When do elites compete? The determinants of political competition in Russian regions

Comparative Politics

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2006, Pages

  Sharafutdinova, Gulnaz ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33745304435     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20433998     Document Type: Review

References (69)

1. McFaul, "The Fourth Wave of Democratization and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World," World Politics. 54 (January 2002), 212.
2. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism. Socialism, and Democracy (London: George Alien & Unwin, 1961).
3. Robert Dahl, Potyarchy and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).
4. Joel Moses, "Rethinking Political Typologies of Russian Regions," paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, St. Louis, November 1999, p.7.
5. See, for example, Alfred Stepan, "Russian Federalism in Comparative Perspective," Post-Soviet Affairs, 16 (April-June 2000), 133-76;
6. Henry Hale, "Will Elections Erode Russia's Democracy?," The Fletcher Forum, 24 (January 2000), 123-36;
7. "The Regionalization of Autocracy in Russia," Program on New Approaches to Russian Security Policy Memo Series (PONARS) (Memo #42, 1998), www.fas. harvard.ed/~ponars/;
8. Mary McAuley, Russia's Politics of Uncertainty (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
9. Midkhat Farukshin, "Politicheskaia elita v Tatarstane: Vyzovy vremeni i trudnosti adaptatsii," Polis, 6 (1994), 67-79.
10. Vladimir Gel'man et al., eds., Rossiia regionov: Transformatsiia politicheskikh rezhimav (Moscow: Ves'mir, 2000);
11. Peter Kirkow, Russia's Provinces: Authoritarian Transformation versus Local Autonomy? (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).
12. This idea is recognized formally in the 1993 constitution of the Russian Federation.
13. This structure came into being in 1991. Prior to then, the federation consisted of forty-nine oblasts, six krais, sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, and ten autonomous okrugs. In 1991 the sixteen autonomous republics and four of the five autonomous oblasts were given the status of republics.
14. For a general discussion of relations between the autonomous okrugs and the regions they are part of, see N. M. Dobrynin, "Problemy regulirovaniia otnoshenii kraia (oblasti) s vkhodiashchimi v ikh sostav avtonomnymi okrugarai," Gosudarstvo i Pravo, 7 (1998), 46-50.
15. For a case study of interregional relations involving autonomous okrugs with their host region, see Mikhail Pryadilnikov, "Federalism and Interregional Conflict in Russia: The Case of Tiumen Oblast and Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous Okrugs," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Slavic Studies, Arlington, November 15-18, 2001.
16. 1992 Federal Treaty, Articles 1, 2.
17. Gail Lapidus md Edward Walker, "Nationalism, Regionalism, and Federalism: Center-Periphery Relations in Post-Communist Russia," in Gail Lapidus, ed., The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), ch. 3.
18. Herbert Kitschelt, "Accounting for the Outcomes of Post-Communist Regime Change: Causal Depth or Shallowness in Rival Explanation," paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September 1-5, 1999, p. 31.
19. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
20. Using this theory, Brandvoll explained the evolution of different authoritarian regimes in the republics of Kalmykia and Buryatia and pointed out that different levels of ethnic polarization contribute to different regime developments. Jorunn Brandvoll, "Only Peace and Harmony? An Investigation of Inter-Ethnic Realities and Their Impact on Regime Development in Buryatia and Kalmykia," paper delivered to the Seventh Annual World Convention of the Association for the Studies of Nationalities, Columbia University, New York, April 11-13, 2002.
21. Hale; "The Regionalization of Autocracy in Russia."
22. Hale, Regionalization of Autocracy in Russia, Ibid.
23. Seymour Martin Lipset, "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy," American Political Science Review, 53 (March 1959), 69-105.
24. For a reassessment of the modernization theory, see Adam Przeworski, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
25. Some sectors might benefit from protectionist policies, while others would favor open borders and free trade.
26. Following the financial crisis, most regions imposed price controls on key food products; regions that had a strong food industry adopted laws banning the export of food and other commodities.
27. It was after this crisis that the regional governors' political interests were institutionalized through the creation of the centrist party All Russia (Ksia Rossiia) to compete in elections to the national legislature (State Duma) in December 1999. In August 1999 All Russia merged with Moscow mayor Luzhkov's party Our Fatherland (Otechestvo). thus creating a powerful anti-Kremlin bloc that endangered Yeltsin's ability to appoint a successor.
28. See Peter Reddaway and Robert Orttung, eds., The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Reform of Federal-Regional Relations (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
29. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out the relevance of this logic.
30. See, for example, Gel'man et al.; McAuley; Neil Melvin, "The Consolidation of a New Regional Elite: The Case of Omsk (1987-1995)," Europe-Asia Studies, 50 (June 1998), 619-50.
31. Kelly M. McMann and Nikolai V. Petrov, "A Survey of Democracy in Russia's Regions," Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, 41 (2000), 155-82; Dahl.
32. Christopher Marsh, "Social Capital and Democracy in Russia," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 33 (2000), 183-99;
33. Tatu Vanhanen, Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries (New York: Routledge, 1997).
34. Bryon Moraski and William M. Reisinger, "Explaining Electoral Competition across Russia's Regions," Slavic Review, 62 (2003), 278-301.
35. Rostislav Turovskii, ed., Politika v regionakh: Gubernalory i gruppy vliianiia (Moskva: Tsentr politicheskikh tekhnologii, 2002).
36. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer and Stephen White for suggesting that this indicator be included.
37. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
38. Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
39. For a critical assessment of turnover tests, see Andreas Schedler, "Measuring Democratic Consolidation," Studies in Comparative International Development, 36 (2001), 66-92.
40. Several sources, including publications of the Central Electoral Committee (for 1995 2000), data collected by Yitzhak Brudny (personal communication) mostly for elections held during 1991-1994, and newspaper reports (for elections during 2000-2002) were used to create this database. The database excluded the results of regional elections that were invalid.
41. The data came from 1989 census.
42. Measured according to the Goskomstat (Russian state statistical committee) criteria.
43. These data are from Goskomstat (Regiony Rossii: Informatsionno- statisticheskii sbornik 2001 (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2002).
44. Often observers talk about the 1996-1997 and the 1999-2002 electoral cycles of regional gubernatorial elections because most gubernatorial elections were held in those years. Gel'man, Golosov, and Meleshkina distinguish between the first (1993-1996) and the second (1999-2000) electoral cycles using national presidential and parliamentary elections as the breakpoint. Vladimir Gel'man, Grigorii Golosov, and Elena Meleshkina, Vtoroi elektoral'nyi tsikl v Rossii: 1999-2000 (Moscow: Ves' mir, 2002). Both of these periodizations seem inappropriate for the purposes of this study because they leave many elections (and thus observations) out of the dataset.
45. An OLS model is used when the dependent variable, political competitiveness, is represented by interval data, and the logistic regression analysis is used when the dependent variable is dichotomous.
46. H. White, "A Heteroscedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroscedasticity," Econometrica, 48 (1980), 817-38. Another technique, the Prais-Winsten 1954 transformed regression estimators, yielded results approximating those reported here.
47. Particularly, there is a negative correlation of 65 between cycle 3 and electoral round 1 and a positive correlation of 47 between cycle 3 and electoral round 3.
48. I also tried to use a more specific time variable than the electoral cycle used previously. Each election date was converted to a simple day counter, beginning with the first regional election; the June 12, 1991, regional elections were taken as 0. However, no significant relationship was found between time and political competitiveness.
49. It should be noted that the standard interpretation of coefficients does not apply in logit models; therefore, I focus mainly on statistical significance levels and signs.
50. Although it appears that nonethnic regions were more competitive during the first cycle (1991-1993), this finding was not valid. The statistical significance in this case seems to be a result of the inconsistent data. Most data in the first cycle come from the republics; there were very few, exceptional cases of elections held in the nonethnic regions during 1991-1993.
51. Indeed, vertikal'vlasti became a catch phrase in the Russian media in 2000-2002.
52. The new institution of presidential envoys specifically and the presidential administration itself are the main bodies that exert pressure and support for particular candidates.
53. See Reddaway and Orttung, eds.
54. See Turovskii, ed.
55. In fact, it was even predicted by Lilia Shevtsova, "Molodye reformatory i partiia vlasti," Izvestiia, Oct. 9, 1997.
56. These policies are most vividly exemplified by the famous cases of two major Russian "oligarchs," Berezovsky and Gusinsky, who ended up being expelled from the country.
57. In early 1996 popular support for Yeltsin was in single digits.
58. Andrew Konitzer-Smimov, "Economic Voting in Russia's Regions: Are Governors Accountable for Regional Performance?" (PhD. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2002).
59. David Samuels, "Federalism and Democratic Transitions: The 'New' Politics of the Governors in Brazil," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 30 (2000), 43-61;
60. Cameron Ross, "Federalism and Democratization in Russia," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 33 (2000), 403-20;
61. Alfred Stepan, "Federalism and Democracy: Beyond the U.S. Model," Journal of Democracy, 10 (1999), 19-34.
62. Samuel Beer, "Federalism, Nationalism and Democracy in America," American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), 12-13.
63. Stepan, p. 21.
64. Ibid., p. 23.
65. Edward Gibson, ed., Federalism and Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
66. Enrique Ochoa-Reza, "Multiple Arena's of Struggle: Federalism and Mexico's Transition to Democracy," in Federalism and Democracy in Latin America, ibid., ch. 8;
67. David J. Samuels and Scott Mainwaring, "Strong Federalism, Constraints on the Central Government, and Economic Reform in Brazil," in Federalism and Democracy in Latin America, ibid., ch. 3.
68. Ross, p. 417.
69. It has been commonly accepted by now, for example, that Ukraine can not be considered democratic; furthermore, Putin's Russia is seen more and more as a case of "creeping authoritarianism." For a recent discussion of Russia, see Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 2004).