Chapter Nine

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Chapter Nine

• Politics in Russia

Russia Its all about
PUTIN!!
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Country Bio Russia

• Population
• 142.4 million
• Territory
• 6.593 sq. miles
• Year of Independence
• 1991
• Year of Current Constitution
• 1993
• Head of State
• President Vladimir Putin
• Head of Government
• Premier Dmitry Medvedev

• Language
• Russian, other languages of ethnic nationalities
• Religion
• Russian Orthodox 70-80 Other Christian 1-2
  Muslim 8-9 Buddhist 0.6 Jewish 0.3

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I. SOVEREINGTY, POWER, AUTHORITY
Soviet Era

• For most of the 20th century, public authority
  and political power emanated from one place the
  Politburo of the Communist Party. The Politburo
  was a small group of men who climbed the ranks of
  the party through the nomenklatura, an ordered
  path from the local party Soviets to the
  commanding heights of leadership. With the
  dissolution of the Soviet Union, the authority of
  the Politburo vanished with it. It left in
  place a new government structure with
  questionable legitimacy.

Holodomor
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I. SOVEREINGTY, POWER, AUTHORITY

• A. Governmental System
• In theory federal system
• In practice turning into unitary
• WHY? PUTIN!!!
• B. Regional Organizations
• Formally a part of the Warsaw Pact
• No longer involved in these

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I. SOVEREINGTY, POWER, AUTHORITY

• C. Sources of Power
• During the Soviet Era, power came from
• Party Congress and Central Committee in theory
• In practice
• Politburo similar to a cabinet in a
  parliamentary system
• Secretariat oversaw the work of the party
  system
• Today
• Duma lower house of legislative branch - and
  President in charge
• D. Constitutions
• They have a written constitution, today, but it
  is not followed and often times breached by
  political leaders
• LikePUTIN!

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I. SOVEREINGTY, POWER, AUTHORITY

• E. Regime Types
• Soviet Union Communist Regime party leads
• Russia federal semi-presidential republic
• F. Types of Economic Systems
• Soviet Union Command economy
• Soviet Union per Gorbachev perestroika
• Russia Federation
• 1990s shock therapy rapid movement towards
  market economy
• Led to high unemployment and inflation
• Late 1990s-now moved more towards government
  control
• WHY? PUTIN!!!!

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I. SOVEREINGTY, POWER, AUTHORITY

• G. State Building, Legitimacy, and Stability
• Difficult time to build the state in transition
  period
• Bad economic times and increase in crime ?
  citizens questioning legitimacy in the 1990s
• Many ethnic groups and former states refused to
  accept the new Russia as legitimate
• H. Belief System as a Source of Legitimacy
• Religion main religion Russian Orthodox
• Used to unite the country connect them to the
  government
• WHO? PUTIN!!!!!!

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• 1993 constitution combined elements of
  presidentialism and parliamentarism
• Separation of executive, legislative, and
  judicial branches
• Federal division of power between the central and
  regional levels of government
• Gave the president wide power

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Presidency
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• President appoints the prime minister and the
  rest of government
• Has the right to issue presidential decrees,
  which have the force of law
• Prime minister primarily responsible for economic
  and social policy
• President directly oversees the ministries and
  other bodies concerned with coercion, law
  enforcement, and state security

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Presidency
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• President can dissolve parliament or dismiss the
  government
• Head of state and commander of chief
• Security Council chaired by the president
• Formulates policy in foreign defense areas and
  more
• State Council heads of regional governments
• Public Chamber- created by Putin in 2005
• Made up of 126 members from selected civic,
  sports, artistic, and other NGOS
• Purpose to deliberate on matters of public policy
• May, along with other councils diminish the
  role of Parliament

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Government
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• Refers to the senior echelon of leadership in the
  executive branch
• Charged with formulating the main lines of
  national policy
• Especially economic and social
• Corresponds to the Cabinet in Western
  parliamentary systems
• Not a party government
• President Putin appoint Fradko, a relatively
  obscure figure as prime minister (now its
  Medvedev)

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Parliament
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• Federal Assembly is bicameral
• Lower house State Duma 450
• Upper house Federation Council 168
• Legislation originates in the Duma
• Federal Council can then only pass it, reject it,
  or reject it and call for the formation of an
  agreement commission to iron out differences.
• If the Duma rejects the upper houses changes, it
  can override the Federation Council by a
  two-thirds vote and send the bill directly to the
  president.

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Parliament
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• When the bill has cleared parliament, it goes to
  the president for signature.
• If the president refuses to sign the bill, it
  returns to the Duma.
• The Duma may pass it with his amendments or it
  may override the presidents veto with a
  two-thirds vote.
• The Federation Council must then also approve the
  bill, by a simple majority if it approves the
  presidents amendments or by a two-thirds vote if
  it chooses to override the president.
• Legislative elections every 5 years, only for
  Duma Federation Council was appointed, now
  elected
• Pro-Putin party United Russia

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Parliament
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• Committees
• Federal Council designed as an instrument of
  federalism
• Executive-legislative relations
• Yeltsin years poor parliament ruled
• Putin power shifted away from parliament

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The Contemporary Constitutional Order The
Constitutional Court
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• 1993 Constitution provides for judicial review by
  the Constitutional Court
• Under Putin, the court has taken care to avoid
  crossing the president.
• Putin wishes to move the seat of the Court to St.
  Petersburg.
• Goal to marginalize it politically
• Central Government and regions
• Ethnic republic guard their special status
• Chechnya-independence
• 20 other ethnic republics accord with Russia
• Municipalities

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Interest Articulation Between Statism and
Pluralism
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
III. CITIZENS, SOCIETY, THE STATE

• NGOs
• Elements of corporatism
• Three examples of associational groups
• The Russian Union of Industrialists and
  Entrepreneurs
• The League of Committees of Soldiers Mothers
• The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of
  Russia
• New Sectors of Interest
• Many new associations
• More collective action by business and other
  sectors
• More open bargaining over the details of policy

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Parties and the Aggregation of Interests
II. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
III. CITIZENS, SOCIETY, THE STATE

• Elections and party development
• The 1989 and 1990 elections
• The 1993 and 1995 elections
• The 1996 presidential election
• The 1999 election
• Putin and the 2000 presidential race
• The 2003 and 2004 elections
• Party strategies and the social bases of party
  support
• Evolution of the party system
• Hampered by institutional factors such as the
  powerful presidency
• Sponsoring shadow leftist or nationalist parties
  to divide the opposition

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2012 Presidential Election Results
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Russian Political Culture in the Post-Soviet
Period
III. CITIZENS, SOCIETY, THE STATE

• Product of centuries of autocratic rule
• Rapid, but uneven improvement in education and
  living standards
• Exposure to Western standards of political life
• Result contradictory bundle of values in
  contemporary political culture
• Sturdy core of democratic values
• Firm belief in the need for a strong state
• Disillusionment with democratization and market
  reform in Russia
• Support individual rights, but less so for
  unpopular minorities (7 rule)
• Nostalgia for the old order and aspirations for a
  better future
• Surveys suggest the citizens have little faith in
  the current political system
• Putin

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Russian Political Culture in the Post-Soviet
Period
III. CITIZENS, SOCIETY, THE STATE

• Political socialization
• Education
• Ideological content has changed
• Church
• Mass media
• Overall, much less subject to direct state
  control than it was in the Soviet era

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Political Participation
III. CITIZENS, SOCIETY, THE STATE

• The importance of social capital
• Scare in Russia
• Participation in civic activity has been
  extremely limited.
• Weakness of intermediate associations
• Since the late 1980s, political participation,
  apart from voting, has seen a brief, intense
  surge followed by a protracted ebb.
• Not psychologically disengaged or socially
  isolated
• Half the Russian population reports reading
  national newspapers regularly or sometimes and
  discussing problems of the country with friends.
• Vote in high proportions
• Prize the right not to participate
• Shattering of expectations for change

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Political Participation
III. CITIZENS, SOCIETY, THE STATE

• Elite recruitment
• Refers to the institutional processes in a
  society by which people gain access to positions
  of influence and responsibility
• Soviet regime Communist Party, nomenklatura
• Today, mixture of career types

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Historical Legacies
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• The Tsarist Regime
• The Communist Revolution and the Soviet Order
• Lenin
• Stalin
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• Glasnost
• Political institutions of the transition period
  Demise of the USSR
• Political institutions of the transition period
  Russia 1990-1993

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The Politics of Economic Reform The Dual
Transition
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• Stabilization
• Shock therapy
• From communism to capitalism
• Heavy commitment of resources to military
  production in the Soviet Union complicated the
  task of reform so does the size of the country

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The Politics of Economic Reform The Dual
Transition
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• Privatization
• Loans for shares
• Consequences of privatization
• Unsustainable debt trap
• No strong institutional framework to support it
  no real market economy in place
• Social conditions
• Small minority became wealthy in the 1990s
• Most people suffered a net decline
• Unemployment

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Rule Adjudication Toward the Rule of Law
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• Gorbachevs goal make the Soviet Union a
  law-governed state
• The Procuracy
• Comparable to the system of federal and state
  prosecuting attorneys in the United States
• Has more wide-ranging responsibilities and is
  organized as a centralized hierarchy headed by
  the procurator-general

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Rule Adjudication Toward the Rule of Law
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• The Judiciary
• Bench has been relatively weak
• Lip service to judicial independence
• Unitary hierarchy all courts of general
  jurisdiction are federal courts
• Commercial courts
• Supreme Commercial Court is both the highest
  appellate court for its system of courts as well
  as the source of instruction and direction to
  lower commercial courts.
• Judges nominated by the president and confirmed
  by the Federation Council
• Ministry of Justice oversees the court system
  lacks any direct authority over the procuracy

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Rule Adjudication Toward the Rule of Law
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• The Bar
• Advocates
• Comparable to defense attorneys in the U.S.
• Role has expanded considerably with the spread of
  the market economy
• Constitutional Adjudication
• Court established for constitutional review of
  the official acts of government
• Again, challenge of presidential authority
• Under Putin, the court has not issued any rulings
  restricting the presidents power.

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Rule Adjudication Toward the Rule of Law
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• Obstacles to the Rule of Law
• Abuse of legal institutions by political
  authorities
• Corruption
• Bribery

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Russia and the International Community
IV. POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHANGE

• Russia has not fully embraced integration into
  the international community.
• Expanded military presence in several former
  Soviet republics
• Chechnya
• Post-communist transition has been difficult and
  incomplete.

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Background Rebuilding the Russian State
V. PUBLIC POLICY

• Sustainability of Russias great power status is
  tenuous.
• Putins policies
• Diminishing the realm of free association outside
  the state
• resource curse
• High levels of corruption, low accountability,
  and low investment in human capital
• Severe demographic crisis
• Mortality rates, particularly among adult males
• Low birthrates
• Net loss of close to a million people per year
• Grave threat to Russias national security and
  economic viability

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Current Policy Challenges
V. PUBLIC POLICY

• Putin elected March 2000
• Undertook a steady effort to rebuild state power
• Attacked the power of the so-called oligarchs
• Weakened the independence of the chief executives
  of the countrys regions (the governors)
  establishing new federal districts overseen by
  presidentially appointed representatives
• Secured power to dismiss governors for violations
  of the law
• Removing them as ex-officio members of the upper
  chamber of the parliament
• High levels of support early for his managed
  democracy

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Current Policy Challenges
V. PUBLIC POLICY

• But now referenced by some as sovereign
  democracy
• Chain of command
• Accountability
• May conflict with state sovereignty

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Current Policy Challenges
V. PUBLIC POLICY

• Only partially successful in achieving his goals
• Role of oil has helped
• Some of his actions (suppression of the
  independent media and the states takeover of the
  assets of the oil company Yukos) have discouraged
  business investment and fueled capital flight.
• Reliance on intimidation/removal of rivals
• End result has undercut democratic checks and
  balances on central power over-centralization

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Russia and the UK
VI. COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Political change
• In Great Britain Magna Carta, the Civil wars of
  1640s, and Margaret Thatcher ideas of
  Thatcherism.
• In Russia, civil war to oust Lenin from power,
  Stalin and USSR, coup against Gorbachev failed
  but led to collapse of Soviet Union, and in 1993
  new constitution put in place.

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Russia and China
VI. COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Party systems
• The leading political party is United Russia,
  which is the first major party since the fall of
  the Soviet Union. The major reason for its
  success is due to Prime Minister Vladimir Putins
  support of the party. Although some suspect that
  elections are rigged, United Russia continues to
  pull ahead by a large majority. Some think of
  political parties in Russia as failed because of
  United Russias dominance in the Duma and in
  elections.
• There is only one political party in China the
  Communist Party. No one is allowed to express
  dissent against it or try to defy it. There are
  some minor parties which tend to represent ethnic
  minorities or specific groups of people but they
  do not have enough clout to make a difference in
  policy making and they are very small--they do
  not function as a true opposition party.

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Russia and Mexico
VI. COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Transition
• Both attempted to moved their economies towards
  market-based capitalism
• Both pushed for agricultural reform and
  privatization of state industries

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Russia and Nigeria
VI. COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Legitimacy
• Both have had problems with corrupt,
  ever-changing governments
• Citizens
• Both have citizens who are frustrated and do not
  trust their governments

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Russia and Iran
VI. COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Factors that obstruct democratization.
  
  
  Russia The control the government has over
  media.
  
  Iran The Guardian Council is in control of
  everything.
• Political cleavages in Iran.Class division
  disconnection between the educated middle class
  and the lower classes to define where that
  struggle for power is taking place
• Political cleavages in Russia. Urban v.
  RuralUrban population wealthier and the rural
  population very poor Division between ethnic
  Russians and Ethnic minorities

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Shhh.sweet dreams.