In this study I test the democratic integrity of regional assembly elections which were conducted in Russia over the period from December 2003 to March 2009. Whilst we should not fall into the elec...

Regional Elections and Electoral Authoritarianism in Russia

Throughout its short history, federal relations in Russia have been dominated by extra-legal political and economic relations rather than constitutionalism and the rule of law. The Russian Federation's unique blend of constitutional, socioeconomic, and political asymmetry, far from promoting democracy, has bolstered authoritarian regimes in the regions. Federalism and regional democracy have also been thwarted by the weakness of Russia's civic culture and the lack of a federal and democratic tradition. Regional elites in particular have more often supported authoritarianism than democracy. Under Putin the principles of federalism and democracy have come under attack and electoral authoritarianism is the norm rather the exception, particularly in the ethnic republics. Key words: democratization, electoral authoritarianism, federalism ********** In December 1993, Russia ratified its first postcommunist constitution that, in Article 1, proclaimed that it was "a democratic federative rule of law state with a republican form of government." However, there are now major concerns about the current regime's commitment to the principles of federalism. Since the inauguration of Vladimir Putin as Russian president in May 2000, federalism and democracy have come under attack. We have witnessed a concerted effort to rein in the power of the regional governors and to centralize power under the presidency. As I demonstrate in this article, the major challenge to the Russian state today is not confederalism or the threat of ethnic disintegration, but rather defederalization and the creation of a centralized and authoritarian state under Putin. The problems of federalization in Russia are rooted in the country's centuries-long history of authoritarian rule and the absence of a federal and democratic tradition. The 1993 constitution provided Russia with all of the major institutional prerequisites necessary for a federation. However, as Elazar stresses, "True federal systems manifest their federalism in culture as well as constitutional and structural ways" and "the viability of federal systems is directly related to the degree to which federalism has been internalized culturally within a particular civil society." (1) Moreover, as Watts stresses, federalism requires a legal democratic culture with "recognition of the supremacy of the constitution over all orders of government." (2) However, as Kempton notes, "although Russia inherited a federal structure, it did not inherit a federal tradition" (3) The Russian state that emerged out of the ashes of the Soviet Union in January 1992 was bequeathed a highly authoritarian political culture and a weak and inchoate civil society. Nor was there any genuine tradition of federalism that the leadership could call upon to support it in its new statebuilding strategy. Although the USSR was formally a federation, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was a "federation within a federation," in reality, Soviet federalism was a sham. As Mikhail Gorbachev (General Secretary of the Communist Party), admitted in 1989, "Up to now our state has existed as a centralized and unitary state and none of us has yet the experience of living in a federation." (4) Federalism also requires the support of political elites. However, the collapse of communism in 1991 did not lead to a democratic "circulation of elites" in Russia. On the contrary, nomenklatura continuity was the norm, particularly in the ethnic regions where former communist elites were able to utilize the ethnic card to win and hold on to power. Postcommunist elites have used federalism primarily as a smokescreen for the promotion of their own narrow political and economic interests and as a shield behind which to carve out electoral dictatorships. Russia's weak and fragmented party system has also hindered the development of federalism. Up until the elections of December 2003, only a minority of parties in the lower house of the Russian parliament (the Duma) had nationwide organizations to glue the federation together, and many of the key parties had been hostile to Russia's ethnoterritorial form of federalism. …

Federalism and Electoral Authoritarianism under Putin

Besides seat maximization, what factors motivate an incumbent regime in the grey zone between democracy and dictatorship to alter a relatively institutionalized parliamentary electoral system? To answer this question, this article seeks to uncover the rationale guiding the 2005 changes to Russia's electoral system. It presents evidence to suggest that the same strategies that allowed Russia's current party of power to use the existing electoral system to its advantage in the 2003 Duma election, threatened to spoil the fruits of that advantage in the years to come. Yet it also points out that moving from a mixed electoral system to a purely proportional system could be good for Russian democracy in the future. As a result, the work contends that seemingly authoritarian incumbents will promote reforms that aid the future cause of democracy when these same reforms serve their more immediate interests.

Electoral System Reform in Democracy's Grey Zone: Lessons from Putin's Russia

A team of Russian and American geographers and political scientists examines what is perhaps the most evident correlate of aggregate voting patterns in Russia from 1991 to 1996—the urban-rural divide within the electorate, with urban areas consistently exhibiting greater support than their rural counterparts for candidates and parties that can be labeled pro-Reform or pro-Yel'tsin. The usual explanations for this pattern concern the greater proportion of young and educated voters in urban areas and the proximity of voters there to the ostensible benefits, promised or real, of reform. This essay, however, argues on the basis of a reassessment of the 1996 Presidential election second-round returns that a share of this correlation can be explained not by mere proximity to urban areas or the urban-rural characteristics of a rayon, but also by a rayon's proximity to regional and local political bosses—those political figures most likely to use their influence to gather votes for Yel'tsin's reelection. Journal ...

The Urban-Rural Divide in the Russian Electorate and the Effect of Distance from Urban Centers

The collapse of the Soviet experiment, and of the country that embodied it, has sur ly been among the most dramatic d con sequential events of the postwar world, and indeed of the twentieth century. But how might this event, and the processes leading to it, be placed most effectively in a world historical context? How should world historians, as opposed to Russian or Soviet historians, treat the passing of the Soviet Union into history? One response might be to focus on the external roots of the Soviet collapse. The negative comparison with an economically flourishing capitalist world; the delegitimizing impact of an increasingly domi nant ethno-nationalist discourse on a multinational polity; the pres sure of Western containment policies and Cold War expenditures; the declining price of oil on the world market in the 1980s; the corrosive consequences of the Afghan debacle; the stimulus of a successful Chi nese reform program; the demonstration effect of the 1989 Eastern European revolutions?all of this and more testify to the "embedded ness" of the Soviet Union in a network of international linkages, many of which exacerbated the declining domestic sources of Soviet cohesion and vitality. Alternatively, world historians might highlight the global out comes or the global significance of the Soviet collapse. It marked the disappearance of the world's largest state, one that had been central to Eurasian political life for four centuries or more, and it occasioned new instability in many places along the borderlands of the former Soviet

Decolonization, Democratization, and Communist Reform: The Soviet Collapse in Comparative Perspective

It seems clear that Russia's attempts at democratization and Westernization will not meet the expectations of Russia's democratic reformers. As happened in previous eras of Westernization, only some elements of Western liberal democracy have taken root in Russian soil, the most important of them being competitive elections. Other fundamental elements of liberalism have not only failed to flourish, but have degenerated since the late Soviet era. Compared with the late Gorbachev period of 1990-91, the mass media and courts in today's Russia are less independent, society's role is weaker, personal rights and freedoms are less secure, and even elections are less free and fair than they were in 1990. To understand this outcome of Russian democratization, the correlation between the electoral process and the development of liberalism should be examined. Elections and Liberal Democracy By the second half of the twentieth century, the belief that democracy is the ideal or at least the best possible organization of human society has become dominant among political scientists, and especially among the political elites of most countries of the world. There are virtually no discussions today of whether democracy is good or bad; opinions differ only on what kind of democracy is more democratic, or what kind of democracy is genuine. Some political scientists have pointed out that the desire of every leader and political movement in today's world to be seen as democratic led to such stretching of the term that it turned into "not so much a term of restricted and specific meaning as a vague endorsement of a popular idea."(1) But the meaning of "democracy" has not withered away completely. Authors of its numerous modern definitions can be divided into two major groups. Those who belong to the first, following Joseph Schumpeter, maintain that elections are the only practical criterion of democracy.(2) The other group believes that democracy cannot be defined by elections alone. It can in turn be divided into two subgroups. The first consists of those who include the fundamentals of political liberalism in their definition of democracy. They argue that a democratic society should be characterized not only by the freedom and fairness of elections but also by a broadly defined pluralism. Thus, they identify democracy with its liberal-democratic form.(3) Others add social and economic democracy, guarantees of social equality, or at least of some level of social justice.(4) Discussions about democracy are carried on almost exclusively among political theorists. In practical politics, however, Schumpeter's definition has prevailed. In today's world, governments and nongovernmental groups in the West, and their supporters from the opposition forces advocating democracy and liberalization in nondemocratic countries, call for immediate general elections according to the rules that exist in contemporary, developed liberal democracies. Regardless of whether it is Bosnia, Russia, Rwanda, China, or Nigeria, elections are promoted as the first and primary remedy for societal evils. In many cases, this approach has led to success, and using the criterion of elections alone, the number of democracies in the world is growing steadily. On these grounds, supporters of the electoral approach have begun to speak of the "third wave" of democratization, which even led to the emergence of such bizarre concepts as Francis Fukuyama's "end of history." At the same time, several theorists have observed that in many countries elections did not produce liberal democracy, with its widely accepted traits: a high level of freedom, the rule of law, secure rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities, and so forth.(5) In fact, in some cases they led to the reverse. Analysis of this phenomenon resulted in a new formulation that separated elections from liberalism and (when elections were still considered to be the essence of democracy) democracy from liberalism. …

Electoral Democracy or Electoral Clanism: Russian Democratization and Theories of Transition

T he unexpected disintegration of the Soviet Union makes it necessary to think about the whole complex of problems related to the methodology of academic approach to Soviet and Russian affairs. Much has been written on the fact that the destiny of the USSR amply showed the crisis in and helplessness of Western sovietology. In his recent article, Michael McFaul also outlined the direction toward finding the roots of the error: the USSR was different from other countries in its transition to democracy, and thus required a better consideration of its politics. McFaul argues that in Soviet society the economic and political spheres were tightly interconnected, and the purely economic reform undertaken by Yegor Gaidar could do nothing but shake the old system rather than create a new one.1 Evidently, the errors in forecasts have been caused by insufficient understanding of the structure and real functioning mechanisms of Soviet society. But how, with so many detailed and specific studies, could this happen? It seems that the reason rests not in the merely technical underestimation of some factors, but rather in the stereotyped view of the USSRa view formed by common political science methodology. Many studies of the Soviet Union can be divided in two major groups: works based on a theory and so-called regional studies. While in the first group the authors seek to use Soviet material in order to prove the correctness of some of the general sociological or political science theories, the latter group represents a mere reproduction of facts of Soviet lile, often in chronological order and without too much theory. The history of ideas in the USSR is most often seen either as a succession of leaders' or ideologues' theories. These theories are usually assessed through the prism of their correspondence with classical Western models, or are being presented without any system at all. In the best cases, some attention is drawn to the similarities and coincidences between some official theories of the Soviet period and the ideas of Russia prior to 1917. Since a fair study of the political developments taking place in Soviet society could find no room in the USSR itself due to the prevailing political climate until the last years of its existente, most sovietologists represented Western cultures and styles of thinking. In practice, as a result of their use of traditional sociological approaches, the perceptions, elaborated and possibly useful to the study of contemporary Europe and the United States, were imposed on the entirely different Soviet society. Always trying to find democrats and conservatives as well as liberals and social democrats in the Soviet Union, sovietologists were surprised to

Lukin Alexander

Papers

Electoral Democracy or Electoral Clanism: Russian Democratization and Theories of Transition

Interpretations of Soviet State and Social Structure: Perceptions of Members of the First Russian Democratic Political Groups, 1985-1991