How Russia’s Institutional Structure has affected its Prospects for Democratization.

        An explanation for the current weakness of parties in Russia stems from its parallel to the polarization of Russian society as a whole.  Since institutions are commonly regarded as the dependent variable, the party system is in some ways a reflection of society.  The traditional structural explanation for this fragmentation would blame culture, citing that Russians have no tradition of even pre-Soviet competitive parties and must be culturally averse to them.  There never really existed a liberal culture of controversy and a search for compromise between different positions.  Another explanation would cite the poorly defined market based interest groups and severe socio-economic cleavages which links the slow development of capitalism with the slow development of the party system and identification.  For example, Russia still lacks a large middle class, or bourgeoisie, with a strong interest in reform.  Both are valid in some respects, however, as I will explain later, it seems as if individual decisions about institutional design is the more accurate explanation for poor party development. 

“Low Trust”, Weak Civil Society and the Soviet Legacy

Russian political culture is still extremely weak in that it lacks the bonds of social trust between persons and groups normally taken for granted in stable democracies.  Barbara Mizstal has summarized a large body of sociological research by noting that communist methods of rule produced throughout Eastern Europe “a social vacuum between the private world and public life, a lack of trust towards others and an unusual importance attached to the intimate circles of family and friends.”  Richard Rose notes that when people in post communist societies are asked their views about a variety of institutions of governance and civil society, the median response normally shows skepticism; while those in Russia “normally registered distrust.” 

Much of blame for this lies in the collectivist Soviet legacy.  In many ways it did immense damage to the atmosphere of civic associationalism that is crucial to developing a willingness to delegate personal sovereignty to democratic structures.  We should take note of the fact that even though “political structures may change quickly, the basis of political behavior will not.  Thus the tsarist and soviet history impact present cultural manifestations.”  The legacy of state socialism results from the fact that the system did not encourage the development of experiences and skills that enhance the capacity of individuals and groups to engage in cooperative behavior and to mold compromises.  This stems mainly from the reality that choosing poorly and investing trust in the wrong friend or coworker during the Soviet era could have meant persecution or imprisonment. 

The traditional centrality of rule between the regime and the populace gave most Russians the perception of a government that was remote and largely irrelevant.  In the Soviet era, edicts were seen to come from Politburo in a consistent, unified way.  Due to press restrictions, contentious moments were hidden from public view.  “While society had disruptions, policy making did not.”  Thus, the bureaucracy was not Weberian in that it was not regulated by defined and clearly established rules.  This encouraged the perpetuation of arbitrary authority by the more powerful elements of local society resulting in corruption and the spread of societal distrust. 

It is important to note that most Russians are not very far removed from these perceptions of political reality.  Trade unions still largely function in their former role of acting as conduits for the CPSU and managers’ power interests rather than real supporters of workers’ interests.  Their influence is important in only a few industries and membership remains low and is still decreasing.  Business associations are growing rapidly but are still neither united nor organized enough to effectively promote their market based interests.  Many are remnants of the CPSU structure and favor taking advantage of individual relationships within the bureaucracy to further their interests.  As to other organizations of civil society, increasing concerns for economic survival leave Russians little time or interest to build up or engage in them.           

                   However, Russians have been socialized to accept the elected council or Soviet and are accustomed to their role of choosing delegates to representative institutions.  They understand the role of representatives to carry electorate’s needs to the center and then implement them back out.  There is an ideal of cooperation in Russian political culture but only in that they realize the importance of a consistent base constructed for the implementation of higher decisions.  So, in the end, their individual interests are still subservient to the whole, as power spreads from the center down the state hierarchy.    

Interest Representation and the Roots of Russian Semi-Presidentialism

         The institutional structure of the Russian system that we see today is borrowed from the French but is substantially amended in that the constitution is incomplete, contradictory, and repeatedly revised in important ways on the basis of ad hoc considerations.  However, it was seen as a means to counteract a divided and weak parliament.  This line of argument notes that this weakness would stem from considerable ethnic, religious, and regional cleavages as well as generational, urban vs. rural, and communist vs. non-communist divisions.  The assumption here is that parliament and government would result in a large number of unstable and uncooperative parties that would create governments that were difficult to form, would turn over quickly, and could be paralyzed, thus jeopardizing the transition.  In fact, this assumption is not very far from the truth.  

If we are to appreciate why political institutions in Russia look and perform as they do, we need to pay attention to the interests they are intended to serve, and thus to the roles that different types of actors play.  So why did Russia end up with a semi-presidential system, similar to most other post-communist countries in that it was not the parliamentary system that the Western political elite had so adamantly promoted?  The answer lies in the fact that institutions are structural means by which political winners pursue their own interests and evaluate their structural options accordingly.  If some individuals dominate the crafting of the constitution, the structure of government will be biased in the direction of their perceived interest.  In this way, the office and authority of the president emerged from the transition in order to insulate the anti-communist movement from the power of the old elite.  Yeltsin saw the presidential office as a way to protect himself from an increasingly conservative congress within which he had little support.  His victory in the 1993 attempted coup allowed him to put in place a presidential system with strong powers of decree.  A strong presidency seem a good fit because the communist opposition gained a more liberalized environment, while the communists did not increase their already considerable power.  Therefore, it was in response to a specific political situation and was not the result of a carefully plotted strategy in favor of separation of powers. 

         

Benefits and Costs of Russian Presidentialism

With some of the relevant realities of Russian society now explained, I will attempt to show how most of the analyses that undeniably link presidentialism to instability may have been considerably overstated.  In fact, presidentialism and the separation of powers hold compelling institutional prospects for combating many of the problems associated with democratic politics.  In no way am I trying to conceal the inherent risks related to the central features of a presidential system.  At the worst, it can result in legislative “gridlock” and malign authoritarianism, contributing to the breakdown of democratic consolidation.  However, at best, it can help to provide legitimacy, exact a sense of political clarity, and promote reliance on institutional structures.  As Kurt von Mettenheim has noted, “recent critics of presidentialism focus on vices, but not virtues, emphasizing risks, but not opportunities.”

Since the fixed term is often criticized as one of the many drawbacks to presidentialism, I will direct my argument there first.  Critics of the fixed term note that it forces a certain “rigidity” onto the political cycle that must be able to bend with the necessities of democratic politics as they arise.  This electoral cycle disallows the possibility of rational decision-making with respect to foreign affairs and economic policy—two areas where public opinion is notably sensitive.  Should the president lose his legitimacy, the system will not be able to adjust as a parliamentary system would by allowing for the removal of the prime minister and the formation of a new government.  The difficult system of impeachment cannot truly be compared to a vote of no confidence.  So, the presidential election becomes a winner-take-all competition with too much at stake—a definite problem for fledgling democracies and divided societies.  This “rigidity” might then increase the chances of crisis in which non-democratic methods might be used to resolve.  It leads to the personalization of power--creating an unworthy aura around the president that can be manipulated easily.  In sum, “the political process then becomes broken into discontinuous, rigidly determined periods without the possibility of continuous readjustments as political, social and economic events might require.”                     

To the contrary, Russia provides very distinct advantages related to the fixed term.  The stability or “rigidity” that it imposes on the political cycle thwarts the ability of anti-system parties to collapse the government.  In Russia, these forces are not merely opposition groups to the party in power, but are the communists who are essentially anti-democratic.  “It deprives anti-system parliamentary groups of the possibility of gaining through a manufactured crisis what they could not through the ballot box.”  It should be noted that in a parliamentary system, Yeltsin and his government would have been forced out and Russia would now be led by a coalition headed by the Communists, who hold the largest number of seats in the Duma.  That is assuming that they would not have done away with most of the democratic structures already in place.  In this way, Linz fails to take into account the possibility that the legislature will for its own reasons, intentionally seek to destabilize the government. 

The mitigating factor at work in Russian politics and political culture is an extreme sense of political and social uncertainty.  I would argue, then, that a parliamentary system would do more to aggravate this pervading uncertainty.  The fact is that parliamentary systems require a great deal of informal trust.  “Without informal norms of trust and reciprocity, parliamentary system cannot mitigate fear of abuses of the concept of parliamentary sovereignty.”  A symbol of this trust is the concept of a “loyal opposition.”  While out of power, the opposition trusts that the party in power will not legislate it into oblivion and maintains the understanding that at some point in the future it will become the majority.  However, where these bonds of trust are lacking, as in Russia, groups and parties will be wary of relinquishing power.  Should the other party gain majority status down the road, that party would be able to pass its own program at will—and, if it wants to, subvert or completely destroy everything that the first party put into place.  The party, unlike a president, has a monopoly of public authority that gives them the right to tell everyone else what to do, whether they want to or not.  Thus, it takes the dangers of political uncertainty to the extreme.  The resulting effect is, at the least, an inability to create durable deals that last through successive governments.  

The difficulty of law-making that follows from a separation of powers is crucial to developing thought out policies that work for everyone and not simply the majority.  Some might call this “gridlock” but, in the Russian case, despite the amorphousness of the center in the Duma, they can “with minimal cooperation, delay the adoption of the most odious questions by denying extremist legislation a veto-proof majority.”  A separation of powers scenario makes accomplishing anything through laws that change the status quo, very difficult.  This works in both directions so that when new laws are achieved, the same system that made victory difficult, now works to protect these achievements from subsequent reversal.  This promotes a reliance on the formal structures of government and strong incentives to entrench achievements securely in formalized legislation.  Such dependence on democratic institutions can go a long way to furthering the chances of success for a transitional democracy.  On the other hand, in parliamentary systems, the executive arises out of the legislature and both are controlled by the majority coalition.  As a result, they do not have to push for policies that compensate for or protect the opposition’s political influence.  Parties cannot commit future governments to the agreements of today, because, in the end, the majority will have the supreme authority to destroy it anyway.  

It is true that parliamentary systems have mechanisms for mitigating the problems of political uncertainty (or they wouldn’t exist, obviously).  For example, in stable and long-standing democracies, parties have found that, over time, it is in their best interest to adhere to a norm of reciprocity and effectively nurture a reputation of honoring their commitments.  Sometimes this is not reliable due to its informal nature and the fact that, when finally in the majority, they will at least come under pressure from supporters to change those structures which are most costly to them.  However, the state of government in Russia, as I have stated before, consists of parties that are neither strong enough nor disciplined enough to channel their interests or rein in competition.  They are small and fractious with no clear possibility of long-term survival.  Both the formal partisan coalitions and informal leadership alliances are correspondingly fragile and subject to sudden change.  A parliamentary system under such conditions, as was the case in the interwar period in Eastern Europe, produced unstable and weak governments—paving the way for authoritarian regimes.  Why should we assume that this would not happen again?  As Sartori points out, “parliamentary democracy cannot perform (in any of its varieties) unless it is served by parliamentary fit parties, that have been socialized…into being relatively cohesive or disciplined, into behaving…as responsible opposition and into playing, to some extent, a rule-guided fair game.”  As I have shown, in Russia, the respect for the rule of law is not fully developed and there are simply no precedents or established conventions that precisely define the boundaries of key institutions.  Thus, leading actors can be expected to define their own prerogatives broadly and in doing so, are likely to collide with the expectations of another.  Linz also admits that a parliamentary system must have, in the first place, “strong well disciplined parties.”

However, the question with respect to the party system that most critics raise is to what extent do presidential or semi-presidential systems contribute to the fractionalization of parliament?  Linz and Stepan argue that parliamentarism, over time provides incentives for cooperation to produce a coalitional majority.  Due to the fact that the formation of government in a parliamentary system needs the compliance of such a majority, especially multi-party systems have a greater ability to endure.  In a presidential system these incentives do not exist.  Since parties are not responsible for government stability and policy, they concentrate their efforts on opposing the presidency increasing instability and discouraging coalition building and cooperation.  Since there is no reward for supporting opposing policies they “turn to the representation of special interests, localized interests, and clientelistic networks in their constituencies.”  In Russia, they would argue that this is especially true because multi-party systems and presidents are more susceptible to democratic impasses and the strength of the presidency allows parties almost no influence on the formation of policy.  But if you view institutional structure as the dependent variable, creating a parliamentary system would not suddenly create parties fit to form coalitions able to pass effective legislation.  Also, as I will explain in greater detail later, the all-encompassing nature of Russia’s transition has proved the need for strong leadership able to spearhead difficult economic legislation.      

Another major objection to presidentialism is the problem of “dual legitimacy.”  The national mandate of both the president and the legislature begs the question--who really speaks for the people?  Even though the president may gain office with a small plurality of the popular vote, the system endows the office with “both the ‘ceremonial’ functions of a head of state and the ‘effective’ functions of a chief executive.”  However, the legislature also retains a similar democratic legitimacy.  And the real problem is that almost everyone “including the president, the public at large and even political scientists feels that the president’s claim is much stronger than the legislature’s.”  If a legislative majority should hold an opinion divergent with those of the president, then who can claim to be the higher authority?  In this case, they would find themselves frustrated because there is no constitutional remedy to the situation and the president has a fixed term.  Presidents may then be tempted to bypass the formal structure of government to achieve their ends. “This mutual independence creates the possibility of a political impasse between the chief executive and the legislative body for which there is no constitutionally available impasse-breaking device.”  Thus, this aspect of presidentialism contributes to democratic breakdown and the possibility of a military coup.    

While I don’t deny the divisive implications that Linz and Stepan commonly use to criticize presidentialism, there still remain specific benefits that “dual legitimacy” can provide for the Russian case.  The president’s national mandate can help to clarify politics when the majority of the population is still affected by the Leninist legacy of forced de-participation.  When the first television transmissions of Duma proceedings were aired, it subjected the Russian populace for the first time, to the institutional problems that were afflicting its society.  There was a complete disappearance of euphemistic Soviet style politics that they were used to, and understandably, they were distressed by the new system’s failure to provide instant solutions.  This perceived failure of democracy has resulted in widespread disillusionment with their legislative institutions and has led many to search for a more unified and decisive form of leadership.  I’m not assuming that giving in to this popular support for centralized leadership will be a panacea for Russia’s problems.  More often than not, public opinion is a backlash against a change in the status quo and Russia is certainly no exception.  

However, on a theoretical level, presidential elections and the national mandate that the president commands, provides a sense unity and accountability to which the public can turn.  Partly due to their constituencies, legislatures and presidents often pursue very different interests in that legislatures can be tied to relatively narrow goals relating to districts, ethnicities, regions or religions.  A heterogeneous national constituency leads the president to think in larger terms about social problems and allows him to resist specialized appeals.  The inclusive nature of the office often means that the president is held accountable for every aspect of national performance and must look for broader appeal and voter base.  Whereas, parliaments can settle for narrower appeal.  “For legislatures, only the pieces matter.  It is the president who cares about the whole.” 

It is true that presidents can often act unilaterally, circumventing the legislative process.  But due to the lack of a functioning party system and the all-encompassing nature of Russia’s transition, this has proved necessary in order to stabilize democratic institutions.  It is the president who holds the autonomy to pursue his own distinctive vision of the public agenda that is not reflective of underlying political pressures.  While critics would note that support for a particular leader could undermine an already weak system, existing democratic structures need to be developed first, in order to be sufficient to sustain a weak democracy.  In a parliamentary system, the prime minister needs the support of the majority to keep his government in office, which would prove extremely difficult in the Duma.  But as the president is elected for a fixed term, by universal suffrage, he can be expected, due to his authority, to rally a fair amount of support.  Jean Blondel notes that dual legitimacy “may be able to provide a combination of authority and flexibility which can create the necessary conditions for a more stable liberal regime.”         

The national presidential election, in itself has done much to consolidate democratic principles in Russia.  Party allegiance normally serves the purpose of clarifying politics, however the weakness of Russian parties and other organizations forecloses this option.  Presidential debates then become a crucial form of communication between the public and regime.  Due to these elections, for the first time in their history, Russians have had the right to throw their leader out.  And more importantly, the sitting leader subjected himself to the will of the people, and the loser (the Communists, no less) accepted defeat.  Since the effective transfer of power to Putin in 2000, the presidential election has been instrumental to democratization by showing the public and the world that democratic principles have been adopted and consistently practiced.  In criticizing presidential elections, Linz mentions that if several candidates compete in a single round, the margin between the winner and the runner-up may be too thin to support any claim that the new president actually represents the nation as a whole.  Also, the possible consequences of presidential elections in multi-party systems is that broad coalitions are likely to be formed that give extremist parties undue influence.  However, Russia’s two-round presidential election does much to avoid some of these problems.  Even Linz notes that “the preliminary round shows the extremist parties the limits of their strength and allows the two major candidates to reckon just which alliances they must make to win.”  In this way, it clarifies national politics and reduces the difficulty of isolating extremist factions so that voters can make more “rational decisions.”  

Russian Semi-Presidentialism vs. Latin America and Southern Europe

All these things considered, it is still hard to ignore the statistical analysis that Linz and Stepan have amassed that point towards parliamentarism as the best way to ensure democratic consolidation.  While I don’t refute their claims, I must still ask myself how Russia contains a different set of political, economic, and social contexts than those of Latin America and Southern Europe.  Since the answer to this question is beyond the scope of this paper and the transition is still largely in its earliest stages, I will try to provide some over-arching themes that can reconcile this apparent paradox.  

Russian semi-presidentialism is similar to the transitions of Latin America and Southern Europe due to the fixed term and direct national election; and arguably, the presidential office in Russia has shown some of the problems that Linz and Stepan warned of.  Namely, the personalization of power has led to a presidency with strong powers of decree that in some ways marginalizes the legislature with respect to policy and decision-making.  As a result, it has also rendered the stakes too high and, at times, contributed to dividing the public.  So, does it follow that Russian democratization is bound to crumble under the weight of its own inadequacies as the statistical record has shown in Latin America and Southern Europe?  

While we can’t really know the answer to this question, Linz and Stepan place a fair amount of weight on civilian control of the military in determining the probability of democratic breakdown.  Because the nature of presidentialism contributes to “impasses” that frustrate both the legislature and president, “such situations often cause both the president and the opposition to seek military involvement to resolve the crisis in their favor.”  Russia is no exception to this rule, as we saw in 1993 when Yeltsin shelled the “White House,” as the parliament building is called, in order to suppress an attempted communist coup.  However, the Russian military has no tradition of being a player on its own; nor is it a blindly obedient instrument in the hands of politicians.  It is true that much of the military elite are remnants of the Soviet era and intensely resent the West as well as their own democratic government for reducing them to the status of a negligible force that was once acknowledged as a U.S. military peer.  Since the 1993 coup attempt, however, the military has been subordinated directly to the presidential regime and counter-forces have been established to neutralize less reliable elements.  Obviously, this still poses the possibility of a coup from the top.  But, with the spread of democratic values, many officers are finding it essential to strictly adhere to a policy of non-involvement in politics.  Although, there is no real way to ensure that this will not happen.

One of the main differences between Russia and the cases that Linz and Stepan focused on, is that of economic transition.  A main reason for choosing the semi-presidential system was based on the assumption that the transition from state communism to capitalism would be long and extremely difficult.  This assumption is correct in that Russian society is under immense stress due to the economic fallout that resulted from the collapse of the social safety net.  Some indicators can show this effect: 1) a tripling of economic inequality by 1994, 2) effective collapse of wage structure, 3) decline of the wages of the aspiring middle class, and 4) a poverty rate of 50%.  As a result, a growing backlash against reform has left people nostalgic for Soviet era stability, and they have voted accordingly for the Communists (now 23% of the Duma).  Therefore, it was thought, a strong presidency that could claim a national mandate would be able to unite the country on divisive issues and ensure political and policy continuity.  This has proved hard, especially due to the preference for a multi-party system in the legislature.  But a president is in a far better position than a parliament to control a painful economic transition and it has yet to prove decidedly that it cannot work.

The international as well as the regional context of the Russian transition also differentiates it from those in Southern Europe and Latin America.  They were, in effect, regime transitions, not state transitions.  The collapse of the Soviet Union entailed redefining national identities and state boundaries.  Russia, especially was forced to redefine itself in relation to the international economy and system of power.  As Valerie Bunce noted, “virtually everything that can be in transition, is in transition.”  As one of the two former superpowers, Russia is now reliant upon large amounts of foreign aid, highlighting the need to show the world that it is committed to the process of democratization.  At the same time, the international world is in a state of transition as well.  The bi-polar world of the Cold War had ended, leaving many with the task of assessing their current political and military alliances.  When navigating these assessments on the international scene, having the capability to speak with one voice can be crucial.  The transitions in Latin America and Southern Europe were largely focused on political regime transition, sparing them of many of the problems associated with the multi-faceted transition in Russia.                    

Conclusion: The Future of Russian Democratization

Even if we assume for the moment that the agenda of economic and political transition does, in fact, require the strong, centralized leadership of a president to survive, what happens when this necessity no longer exists?  Once Russia has successfully implemented reforms, developed a respect for the rule of law, built a strong civil society and their situation improves, how do they then reverse the evolution of institutional structures to accommodate a more developed party system and democratic society?  Some would argue that they are, in effect, stuck with it.  The French Fifth Republic may provide some possible outcomes for Russia, by looking at its profound transformation from executive to parliamentary legislative supremacy.  This was made possible only through the existence of a majority party that could effectively oppose presidential authority.  This non-constitutional change then accounts for the fact that the Fifth Republic is not a “synthesis of the parliamentary and presidential system, but an alternation between presidential and parliamentary phases.”  Currently the only party with even a slight prospect of a majority in the future would be the Communists, but there is no way to predict whether some moderate group may emerge with a more reform-minded, class-based constituency.  If Russia’s market-based economy grows in the future, as it has started to do, such a group may gain more strength and ability to cut across the ethnic, religious, and regional cleavages that currently dominate the party system.  Civil society and organizations must become widespread as well in order for democracy to take root.  Through the spread of human values and freedom, confidence may eventually grow in the new generation of politicians and the current apathy for politics could decline.  More importantly, should this time come, Russia will need an executive that will accept possible amendments to the constitution that check and balance the president’s power.  He must be able to accept the people as ultimately sovereign and realize the importance of his position in affecting structural change.                          

        While I have not intended to debate the superiority of presidentialism over parliamentarism for the reasons I stated before and because the Russian system falls under neither category, it was my intention to show that “outcomes arise less from the institutional structure than from the nature and context of political problems.”  As I have said before, institutions should be seen as the dependent variable and Russian political culture and society represent the independent variables.  With this in mind, the Russian case provides some good examples of the ways in which semi-presidentialism can mitigate many of the problems associated with democratic transition and consolidation.  I agree with Linz and other critics that presidentialism can contribute polarization and can force presidents to pursue non-democratic methods due to high electoral stakes, the fixed term, and “dual legitimacy.”  Russia has also shown some of the forces that these critics precisely warn against—namely, a lack of incentives to develop the party system and build coalitions.  However, due to the Soviet legacy, mistrust and apathy towards democratic principles, institutions, and politicians is widespread.  Civil society and organizations are immensely underdeveloped and the transition to capitalist order has left many feeling as if democracy has somehow failed them.  Anti-system forces are still strong and the need to isolate them is a crucial factor in Russian consolidation.  Thus, the case for semi-presidentialism with a strong executive is quite strong.  Through national elections, the fixed term and the executive’s national mandate, the presidential office has arguably strengthened democratic legitimacy both internally and externally.  The continuity and unity of the office has helped sustain this legitimacy in the face of a general weariness with politics and considerable economic adversity.  It has provided a sense of political clarity on the national level to a public that is still largely confused and distressed by the realities of democratic politics.  That said, I am still wary of the problems that current institutional structures will pose to Russia as democracy develops.  While semi-presidentialism may be the present solution, there is good reason to assume that it might become the problem at some point in the future.  Russia may, in fact, become stuck with it, in which case, some creative leadership and an accommodating parliament could be its only chances for survival.                                

        

           

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