electoral systems under post-communist conditions is their permeability to independent candidates. PR systems tend to impose party labels on the electorate and elites and thus bolster the status of parties as electoral agents. Plurality systems allow independents to compete on a level playing field with partisan candidates, robbing parties of the preferential treatment they need to get established in the initial years of democratic governance.

Participation and the success of economic and political reforms: A lesson from the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections

In December 1993, observers of Russian politics were surprised that Vladimir Zhirinovskii and his party performed so well in the parliamentary elections and that the reformers did not attract more voters. Two explanations for this outcome have become widely accepted. The first maintains that Russians were expressing their discontent with economic hardships, while the second contends that the balance of political forces accounts for the reformists’ defeat. To the contrary, it appears that it was not the unwillingness of Russians to participate in market reforms and to accept key aspects of the government's programmes, nor was it the combination of the division of the democrats, the invisibility of Yeltsin and the unity of the right wing that produced the unexpected results. Rather, the arrogance of the reformers and the alienation of the Russian public explain the election outcome. These two factors explain why the democrats split as they did and why the type of campaigns waged had such an impact on the fo...

The authoritarian idea in the public conscious and political life of contemporary Russia

The success of extremist parties in the Russian parliamentary election of December 1993, combined with opinion poll findings in the 1990s, has once again prompted speculation about the conflict between democratic and authoritarian trends in the Russian public mind, including suggestions that the Russians are not ready for democracy. However, the evidence can be interpreted in more than one way, and attitudes towards ‘order’ and ‘democracy’ are compounded by the complexities of an economy in transition and the rise of criminality. The adoption of a presidential constitution in 1993 may offer the chance of a system that can satisfy the popular need for order and stability while also going some way towards meeting aspirations for democracy.

The Dominant Party System: A Neglected Model of Democratic Stability

POLITICAL PARTIES have long been central to the field of political science. As the most common linkage between the formal governmental structure and the social world, parties are a natural focus for students of political institutions, political behavior, political psychology, and political theory. The variety of the literature on parties reflects their multifaceted nature and the range of questions that can be asked about them. Although the taxonomic is one of the least rewarding approaches to the study of parties, much of the analysis existing in the literature reflects our concern with the differences between one, two, and multi-party systems. Underlying this concern is the realization that the number of parties has significance. The party is a major link between political elites and the mass and an important instrument of governing in most political systems, but the ways in which these functions are performed vary widely. The number of parties in a system and the ways in which they relate to one another are associated with radically different styles of politics. The dominant party system is sometimes recognized as having a separate identity, though more often than not it is seen as a particular mutant of one of the other systems that results from idiosyncratic features of a specific historical tradition. It is our contention that the dominant party system is sui generis. It should not be con-