Russia's 1999 Parliamentary Elections: Party Consolidation and Fragmentation

Demokratizatsiya

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 5-23

  McFaul, Michael ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 0011113110     PISSN: 10746846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. On the origins of this formulation for selecting Duma members, see Michael McFaul, "Institutional Design, Uncertainty, and Path Dependency during Transitions: Cases from Russia, Constitutional Political Economy 10, no. 1 (1999): 27-52.
2. Some minor changes were introduced in the new 1999 Duma electoral law. One year before the vote, a party or an organized movement had to specify in its charter its intention to participate in the 1999 parliamentary election. The change was designed to discourage latecomers. The new law also limited the number of candidates to 270 of whom not more than 18 (in the 1995, the number was 12) could be included in the federal part of the party list. The rest must be included in regional candidate groupings. The list of personal data to be made available to the public by candidates was also significantly increased. It included information about convictions, citizenship of foreign countries, amount and source of income, and a listing of property owned by the candidate. The new law was also more specific about registration procedures. It required the verification of signatures in the signature lists, forbids solicitation of signatures from experts from legislative bodies of interior affairs, judicial entities, military ministry, and other state organizations. At least 20 percent of all signatures, selected randomly, had to be officially verified by law. A final significant new provision did not allow party leaders at the top of the party list to use free television time if they were also running in single-mandate districts. This rule was designed to discourage individuals from registering parties as a way to help them win single-man-date seats, a phenomenon that occurred frequently in 1995.
3. See Mikhail Dmitriev, "Party Economic Programs and Implications," in Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, with Elizabeth Reisch, Primer on Russia's 1999 Duma Elections (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 1999), 31-60.
4. See Tatyana Krasnopevsteva, "Comparing Party Platforms," Russia's 1999 Duma Elections: Pre-election Bulletin, No.1 (Moscow: Moscow Carnegie Center, 2 December 1999).
5. Agenstvo Regional'nykh Politicheskikh Issledovanii (ARPI), Regional'nyi Sotsiologicheskii Monitoring 49, 10-12 December 1999, 6.
6. Nikolai Petrov and Alcksey Makarkin, "Unity (Medved)," in McFaul et al., Primer on Russia's 1999 Duma Elections, 124. This chapter provides a concise history of the bloc.
7. Michael McFaul, "Russia's Political Forces Realign," Wall Street Journal (European Edition), 26 August 1999.
8. ARPI, Regional'nyi Sotsiologicheskii Monitoring 49, 10-12 December 1999, 6.
9. Quoted here from Vlast 31, 10 August 1999, 20
10. M. Steven Fish, "The Travails of Liberalsim," Journal of Democracy 7, no. 2 (April 1996): 114-15.
11. See Michael McFaul and Nikolai Petrov, "The 1999 Duma Election in Comparative Perspective," 8; and Alexcy Zudin, "Union of Right Forces," 103-12, both in McFaul et al., Primer on Russia's 1999 Duma Elections. In my own survey of commentary and analysis on the elections before the vote, I found no one who predicted such a strong showing for SPS. Most believed that they would not cross the 5 percent threshold.
12. See Michael McFaul and Nikolai Petrov, "The 1999 Duma Election in Comparative Perspective," 8; and Alexcy Zudin, "Union of Right Forces," 103-12, both in McFaul et al., Primer on Russia's 1999 Duma Elections. In my own survey of commentary and analysis on the elections before the vote, I found no one who predicted such a strong showing for SPS. Most believed that they would not cross the 5 percent threshold.
13. This kind of interpretation, the dominant explanation found in most journalistic accounts, is most eloquently stated in Thomas Graham, "Who Really Won in Russia?" New York Times, 21 December 1999, A31; and "Russia's Election: A Grubby Spectacle," The Economist, 18 December 1999, 19-21.
14. This kind of interpretation, the dominant explanation found in most journalistic accounts, is most eloquently stated in Thomas Graham, "Who Really Won in Russia?" New York Times, 21 December 1999, A31; and "Russia's Election: A Grubby Spectacle," The Economist, 18 December 1999, 19-21.
15. This assessment is based on my interviews with campaign managers from all four parties (December 1999).
16. In correlating the party percentages across eighty-eight regions, Aleksei Titkov found that a comparison of OVR and Unity produced a strong negative correlation (-0.6). The only other negative correlation of that magnitude occurred when comparing Fatherland-All Russia levels of support with Zhirinovsky's Bloc. Even the negative correlation between SPS and the CPRF was not as strong (-0.3). Not surprisingly, the highest posi- tive correlation (0.6) occurred when comparing Yabloko and SPS. The author is grateful to Aleksei Titkov for generating these preliminary figures which, it must be cautioned, are based preliminarily on regional results and not on precinct-level figures, which have yet to be released.
17. http://www.wciom.ru/EDITION/pressl4.htm, 5 of 14.
18. Ibid., 6 of 14.
19. All of these figures should be treated as preliminary because this article was written before the first session of the new Duma had convened, the moment when actual single-mandate party affiliations will become better known. The basic conclusions drawn here, however, can be made based on rough approximations.
20. In eight electoral districts, the elections were declared invalid because turnout was below 25 percent. The election for the electoral district in Chechnya did not occur.
21. Many argue that his fate is tied exclusively to military success in Chechnya; as more body bags begin to undermine support for the war, so, too, will Putin's popularity decline. In the long run, strong opposition to the war may emerge, as it did during the last Russian invasion of Chechnya, in 1994-96. To date, however, this war is different. First, the rationale for intervention has changed. In 1994, Russian citizens did not understand why their military invaded Chechnya. Polls showed a majority did not believe that preserving Russia's territorial integrity was a worthy aim. In contrast, everyone, rightly or wrongly, understands the current offensive to be a counter-terrorist campaign against "bandits" who attacked Russian territory (Dagestan), for the first time since 1941. These same "terrorists" allegedly bombed innocents in Moscow and elsewhere. Consequently, public support for the war remains high and will not necessarily be undermined by higher casualties. Second, the current conflict is a different kind of war. Russian forces are greater: 100,000 compared with the 30,000 that fought before. Russian tactics differ, too: Russian generals are avoiding casualties by relying more heavily on aerial bombing. The Russian military has slowed the pace of fighting to avoid casualties but also to ensure that the popular war does not end too fast. Third, the electoral dynamics of the current war contrast with those of Russia's 1996 presidential race. Then, President Boris N. Yeltsin's chief pollster argued that the war had to end for Yeltsin to be reelected. Yeltsin agreed, and on 31 March, he signed a temporary cease-fire. In 2000, there will be no electoral pressure to end the war. On the contrary, the war is popular, and no major presidential candidate advocates negotiating with the Chechen authorities. Finally, Russia's three national TV networks support the war, in contrast to the 1994-96 campaign. NTV has begun to criticize the war, but only sparingly. Furthermore, few print journalists report from Chechnya because the Russian government has restricted their movement. Even if the Russian military has begun to lose and many Western reporters also claim they are losing, most Russians are unlikely to know it.