Should party in parliament be weak or strong? The rules debate in the russian state duma

Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics

Volumn 14, Issue 1-2, 1998, Pages 178-200

  Haspel, Moshe ^a  

^a EMORY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3042589078     PISSN: 13523279     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13523279808415374     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. See E.E. Schattschneider, Parly Government (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1941); Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie and Jae-On Kim, The Modes of Democratic Participation: A Cross-National Comparison (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1971).
2. Sarah Dates, 'Elected Officials, Political Groups, and Voting in Russia', RFE/RL Research Report, 1993, No.2, pp.62-4.
3. Eric Rudenshiold and N. Catherine Bames, 'Political Party Development in Russia: Integration and Disintegration', in Douglas W. Blum (ed.), Russia's Future: Consolidation or Disintegration? (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), pp. 17-30.
4. Stephen White, Richard Rose and lan McAllister, How Russia Votes (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1997).
5. lan McAHister and Stephen White, 'Democracy, Political Parties, and Party Formation in Post-Communist Russia', Party Politics, Vol.1 (1995), pp.49-72.
6. Marcia A. Weigle, 'Political Participation and Party Formation in Russia, 1985-1992: Institutionalizing Democracy?' The Russian Review, Vol.53 (1994), pp.240-70.
7. V.O. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 5th edn (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1964).
8. Technically, there are two types of officially registered deputy organizations to be found in the Duma. 'Factions' (or 'fractions') are formed on the basis of electoral organizations that pass the five per cent PR barrier, while 'deputy groups' may be formed of a minimum of 35 'independent' deputies. Both groups possess equal rights under the Duma Rules, and will collectively be referred to as parliamentary parties for the purposes of this study.
9. See John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parlies in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
10. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1954).
11. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).
12. Moshe Haspel, 'Pacts in Transitions: The Case of the USSR Congress of People's Deputies', paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 1994.
13. Michael E. Urban, 'Party Formation and Deformation on Russia's Democratic Left', in Robert T. Huber and Donald R. Kelley (eds.), Perestroika-Era Politics: The A'eiv Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), pp.129-52.
14. Thomas F. Remington and Steven S. Smith, 'Communism's Collapse and the Development of Parliamentary Institutions in Russia', paper presented at the Seminar on the Collapse of Communism and Social Theory, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, 28 April, 1995, p.13.
15. Thomas F. Remington and Steven S. Smith, 'The Development of Parliamentary Parties in Russia', Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol.20 (1995), pp.456-89.
16. Aleksandr Sobianin, 'Political Cleavages Among the Russian Deputies', in Thomas F. Remington (ed.), Parliaments in Transition (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), pp.I81-216; Thomas F. Remington, Steven S. Smith, D. Roderick Kiewiet and Moshe Haspel, 'Transitional Institutions and Parliamentary Alignments in Russia, 1990-1993', in Remington (ed.), Parliaments in Transition, pp. 159-80.
17. Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (New York: Routledge, 1993).
18. Remington et al., 'Transitional Institutions and Parliamentary Alignments'.
19. Thomas F. Remington, 'The Evolution of Rules in the Russian Legislature', Emory University, 1992 (photocopy).
20. Richard F. Fenno, Congressmen in Committees (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1973).
21. This decree was prepared on the basis of a new election law that had been under consideration in the Supreme Soviet. This law, prepared by Viktor Sheinis, was modeled on the German electoral system: see Thomas F. Remington and Steven S. Smith, 'Political Goals, Institutional Context, and Choice of an Electoral System: The Russian Parliamentary Election Law', American Journal of Political Science, Vol.40 (1996), pp.1253-79; Michael E. Urban, 'December 1993 as a Replication of Late-Soviet Electoral Practices', Post Soviel Affairs, Vol.10, No.2 (1994) pp.127-58; Ol'ga Bychkova, 'Partiinye spiski v redaktsii Viktora Sheinisa', Moskovskie novosti, 20 June 1993; and Jerry F. Hough, 'Institutional Rules and Party Formation', in Timothy J. Colton and Jerry F. Hough (eds.), Growing Pains: The 1993 Russian Legislative Election (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, forthcoming).
22. In January 1996 this committee was renamed the Committee on the Rules and Organization of Work of the State Duma.
23. Gosudarsvennaya Duma: Slenogramma zasedanii, 11 Jan. 1994.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 13 Jan. 1994.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 14 Jan. 1994.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 17 Jan. 1994.
32. Ibid., 18 March 1994.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 18 Feb. 1994.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 18 March 1994.
37. Factor analysis is a statistical technique used to identify a relatively small number of underlying 'dimensions' within a large body of data.
38. Eigenvalues for the first and second factors were 45.7 and 13.7, respectively.
39. Factor loadings range in absolute value from zero to one, and demonstrate the degree to \vhich a particular vote is correlated with a given common dimension captured by the factor analysis. The higher the factor loading on a given dimension, the more 'overlap' between the vote and the identified dimension; votes very highly correlated with a dimension are said to be 'defining votes'.
40. The debate on the law on the deputy's status included many discussions, such as that on deputies' salary, that did not tap into either of these substantive dimensions. When the 100 votes on this law are excluded, the first factor explains 18.2 per cent of the variance (eigenvalue = 38.1) and the second factor explains 5.0 per cent (eigenvalue = 10.5), giving a total of 23.2 per cent. The interpretation and loadings of major votes do not change significantly.
41. John H. Aldrich and Ruth W. Grant, 'The Antifederalists, the First Congress, and the First Parties', The Journal of Politics, Vol.55 (1993), pp.295-326.