POLITICS
1. PUTIN'S PARLIAMENT
SOURCE. Thomas F. Remington, "Putin and the Duma,"
Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 17 No. 4, October-December 2001, pp. 285-308.
The author, a political scientist at Emory University, examines the internal dynamics of Russia's third Duma, which convened in January 2000, and its relations with the executive branch. He also analyzes the results of 30 key votes which took place in the Duma between June 2000 and February 2001.
Russia's parliament remains weak vis-à-vis the presidency and government. In some respects its role has been further constrained under Putin. Thus the Duma used to be able to influence intra-governmental disputes by maintaining direct relations with individual government ministries and agencies, which used these relations to lobby on behalf of their departmental interests. This practice was banned in April 2000, when government departments were ordered to deal with the Duma only through the government's official representative to the Duma.
Nevertheless, the role played by the Duma is not totally insignificant. In fact, the importance of its law-making activity has increased. This is because Yeltsin was willing if necessary to bypass the Duma and push his measures through by means of presidential decrees, while Putin considers it essential to provide a firm basis for his reform program in legislation.
Professor Remington's data relate to the period before the merger of Fatherland/All Russia (OVR) with Unity in April 2001, when OVR still maintained a stance somewhat independent of the government. At this time the Duma contained the following nine organized factions (numbers of deputies in brackets):
-- Unity, the party created to support Putin (83)
-- Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) (84) and the allied Agrarian
Party group (APG) (42)
-- Fatherland/All Russia (OVR) (45)
-- Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) (14)
-- Yabloko (19)
-- Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) (32)
-- two new non-ideological factions of deputies elected from single-mandate
constituencies: People's Deputy (PD) (53) and Russia's Regions (RR) (41)
In addition, there were 15 "independent" deputies.
These factions can be divided into three groups with respect to their stance toward the executive branch:
-- Unity deputies almost always support the government.
-- CPRF and APG deputies usually, but not always, vote against the government.
-- Deputies in all other factions (and also the "independent"
deputies) are often willing to lend their support to the government, but their
support cannot automatically be counted on.
Thus informal bargaining is needed to ensure a pro-government majority on each vote, giving deputies in the swing factions a certain leverage. Their votes have to be bought, either for political concessions or for personal favors (or simply for money).
On the basis of Professor Remington's data on key votes, I have ordered the factions according to the proportion of their deputies' votes which are supportive of government positions. Here are the results:
Unity 96 per cent
LDPR 79 per cent
SPS 73 per cent
PD 72 per cent
OVR 71 per cent
Yabloko 69 per cent
RR 69 per cent
Independents 60 per cent
APG 19 per cent
CPRF 16 per cent
Thus we see that all the swing factions vote in accordance with government wishes over two-thirds of the time. SPS is generally regarded as the party most loyal to Putin apart from Unity itself, but the voting record shows that this honor rightly belongs to Zhirinovsky's LDPR, an embarrassing fact which it is convenient to overlook.
Analysis of voting patterns also reveals a shifting pattern of factional alignments depending on the type of issue at stake. There seem to be five types of issue in this respect:
(1) issues on which the CPRF and APG find themselves in opposition to all
other factions (e.g. whether to permit mortgaging of land, whether to index
student stipends)
(2) issues on which CPRF/APG positions get backing from OVR, PD and RR deputies
(e.g. spend more on water projects or on children's programs)
(3) issues on which CPRF/APG positions get backing from Yabloko and/or SPS
deputies (e.g. increase pensions in the Far North, do not license private firms
to handle nuclear waste)
(4) issues on which CPRF/APG positions get backing from OVR/PD/RR and Yabloko/SPS
deputies (e.g. unilaterally reduce government debt to the Central Bank)
(5) issues on which the CPRF and APG factions support the government while
Yabloko/SPS deputies oppose the government (e.g. the new system for regulating
environmental protection)
This pattern suggests that to some extent the swing factions continue to represent specific social and regional interests despite their unwillingness to express strong public opposition to the Putin administration. Such opposition now comes only from the CPRF and APG factions, which have not only been reduced considerably in size but have lost influential positions which they used to hold on important Duma committees.
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