Research Project - Efficiency of the parliament as a legislative branch in Russia.

Westminster International University in Tashkent

Research Methods

2011 - 2012

To be completed by the student

Efficiency of the parliament as a legislative branch in Russia.

Abstract:

Since the fall of Soviet Union and until now Russian economic and political systems are changing. The old system was not effective enough to compete with modern world market. And whole population of ex Soviet Union wanted freedom and full protection of their rights. They wanted to have a right to choose political party, to play at least small influential role in political live of their homeland. And with the new government people finally witnessed these changes through Constitution of the Russian Federation 1993. Since that time Russia started a transition to new democratic system. This transition was going really hard, as everybody know, 1990s were a harsh times for all aspects of life, for politics, economics, social life. But after Boris Eltsin, the new president had come. And then, I could say that chaos stopped. Putin started to restore the order with Parliament. One of the most important parts of Constitution of the Russian Federation is chapter 5, which is about Federal Assembly – Russian Parliament. Parliament is the essential demonstration of democracy principles, so one of the most important goals for government is to increase efficiency of the Federal Assembly. Citizens rule the country through Parliament; this is compulsory principle of democracy. But I cannot say that now in Russia this principle works in full strength, of course political parties represent people, they have their programs and their own bills, and parliament is changing in better way all the time, step by step. But still there are some issues that reduce efficiency of work of Parliament that I want to discuss. In my point of view, personnel (staff) issues are really important and their solvation is obligatory, because if deputies will work for their own benefits or will not work at all, than parliament will not be democratic. Now, let me speak about issue of depriving immunity. I think that deputies must work with fewer privileges, because these privileges bring a field for corruption, because deputies can use their employment in parliament for their own benefit. But still without immunity deputies of oppositional parties will be in danger, so that means that law about immunity must be revised, but very careful. The next issue in my opinion is the most important. It is the issue of opposition. In Russian parliament the majority belongs only to one party – United Russia. Even though this party works really well, there must be opposition to show UR other sides of decisions of majority. UR is the most popular party in Russian Federation and people were satisfied all this time, but deficiency of opposition is leads to legislative acts, that are not satisfying whole country. And more important consequence of lack of oppositional parties is inconsistency of democracy principles. Solving these issues will increase efficiency of Russian parliament not only as representative body, but will also affect in better way on legislative functions of the Federal Assembly.

Methodology:

This is a preview of the whole essay

Methodology:

For me the best method of research is exploration. I choose topic about parliament, and to learn this I used historical approach, because to understand principles of Parliament and democracy I needed to learn the beginning of Parliament in history, the first parliament, how it worked, who were the deputies and so on. I needed to make a comparative research on what are the differences in parliaments of past and the parliament of nowadays. Also I used descriptive techniques to learn principles and rules of parliament in Russia through the Constitution of the Russian Federation. To understand how efficient Russian Parliament is I need to implement critical and comparative analysis, to see the difference between countries like UK and USA, where democracy and therefore parliament are very developed, and compare this countries with Russia. I will also solve the problems that I see in my topic. Also to fulfill my research, I will use interviews. I will send email, to Russian Politology institutes with questions about how Russian parliament is developed, what where the changes from 1993 until now, what significant changes happened in last 2 years, and what changes are planned by government. Also, I am planning to take interview from Russian embassy to have reliable information on the Federal Assembly.

Interview questions:

How the Parliament was changed since 1993 year?
How efficiency of Parliament grown since that time? Which changes played the most significant roles.
How constitutional changes of Medvedev affect work of Parliament?
Does depriving immunity leads to more corruption in the Federal Assembly?
Do you think that deputies should not have privileges?
How do you see Russian Parliament in next five years?

Research questions:

What is democracy, why parliament is the most important part of it?
What should be requirements for deputies? Do they need depriving immunity?
How the opposition develops in Russia? What can help it?
What actions could be taken to achieve more efficiency in work of the Federal Assembly?

Hypotheses:

Deficiency of political opposition in the Parliament. In Russian Parliament more than 50% majority belongs to United Russia party. The lack of opposition is bad for parliament as legislative branch, because in this case most of the laws will satisfy only half of population of the country. But deputies cannot be fully striped off their immunity, because then they could suffer from governance that not often likes to have a strong opposition. The way to solve this problem is for citizens to be more politically active, to create more parties. But first of all, there must be a flow of parties in parliament, because when one party has a governance power for a long time, then we will face second Soviet Union. Thus president of Russia need to make new legislations maybe even constitutional, to refresh parliament with new faces, new parties and new ideas and points of view.
Personnel issues is the second problem that I think need solvation in the first place. This problem is developed because of depriving immunity and not changing faces in the parliament, that brings more corruption. Because of their immunity deputies often are very corrupted, because they use their immunity and connections for their own benefit. First of all immunity should be reconsidered and more policies for government workers should be added. Government should create an institution, which will inspect workers of parliament. Also movement of personnel will add more confidence, and deputies could not use their beneficial sides of work. There also must be made new requirements for the deputies and parties that will decrease percentage of corrupted people in Parliament.

Literature review:

The Federal Assembly is really matched the parliamentary criteria, and all the functions and obligations are implemented well, just like it is written in Constitution of the Russian Federation chapter 5: “The Federal Assembly”. I think that Russian parliament is efficient enough, as legislative branch, it works very well. A lot of new bills became a law and protected citizens, but still there are a lot more must be made to satisfy whole population, there are actions need to be done, opposition needs to play bigger role in political life of Russia. As Roger Darlington says in his “A short guide to Russian political system” 7% for party is the highest percentage in Europe and by doing this Putin eliminated independents small parries from election to Duma. I agree on this point, there must be more parties even small, because they also represent people of their country; they also can make bills to fulfill wishes of people. But I disagree with Roger Darlington in many other ways; he is talking about Russia as about country, with autocratic regime, where Putin is evil man, which only wants power, and political system of Russia is just fake democracy for whole world, because it is not democracy at all, it is just another tyranny. I disagree with that, even so Putin and Medvedev are very powerful tandem, still there are no doubts that both of them won the elections, because people voted for them. And their political course is to hold peace and order, and they are doing it good. United Russia is party, that supports them and they are working together very effective. Since the time that Putin became president there were so many new laws and regulations, that were made by parliament not without UR party, that whole Eltsins’ term of presidency was like a small drop in the ocean. Also I think that there are a lot of unsupported with real facts information, where author is just talking about his own opinion about Russian Federation, even though in point of opposition he is partially right. The dismissal of prosecutor-general Yuri Skuratov in 1999 and then imprisonment of Khodorkovskiy in 2003 and 2010 shows that Russian political system is really far away from democracy, but still, there is a point in doing that, good opposition, that is not going to make revolution is all right, but opposition that is going to destroy peace in country should not be in parliament or in government. My opinion, that Russian system is a right system for country in transition.

Alla Eshchenko and Phil Black are reporters, and their article 250 Putin protesters, Russian opposition leader arrested at rallies. They are talking about elections in Duma and their opinion, that the middle class is not agree on what happening to opposition and a lot of protests were made on the streets of big cities of Russia. These journalists have an opinion that people want to have more parties in parliament that represents more people, not just United Russia, Communists party, Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia. I totally agree on that, without opposition even the best President and Party in the world will make huge mistakes.

In interview of Aleksandr Shatilov (Director of the Center of the Current Politics) on Free Press (svobodnaya pressa) “Party of Putin/Medvedev will be cut in-live” – made by Aleksey Polubota. They are talking about what will happen to United Russia Party in the next few years, and how these last elections in the Duma will affect political influence and behavior of United Russia. Aleksandr Shatilov says that these elections will shake United Russia a bit. Even though there is still no Party that could be counterweight for United Russia, but now UR will need to listen more to the opposition and to act without overlaps with their interests. Putin is not satisfied with feedbacks and results of these elections and because of these, there will be a lot of changes in the structure and work of United Russia. I agree with Aleksandr Shatilovs’ point of view, and as we can see from the news, actions to increase efficiency of Parliament already started.

Information Resources:

For my dissertation I used primary sources in the first place, because I needed to learn about Parliaments of the world from constitutions of these countries. And only after that I started to work with secondary sources. After that I understood, that topic of my dissertation is quite interesting and I need to work more with secondary sources, because they are not so dry and even if sometimes they are more contradictory, they are much more interesting.

Schedule of the research:

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Constitution of the Russian Federation ed2010
- Free Press (Svobodnaya Pressa) – Interview of Aleksandr Shatilov by Aleksey Polubota (5th December 2011)
- Putin May Enlist Growing Parliamentary Opposition to Smooth Presidency Bid by Lyubov Pronina and Scott Rose Dec 7, 2011