Russia's Political Party System as an Obstacle to Democratization

The first 200 words of this essay...

Russia's Political Party System as an Obstacle to Democratization

Introduction

Political parties play a fundamental role in the representative political systems of northern industrialized democracies. They "connect civil and political society, advance the perceived interests of individuals, groups, and social strata while aiming consciously to develop these constituencies, and provide a link between society and the state, espousing the claims of the one and enforcing the rules of the other" (Sakwa 1995, 169). Political parties provide representation and accountability, electoral pressure for partisan constituencies, and the basis for structuring political choice in the competition of interests in the political arena. In short, they serve as an integral aspect of representative democracies, and thus are perceived as the bedrock for the process of democratization.

It is the argument of this article, however, that Russia's transition to democracy actually has been inhibited by the development of a dysfunctional and extremely unstable party system. An important starting point for understanding the woeful state of Russia's contemporary party system is examining the motivations surrounding the choices made by self-interested political elites. The desire of those who already possess power to maintain it and the desire to obtain the "goods" of political