Electoral system reform in democracy's grey zone: Lessons from Putin's Russia

Government and Opposition

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 536-563

  Moraski, Bryon ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34548622595     PISSN: 0017257X     EISSN: 14777053     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00235.x     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Previous drafts of this manuscript were presented at the 2005 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting and a research brown bag at the University of Florida. The author would like to thank Bernard Grofman, Conor O'Dwyer, Susan Orr, Benjamin Smith, Daniel Smith, Joshua Tucker, Stephen White and Philip Williams for their comments and suggestions, as well as Steven Minegar and Stanislav Veremeychik for their assistance with the data entry for the project.
2. Larry Diamond Thinking about Hybrid Regimes Journal of Democracy, 13 : 2 (2002 pp. 21 35
3. Steven Levitsky Lucan Way The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism Journal of Democracy, 13 : 2 (2002 pp. 51 65
4. The decision to raise the legal threshold was actually passed into law in December 2002, see Federal Law No 175-FZ of 20 December 2002, 'On the Election of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation' (at http://www.democracy.ru/english/library/laws, accessed 8 September 2005). According to this law, the higher threshold would not go into effect until the Duma had been elected once following the law's passage - that is, after the December 2003 election.
5. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Duma Approves Election Law Changes RFE/RL Newsline, 7 July 2005
6. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Changes, and Economic Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 16.
7. Kenneth Benoit Models of Electoral System Change Electoral Studies, 23 : 3 (2004 pp. 363 84
8. Carles Boix Setting the Rules of the Game: The Choice of Electoral Systems in Advanced Democracies American Political Science Review, 93 : 3 (1999 pp. 609 24
9. Josep M. Colomer It's Parties that Choose Electoral Systems (or, Duverger's Laws Upside Down) Political Studies, 53 : 1 (2005 pp. 1 21
10. Olga Shvetsova Endogenous Selection of Institutions and Their Exogenous Effects Constitutional Political Economy, 14 : 3 (2003 pp. 191 212
11. Vladimir Ryzhkov The Liberal Debacle Journal of Democracy, 15 : 3 (2004 pp. 52 8
12. Michael McFaul Nikolai Petrov What the Elections Tell Us Journal of Democracy, 15 : 3 (2004 pp. 20 31, p. 25
13. William A. Clark The Russian Election Cycle, 2003-2004 Electoral Studies, 24 : 3 (2005 pp. 511 19
14. While one could argue that polling data at the time of the electoral system change may be a preferable approach for estimating the potential effects of the new electoral system, this approach has clear drawbacks. The most important is that it eliminates the electoral dynamics associated with a political campaign - that is, survey results when no election is actually on the horizon can differ notably from survey results close to an election, let alone from the actual election results. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that those promoting electoral system reforms are basing their assessments on how voters actually cast their ballots in the midst of an election campaign rather than in between election cycles.
15. It is also important to emphasize the dangers of applying a different electoral system to the results of an old election since such an approach assumes that behaviour would not change. Yet, as Katz notes, there is a large body of theoretical literature and empirical evidence to suggest that both voters and parties behave differently under different institutional settings. So, even though these behavioural changes are advanced as reasons justifying a new electoral system, 'unless they can be taken into account, they leave projections based on past elections of very dubious value'. See Richard Katz, 'Problems in Electoral Reform: Why the Decision to Change Electoral Systems is Not Simple', in Henry Milner (ed.), Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count: Electoral System Reform in Canada and its Provinces, Peterborough, Ontario, Broadview Press, p. 93.
16. Jack Bielasiak Party Competition in Emerging Democracies: Representation and Effectiveness in Post-Communism and Beyond Democratization, 12 : 3 (2005 p. 347
17. McFaul and Petrov, 'What the Elections Tell Us', pp. 20-31.
18. In 1995, 43 parties competed for seats in the proportional representation half of the Duma election with 49.5 per cent of the vote going to parties that failed to pass the 5 per cent threshold. Given this result, Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) was charged with preventing a recurrence of such disproportionality in the 1999 election. Accordingly, the CEC refined Russia's election law in several ways. In 1999, the CEC was required to verify 20 per cent of 200,000 signatures needed to be on the ballot and to disqualify parties with 15 per cent or more invalid signatures. Likewise, the CEC disqualified candidates who failed to submit accurate income and property statements, had a criminal record, or were foreign citizens. The disqualification of any of the top three candidates on a party list or 25 per cent of a party list would disqualify the entire party from competition. The 1999 election law also included several other innovations, see Yitzhak Brudny, 'Continuity or Change in Russian Electoral Patterns: The December 1999-March 2000 Electoral Cycle', in Archie Brown (ed.), Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 154-78.
19. Jack Bielasiak The Institutionalization of Electoral and Party Systems in Post-Communist States Comparative Politics, 34 : 2 (2002 pp. 189 210
20. Sarah Birch Electoral Systems and Party Systems in Europe, East and West Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 2 : 3 (2001 pp. 355 77
21. See among others, Gary W. Cox, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, New York, John Wiley, 1954; Douglas W. Rae, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1967; and Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1989.
22. Sarah Birch Single-Member District Electoral Systems and Democratic Transition Electoral Studies, 24 : 2 (2005 pp. 281 301
23. Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
24. Thomas F. Remington Steven S. Smith Political Goals, Institutional Context, and the Choice of an Electoral System: The Russian Parliamentary Election Law American Journal of Political Science, 40 : 4 (1996 pp. 1253 79
25. Erik S. Herron Political Actors, Preferences and Election Rule Re-design in Russia and Ukraine Democratization, 11 : 2 (2004 pp. 41 59
26. Remington and Smith, 'Political Goals', p. 1277.
27. Ibid., p. 1271.
28. Matthew S. Shugart, 'Politicians, Parties, and Presidents: An Exploration of Post-Authoritarian Institutional Design', in Beverly Crawford and Arend Lijphart (eds), Liberalization and Leninist Legacies: Comparative Perspectives on Democratic Transitions, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997, pp. 40-90.
29. Kathleen Bawn The Logic of Institutional Preferences: German Electoral Law as a Social Choice Outcome American Journal of Political Science, 37 : 4 (1993 pp. 965 89
30. David Brady Jongryn Mo Electoral Systems and Institutional Choice: A Case Study of the 1988 Korean Elections Comparative Political Studies, 24 : 4 (1990 pp. 405 29
31. Geoffrey Garrett International Cooperation and Institutional Choice: The European Community's Internal Market International Organization, 45 : 2 (1992 pp. 533 60
32. Peter Reddaway Is Putin's Power More Formal Than Real? Post-Soviet Affairs, 18 : 1 (2002 pp. 31 40
33. Lilia Shevtsova, Putin's Russia, Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003, p. 229.
34. Mikhail A. Alexseev (ed.), Center-Periphery Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia: A Federation Imperiled, New York, St Martin's Press, 1999.
35. James Alexander Federal Reforms in Russia: Putin's Challenge to the Republics Demokratizatsiya, 12 : 4 (2004 pp. 233 63
36. Matthew Hyde Putin's Federal Reforms and their Implications for Presidential Power in Russia Europe-Asia Studies, 53 : 5 (2001 pp. 719 43
37. Bryon Moraski Mandating Party Development in the Russian Federation: Effects of the 2001 Party Law Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 16 : 3 (2006 pp. 199 219
38. O. K. Zastrozhnaia (ed.), Politicheskie Partii - Izbiratel'nye ob'edineniia nakanune vyborov deputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniia Rossiiskoi Federatsii chetvertogo sozyva, Moscow, Russian Fund for Free Elections, 2003, p. 5.
39. Edwin Bacon, 'Russia's Law on Political Parties: Democracy by Decree?', in Cameron Ross (ed.), Russian Politics Under Putin, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004, p. 43.
40. Grigorii V. Golosov From Adygeya to Yaroslavl: Factors of Party Development in the Regions of Russia, 1995-1998 Europe-Asia Studies, 51 : 8 (1999 pp. 1333 65
41. Grigorii V. Golosov, Democracy Unclaimed: Political Parties in the Regions of Russia, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2004, p. 262.
42. S. Mohsin Hashim Putin's Etatization Project and Limits to Democratic Reforms in Russia Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 38 : 1 (2005 p. 26
43. Henry E. Hale Explaining Machine Politics in Russia's Regions: Economy, Ethnicity, and Legacy Post-Soviet Affairs, 19 : 3 (2003 pp. 228 63
44. Alexander Lukin Electoral Democracy or Electoral Clanism? Russian Democratization and Theories of Transition Demokratizatsiya, 71 : 1 (1999 pp. 93 110
45. Bryon J. Moraski William M. Reisinger Explaining Electoral Competition across Russia's Regions Slavic Review, 62 : 2 (2003 pp. 278 301
46. Richard Rose How Floating Parties Frustrate Democratic Accountability: A Supply-Side View of Russia's Elections East European Constitutional Review, 9 : 1-2 (2000 pp. 53 9
47. Mikhail Myagkov Peter Ordeshook Changing Russia's Electoral System: Assessing Alternative Forms of Representation and Elections Demokratizatsiya, 71 : 1 (1999 p. 74
48. Natal'ia Melikova Sauna, lapti I tretii srok Nezavismaia Gazeta, 160 : 3556 (3 August 2005 pp. 1 2
49. See Vladimir Putin, 'Interv'iu direktoru direktsii informatsionnykh programm "Pervogo" kanala Kirillu Keimenovu, glavnomu redaktoru sluzhby informatsii telekanala NTV Tat'iane Mitkovoi i politicheskomu obozrevateliu telekanala "Rossiia" Nikolaiu Svanidze', transcript available on the official site of the president of Russia, http://president. kremlin.ru/text/apears/2004/11/79594.shtml.
50. Moser, Unexpected Outcomes.
51. Robert G. Moser Ethan Scheiner Mixed Electoral Systems and Electoral System Effects: Controlled Comparison and Cross-national Analysis Electoral Studies, 23 : 4 (2004 pp. 575 600
52. Henry E. Hale Why Not Parties? Electoral Markets, Party Substitutes, and Stalled Democratization in Russia Comparative Politics, 37 : 2 (2005 pp. 147 66
53. Richard Rose, Neil Munro Stephen White Voting in a Floating Party System: The 1999 Duma Election Europe-Asia Studies, 53 : 3 (2001 pp. 419 43
54. Erik S. Herron Causes and Consequences of Fluid Faction Membership in Ukraine Europe-Asia Studies, 54 : 4 (2002 pp. 625 39
55. Thomas D. Lancaster David W. Patterson Comparative Pork Barrel Politics: Perceptions of the West German Bundestag Comparative Political Studies, 22 : 4 (1990 pp. 458 76
56. Frank Thames A House Divided: Party Strength and the Mandate Divide in Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine Comparative Political Studies, 38 : 3 (2005 pp. 282 303
57. Thomas F. Remington Putin and the Duma Post-Soviet Affairs, 17 : 4 (2001 pp. 285 308
58. Andrei Kunov, Dmitrii Shakin Aleksei Kazakov Ne takaia uzh antinarodnaia Ekspert, 44 : 398 (2003 pp. 72 8
59. A. V. Kunov, D. A. Shakin and A. V. Kazakov, 'Protivostoinie Interesov v Gosudarstvennoi Dume Tret'ego Sozyva', working paper, State University Higher School of Economics, 2004.
60. Regina Smyth Building State Capacity from the Inside Out: Parties of Power and the Success of the President's Reform Agenda in Russia Politics and Society, 30 : 4 (2002 pp. 555 78
61. Henry E. Hale The Origins of United Russia and the Putin Presidency: The Role of Contingency in Party-System Development Demokratizatsiya, 12 : 2 (2004 pp. 169 93
62. Smyth, 'Building State Capacity from the Inside Out', p. 573.
63. The by-elections resulted because more voters in these three districts supported Russia's 'against all' option than any single candidate during the 7 December 2003 ballot.
64. The only party winning an amount close to this total is the KPRF in 1995 with 58 SMD seats.
65. The results are not substantively different when this control variable is excluded (unreported, but available from the author).
66. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 'The Russian Federation Votes, 2003-4', at http://www.rferl.org/specials/russianelection/.
67. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York, Free Press, 1967.
68. S. Mozaffar R. Vengroff A "Whole System" Approach to the Choice of Electoral Rules in Democratizing Countries: Senegal in Comparative Perspective Electoral Studies, 21 : 4 (2002 pp. 601 16
69. Joshua A. Tucker A Glimmer of Hope in Putin's Power Grab International Herald Tribune, 18 September 2004
70. Richard Rose Doh Chull Shin Democratization Backwards: The Problem of Third-Wave Democracies British Journal of Political Science, 31 : 2 (2001 p. 336
71. Ibid., p. 337.