Dilemmas of Russian Party Development

Abstract

There are two main approaches to explaining Russia's stunted party development. The first focuses on social and cultural factors «from below»: the weakness of an independent civil society, blurred class identities, a cultural resistance to party affiliation, and weak civic subjectivity. The second prioritises institutional design «from above», notably the «superpresidential» system towering above the government, parliament and the judicial system while reproducing a «monocentric» system to which all socio-political life is subordinated. These are exogenous factors, and there is also the endogenous approach, focusing on the behaviour of parties themselves. The sudden fall of the Soviet system disrupted the evolutionary emergence of a stable party system by cutting its links to society, and thus the party system was reconstituted from above by elites, a pattern that was reinforced by subsequent elections. Thus the party system was largely the outcome of elite interactions and will remain stunted until parties are able to re-establish genuine reciprocal links with society. In recent years the elite-driven party system has intensified, accompanied by the intensified «Mexicanisation» of Russian politics, the establishment of a one-party dominant political system. This paper combines analysis of endogenous with exogenous factors to survey the development of the Russian party system.