Erratum

This article refers to:

Duma-2014 Report

In volume 53, issue 4 (2015), the article, Duma-2014 Report: Outcomes and Tendencies by Ekaterina Schulmann published with errors. The entire corrected article is reprinted here using the same page numbers as the originally printed article. The corrected article can be found online in volume 53, issue 4 at www.tandfonline.com. Any citations of the article should be as follows:

Schulmann, E. 2015, Duma-2014 Report: Outcomes and Tendencies, Russian Politics & Law, 53, 57–65.

Ekaterina Schulmann

Duma-2014 Report

Outcomes and Tendencies

Why do hybrid regimes imitate democratic institutions? Do they serve exclusively as a showy formality for the external, mainly Western, audiences or do they perform some substantive functions within the framework of a politicalxs system? Within the broader context of diffusion of ideas across countries, the author of this paper explains the nature of the Russian State Duma, which, over the last 10 years, has become a kind of administrative stock exchange for the Russian political elites, and challenges the common simplistic view of the current Russian legislative process as “rubber-stamping” orchestrated by the executive branch.

The history of modern Russian parliamentary development can be described as a spiral-like transformation: from polyphonic chaos and legislative-executive confrontation (I-II convocations) via a short phase of balanced professionalism and political competition (III convocation), to the “rubber-stamp” period of convocations IV-V, and back to the “all against all” neo-chaos of VI convocation, that may be seen as a sort of democratization process, though still within the limits of a system that allows only the ruling bureaucracy (though very inclusively understood) a voice and a part in the decision-making process.

This article intends to demonstrate, by showing the inner workings of the legislative decision-making machine, that the Russian State Duma contradicts the “rubber stamp” trope of much of the political science literature and public debate. [Particularly the current sixth convocation of the State Duma contradicts both the established view on the Russian legislative process and the order imposed on the legislature by the presidential administration that formerly governed its proceedings during the fourth and fifth convocations.]

To understand what is happening, it is necessary to first accept that lawmaking is a political process essentially aimed at coordinating the interests of powerful individuals and interest groups. Only a very narrow circle of actors has access to the decision-making process, and even that number continually grows smaller. Intuition suggests that under such circumstances, only that select group makes all the decisions and the results are not open to discussion. In fact, this is not the case at all.

At the end of 2014 the Duma published its annual Report on the State of Russian Legislation, in which the important part is its appendix on legislative statistics. Traditionally, the main legislator in Russia is the government: it initiates most bills and has the highest percentage of approval among all other initiators, excluding the president (who, unlike the government, traditionally introduces few bills). By the end of the spring session of 2014 among the laws signed by the president, 155 were authored by the deputies and 120 by the government—an unprecedented result. The annual outcome of 2014 looked more traditional: 555 bills signed into laws, among them 45 presidential, 256 governmental, 188 introduced by the Duma deputies, 29 by the Federation members, 34 by the regional legislative assemblies, 3 by the Supreme Court, and 1 by the Federation Council as a body. It has to be kept in mind, however, that the preponderance of the governmental bills adopted during the fall session is mainly due to the passing of the federal budget and the accompanying budgetary bills, and later, of the anti-crisis economic measures also introduced by the government.

President Putin has used his veto power only once during the sixth Convocation of the State Duma. That was in late 2012 and it concerned amendments to a law on the Skolkovo innovation center. Using its veto power slightly more often, Federation Council vetoed 18 bills during the sixth Convocation. However, the president signed 14 of those into law after minor changes were made.

The main trend of the 2014 parliamentary year was a rise in the number of deputies' initiatives, both among those introduced and those adopted. During the previous two convocations it was customary for a relatively small number of initiators—the president, the government, and the top United Russia members and chairs of parliamentary committees—to introduce the bills that had a chance to become laws. Previously, it was clear that if the project was submitted by the government or the high-office deputy, it would be speedily adopted. In 2014, governmental projects have sometimes been delayed or stalled, while the initiatives of deputies outside the United Russia Party and not on any position of importance in the Duma itself would become law in a matter of just a few days.

It should be noted that the intensity of the debates on the floor became more intense during the past year: governmental bills are being subjected to a lengthy consideration process and largely rewritten (examples are the numerous amendments to the law on strategic industries and the ambitious bill n industrial development introduced and adopted in 2014). This can be further proved by statistical numbers showing the length of time spent in the Duma by bills introduced by the executive branch (president and the government) growing over time. That is, the length of discussion time has actually increased over past years, thus contradicting the “rubber stamp” theory.

The old unspoken rule that government initiatives should be adopted in the same form they were introduced is no longer valid.

This is partly due to the peculiarities of the Russian lawmaking mechanism: the right of legislative initiative belongs to the senators and deputies, the government as a body, the regional legislative assemblies, and the higher courts (now the united Supreme Court of Russia). Note that the government can only introduce a bill as a whole. For a ministry or a federal service to advance its legislative agenda, it has to go through a special governmental commission on legislative work, where other ministries and departments can block each other's propositions. Security agencies and law-enforcement bodies, the General Prosecutor's Office and the Investigative Committee have no right of legislative initiative.

This is one of the main reasons for the growing numbers of successful laws authored by the deputies. Many interest groups wishing to promote their agendas and either debarred by law or forced by political constraints out of the ever-narrowing circle of decision makers bring their legislative ideas to the Duma to be introduced as a deputies' initiative.

The State Duma demonstrated its highest level of legislative discipline in 2007–11. During that period, only well-established politicians such as cabinet ministers, the president, and United Russia leaders initiated a relatively small number of bills that passed after somewhat brief but unhurried discussion. By contrast, the current scene calls to mind the parliamentary chaos of the 1990s, but at a whole new level: a flood of initiatives from a variety of authors—senators, individual Duma deputies not belonging to the ruling party or holding any important parliamentary posts, and even regional legislative assemblies.

Paradoxically, the bills introduced by ordinary deputies are adopted within days whereas initiatives coming from the cabinet stall or require rewriting. Two examples are (1) a package of amendments on advertising regulations introduced by Duma deputy Igor Zotov was passed by parliament in just eleven days at the end of its spring 2014 session, and (2) a bill by a group of deputies that limits foreign stakes in Russian mass media assets was passed in September 2014 after a brief nine-day review period.

This is not a result of “lobbying,” as the word is commonly understood, because the idea of lobbying presupposes the existence of business groups as separate political entities that push their agendas through governmental structures and agencies. But in today's Russia, all of those “outside interests” are the Duma deputies themselves, which makes the legislative process the exclusive work of “insiders.” In such a situation, how can the public or even other businesses not represented in parliament influence decisions? It might seem impossible, but that is not the case.

And just as the steadily shrinking number of empowered political actors has not led to increased legislative discipline, but instead to growing chaos, the closed nature of the legislative process does not mean there is no place for input from the public. In reality, this is what happens: politicians want to know which of their actions might lead to social discontent, but they have no feedback mechanisms in place to obtain that information. They therefore have to rely on unofficial, often garbled channels of information. Or else they invent such mechanisms themselves or misinterpret internal elite negotiations for a dialogue with wider society. This has led to the bizarre cult of opinion polls in Russia's political system, as seen in the mysterious efficacy of petitions posted on the Web site Change.org—a resource that, for some reason, has proved more effective than the official Russian Public Initiative (ROI).

In general, poor decision making and low implementation quality are characteristic of semi-authoritarian political regimes as in Russia, with their heavy bureaucracy, opaque and vague rules, and the absence of external public and media control. The result is an external mechanism for making adjustments to laws. Generally, one of two things occurs: either legislators announce their new law and later put it “on hold”—as happened with the so-called Rotenberg law that provides government compensation for the losses companies suffer from rulings by foreign courts—or else they pass a new law and immediately begin the process of correcting it. Outside the parliamentary legislative sphere, this has happened with the governmental decree banning a wide range of food imports from the European Union and the earlier law regulating the way international payment systems can operate in Russia. Both are still undergoing corrections, with no end in sight.

The amendments to fees charged to small business that passed the Duma during the fall session of 2014 offer a perfect example of this “external digestion” system. They first appeared as part of changes to a government bill on tax policy. It is an old Duma practice to introduce amendments unconnected to the bill under discussion during the second reading. The reason is that the relevant Duma committee has the right to introduce changes to a bill during its second reading, whereas during the third reading, it is opened up to a plenary session of parliament. Thus, deputies generally use the second reading when they want to introduce changes quickly and quietly. However, the changes to the tax bill became known and caused a public uproar, prompting legislators to pass the government's bill without the alterations.

Fees levied on small businesses were included in the second reading of a different bill authored by deputy Andrei Makarov, that passed the first reading on October 14. As they moved from one bill to another, the proposed amendments changed considerably, so that they no longer applied to all municipalities, but only to Russia's three “federal status” cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sevastopol. The fees themselves were lowered and the range of taxable business activity was reduced. The amendments were adopted in this form during the second reading on November 18, and the third on November 25, 2014. None of this resembles a lobbying process as it is understood elsewhere. Instead, it is more of an unbalanced system that sends and receives random and distorted signals.

In a sense, the operational mode of the Duma makes it a parody of a real parliament. The crucial difference is that instead of the public interest and the electorate's opinion we have elite groups and actors, the bureaucracy talking to itself, competing within itself and using political institutions to further its interests.

Tendencies to watch in 2015–2016

A growing rift between the Duma and the government

The deepening economic crisis will hit home to the consumers by exactly the time the parliamentary campaign of 2016 has to start. There will be need to shift the blame to somebody, and that somebody has to be closer to home than President Obama. Since blaming Putin is unthinkable, the “governmental liberals” in the economic and financial bloc will be the culprits. United Russia will try to repeat what it did in 2008–9, but hoping for more success this time: explain to the electorate that the food prices have risen due to the pernicious liberal policies inspired by Russia's Western enemies and implemented by spies and saboteurs, and at the same time campaign to have those untrustworthy ministers replaced by true Party members. The political management of the presidential administration will allow them to do the former, but not the latter.

The arena of the Duma–government disagreement will be the budgetary and tax legislation, particularly the former. The Duma, or at least its ambitious speaker Sergey Naryshkin, understands that the parliament's powers have been cut by the budget law reform of 2004–6, which severely restricted the Duma's ability to introduce changes into the federal budget. The executive branch will never treat the legislative branch as an equal partner in the political negotiation process, and the economic crisis may be the chance to at least partly reclaim those powers. In 2015, the government will submit a draft law to the State Duma introducing 10 percent cuts on most of the expense items of the 2015 budget. The Duma has already refused to give the government the power to amend the budget without reference to the parliament, as part of the proposed anti-crisis measures. This was done to force the government to sit down with the Duma leaders every time they need some budget parameter fixed. This, however, is using such authorities as the Duma already has. During the next two years it will attempt to acquire additional authorities, and possibly will succeed.

The rise of “confiscatory legislation” at the expense of repressive legislation

The parliamentary year 2014 saw a change occurring approximately between the spring and the fall sessions: “repressive” laws on meetings, press, nongovernmental organizations, and other civil rights subjects were gradually superseded in the Duma's agenda by the economic bills seeking to raise budget receipts. These changes are naturally not clear-cut, due to the continuous nature of the legislative process. The repressive political legislation has not suddenly gone away, nor has any part of it been repealed. We are not talking about any “thaw,” but rather a change of focus. The ongoing economic crisis makes the legislative branch look into possible ways to replenish the federal and, to a lesser extent, regional budgets. These ways include: an increase of taxation, especially property and real estate taxation; the implementation of personal bankruptcy legislation; and the abrogation of restrictions for selling and advertising alcohol and tobacco. This last line of legislative innovation is likely to be further explored in 2015–16: budget necessities may force the Duma to repeal some of the harsher antismoking provisions, since they harm both the vulnerable public catering sector and taxpaying tobacco industry.

Increase of the number of “publicity bills” introduced by the deputies and further loss of correlation between the bill's authorship and its chances of success

It has been stated in the media that deputy head of the presidential administration Vyacheslav Volodin has allowed greater freedom than was formerly granted to the deputies to express themselves via legislative initiatives. However, Russian political commentators have traditionally ascribed what has really been the result of an objective political process to one bureaucrat's decision. The closer to the elections, the more urgent the need of the Duma members to attract and hold public attention. The easiest way for them to do so is to introduce new bills. No Kremlin official can stop that process, especially given the nature of the approaching elections: in 2016, elections will be held both by party lists and single-member constituencies, with 50 percent of the 450-member body elected by each method.