Suchergebnisse

An overview is given of the 2016 Russian State Duma election, and its significance for the current Russian regime. As the first in a series of five articles in this edition of Russian Politics, it sets the 2016 State Duma election into context. It begins by discussing the role of the Duma in Russian politics, and reviews political developments between the protests that followed the 2011 parliamentary election, and the successful conclusion of the 2016 one. It then examines how institutional and political changes came together in the 2016 campaign. The resultant supermajority for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party is analyzed, before the remaining articles in this issue – which examine the issues of turnout, voting behavior, electoral manipulation and the future of the regime – are introduced.

The article applies and develops Katz and Mair's 'cartel party' thesis to the Russian case. Challenging the accepted characterization of the Russian party system as 'hegemonic', the article contends that this underplays the systemic importance of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and its collusion with pro-Kremlin parties in the fields of electoral and party reform. By applying the concepts of cartelization to the Russian case, it appears that the intersection of state and party goes beyond simply the 'top-down' establishment of political parties towards a party system in which there is inter-party collusion around a strong state-based regime. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

The article applies and develops Katz and Mair's 'cartel party' thesis to the Russian case. Challenging the accepted characterization of the Russian party system as 'hegemonic', the article contends that this underplays the systemic importance of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and its collusion with pro-Kremlin parties in the fields of electoral and party reform. By applying the concepts of cartelization to the Russian case, it appears that the intersection of state and party goes beyond simply the 'top-down' establishment of political parties towards a party system in which there is inter-party collusion around a strong state-based regime.