Party support or personal resources? Factors of success in the plurality portion of the 1999 national legislative elections in Russia

In: Communist and post-communist studies, Band 35, Heft 1, S. 23-38

Abstract

The paper estimates party-related and non-party-related factors of electoral success in single-member district elections to the Russian State Duma in December 1999. As demonstrated by the analysis, both kinds of factors facilitate candidates' performance, but the utility of personal political resources of non-electoral origins is greater than that of party support. Thus it is likely to be valued by Russian politicians as a supplement, not as a core component of their electoral strategies. By distorting the structure of incentives for elite partisanship, this situation conserves party system underdevelopment in the country.