Combining statistical and qualitative analysis, including numerous case studies, this text explains why political parties have failed to take hold in Russia's regions. The author's argument is bolstered by a database of regional elections held between 1993-2003.

Subnational political units are growing in influence in national and international affairs, drawing increasing scholarly attention to politics beyond national capitals. In this book, leading Russian and Western political scientists contribute to debates in comparative politics by examining Russia’s subnational politics. Beginning with a chapter that reviews major debates in theory and method, this book continues to examine Russia’s 83 regions, exploring a wide range of topics including the nature and stability of authoritarian regimes, federal politics, political parties, ethnic conflict, governance and inequality in a comparative perspective. Providing both qualitative and quantitative data from 20 years of original research, the book draws on elite interaction, public opinion and the role of institutions regionally in the post-Soviet years. The regions vary on a number of theoretically interesting dimensions while their federal membership provides control for other dimensions that are challenging for globally comparative studies. The authors demonstrate the utility of subnational analyses and show how regional research can help answer a variety of political questions, providing evidence from Russia that can be used by specialists on other large countries or world regions in cross-national scholarship. Situated within broader theoretical and methodological political science debates, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Russian politics, comparative politics, regionalism and subnational politics.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Building on earlier work, this text combines theoretical perspectives with empirical work, to provide a comparative analysis of the electoral systems, party systems and governmental systems in the ethnic republics and regions of Russia. It also assesses the impact of these different institutional arrangements on democratization and federalism, moving the focus of research from the national level to the vitally important processes of institution building and democratization at the local level and to the study of federalism in Russia.

Secrecy of the ballot

Examines how political parties navigate major election reforms by comparing electoral system changes in Russia and Ukraine at the same time, under different regimes In Party Politics in Russia and Ukraine, Bryon Moraski provides a window into the political landscapes of Russia and Ukraine, two countries that have clashed with each other—and struggled with their own popular revolts—in recent years. Drawing on election outcomes, party nominations, parliamentary voting, and other data, Moraski highlights how ruling parties, incumbent legislators, and others have adapted to major electoral system changes in both countries. Moraski sheds light on how authoritarian regimes—and the ruling parties that support them—have used changing conditions in their countries to consolidate their power, with varying success. Exploring the swiftly changing political arena of Eastern Europe, Party Politics in Russia and Ukraine offers timely insight into the impact of elections in the twenty-first century.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's party system has suffered a difficult and turbulent infancy. Moscow based parties have had only very limited territorial penetration, and fragmentation has been one of its most significant features. Based on extensive fieldwork in three Russian regions, this book examines the development of the country's party system and the role played by parties in regional politics. Using a comparative approach, it scrutinises the internal structures and activities of the parties, looks at their decision-making processes, their everyday party life, the activities of party members, and the role of regional party organisations in federal and local election campaigns.

By the end of the 2000s Russia had become an increasingly authoritarian state, which was characterised by the following features: outrageously unfair and fraudulent elections, the existence of weak and impotent political parties, a heavily censored (often self-censored) media, weak rubber-stamping legislatures at the national and sub-national levels, politically subordinated courts, the arbitrary use of the economic powers of the state, and widespread corruption. However, this picture would be incomplete without taking into account the sub-national dimension of these subversive institutions and practices across the regions of the Russian Federation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, sub-national political developments in Russia became highly diversified and the political map of Russia’s regions became multi-faceted. The period of 2000s demonstrated a drive on the part of the Kremlin to re-centralise politics and governance to the demise of newly-emerging democratic institutions at both the national and sub-national levels. Yet, federalism and regionalism remain key elements of the research agenda in Russian politics, and the overall political map of Russia’s regions is far from being monotonic. Rather, it is similar to a complex multi-piece puzzle, which can only be put together through skilful crafting. The 12 chapters in this collection are oriented towards the generation of more theoretically and empirically solid inferences and provide critical evaluations of the multiple deficiencies in Russia’s sub-national authoritarianism, including: principal-agent problems in the relations between the layers of the ‘power vertical’, unresolved issues of regime legitimacy that have resulted from manipulative electoral practices, and the inefficient performance of regional and local governments. The volume brings together a team of international experts on Russian regional politics which includes top scholars from Britain, Canada, Russia and the USA.

This book asks why dominant political parties emerge in some authoritarian regimes, but not in others, focusing on Russia's experience under Putin.

From its inception in 2001, the United Russia Party has rapidly developed into a hugely successful, organisationally-complex political party and key component of power. This book provides a much needed analysis on United Russia by exploring the role of the party in the Russian political system, from 2000 to 2010. It explores the party empirically, as an impressive organisation in its own right, but also theoretically, as an independent or explanatory variable able to illumine the larger development of dominant-power politics in Russia in the same period. The book creates a model to understand the role of political parties in electorally-based political systems and shows how United Russia conforms to this model, and importantly, how the party also has unique features that affect its place in the political system. The book goes on to argue that United Russia represents a ‘virtual’ party hegemony, an outcome of political changes occurring elsewhere, and so a reversal of the typical relationship between parties and power found in comparative literature. This has potentially far reaching implications for our understanding of party dominance in the twenty-first century and also the sources of regime stability and instability.

Russia poses a major puzzle for theorists of party development. Whereas virtually every classic work takes political parties to be inevitable and essential to democracy, Russia has been dominated by non-partisan politicians ever since communism collapsed. This book mobilizes public opinion surveys, interviews with leading Russian politicians, careful tracking of multiple campaigns, and analysis of national and regional voting patterns to show why Russia stands out. Russia's historically influenced combination of federalism and super-presidentialism, coupled with a post-communist redistribution of resources to regional political machines and oligarchic financial-industrial groups, produced and sustained powerful party-substitutes that have largely squeezed Russia's real parties out, damaging Russia's democratic development.