Patronage and the Party of Power: President–Parliament Relations Under Vladimir Putin

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Notes

At any given time, the United Russia faction had around 306–308 members in the Fourth Convocation. It begins the Fifth Convocation with 315 members.

Under the Duma's rules, a deputy group was entitled to enjoy the same rights and privileges as a party-based faction if it could demonstrate that it had at least 35—later 55—registered members. Such groups were a feature of all three of the first convocations. They gave members from single-member district seats opportunities to use their groups to lobby on behalf of their clients.

Oil and gas made up 52% of the total value of Russia's exports in 2000, and rose to 62% in 2005 (OECD 2006, p. 50).

Party Chairman Boris Gryzlov has consistently identified the party's strategy with the interests of the nascent middle class. At a congress in Novgorod in October 2000, when the party was still called Unity, he praised Margaret Thatcher, characterised the party's ideology as right-conservative, and called the middle class the foundation of stability (available at: http://Polit.ru, accessed 31 October 2000). Two years later, addressing the party's Central Political Council, Gryzlov said that the middle class—comprising three-quarters of the country's population—was dissatisfied with its living standard and that the party's goal would be to cultivate the middle class's support (RFE/RL Newsline, 23 December 2002). At a session of the party's General Council in April 2005, Gryzlov declared that United Russia ‘prefers social conservatism, relying on the middle class and acting in the interests of this class, defending the interests of those who need no revolutions, either financial, economic, cultural, political or orange, brown, red or blue’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 25 April 2005). Concluding his summing-up remarks to the Fourth State Duma in November 2007, Speaker Gryzlov declared that ‘we don't need for there to be fewer rich people in Russia, we need for there to be no poor people’ (see http://wbase.duma.gov.ru/steno/nph-sdb.exe?B0CW[F8&8-, accessed 31 December 2007). The middle class theme has been far more prominent in Gryzlov's statements than in those of Vladislav Surkov, deputy chairman of the presidential administration under Putin and the principal architect of Putin's political strategy. Nonetheless, in his remarks to the officials receiving training at United Russia's party school in February 2006, Surkov observed that ‘if our business community does not transform itself into a national bourgeoisie, then, of course, we have no future’ (see http://www.edinros.ru/news.html?id=111148, accessed 31 December 2007).

How well deserved this credit is is another matter. For example, see Aslund (2007), McFaul and Stoner-Weiss (2008) and Shevtsova (2007).

Taken from stenogram of Duma available at: http://wbase.duma.gov.ru/steno/nph-sdb.exe?B0CW[F8&8-, accessed 20 December 2007.

The First Duma‘s term was only two years (1994–1995) as a result of the provisions of the 1993 constitution calling for elections to a new Duma after only two years. Therefore following the December 1995 elections, the Second Duma convened for the normal four-year term beginning in January 1996.

Statistical analysis of Duma voting alignments bears out the impressionistic reports of journalists and close observers. For example, principal components analyses of electronically-recorded Duma voting reveal a pronounced left–right structure to voting in the Russian Congresses and Supreme Soviet in the 1989–1993 period. [Principal components is a form of factor analysis. When applied to large numbers of rollcall votes, it reveals underlying commonalities in the voting behaviour of deputies. When a particular group of deputies votes alike over a large number of votes, the consistency of their voting behaviour can be calculated and used to predict how likely it is each of them will vote yea or nay on any given vote. Each such alignment pattern is extracted as a factor. Those that characterise a larger number of votes receive correspondingly greater weights (eigenvalues). Such a factor then defines a recurrent cleavage line in voting preferences—for example, between ‘government’ and ‘opposition’ or between left and right. In turn, the particular rollcall votes on which voting alignments are strongly predicted by a common factor are said to load highly on that factor. They can then be used to interpret the substantive significance of that factor.] For instance, at the Third Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR in March 1991, the first factor extracted accounted for 52% of the variance in voting; this reflected the intense polarisation of the deputy corps into pro- and anti-Yel'tsin camps. Three years later, in the first year of the First Duma, polarisation was still strong. The first factor now accounted for nearly 23% of the variance in the voting. But by the time of the first two years of the Third Duma, the first factor accounts for only about 16% of the variance and the second factor about 10%. [A principal components procedure with no rotation produced a set of uncorrelated factors on which each deputy (and therefore each faction) could be scored. The methods for constructing the rollcall data sets differed slightly between the 1994 data and the 2000–2001 data. For details, see Remington (2001).] This finding reflects the fluid, open-ended structure of voting alignments: no single division between majority and minority coalitions dominated voting in the Duma.

Observers claim that these prices fell as parliament's distance and independence from the president declined.

The Fourth Duma raised the threshold requirement for membership for such groups, and none formed. Therefore henceforth, with the elimination of all SMD seats from the Fifth Duma and the adoption of the ‘imperative mandate’ rule providing that a deputy who leaves his faction loses his seat, there will be no more deputy groups unless the rules are changed again.

Originally posted to the Russian government website on 28 December 1999 (originally available at: http://www.government.ru, accessed 31 December 1999, however this is no longer available).

See http://Polit.ru, accessed 12 April 2005.

See http://Polit.ru, accessed 3 March 2004. According to the deputy chairman of the Duma, Viacheslav Volodin, a number of figures from UR were being considered for work in the government, and expressed certainty that the government would be formed on the basis of a parliamentary majority.

A widely-discussed interview with Oleg Shvartsman, head of the Finansgrupp investment fund, published in Kommersant (30 November 2007), sheds light on how the state corporations tie Kremlin factions with the commercial activity of state corporations. He stated that the financial group which he heads (and which won a tender from the Russian Venture Company) handles investments on behalf of families and friends of the ‘silovik’ patron–client network headed by Igor' Sechin (deputy head of the presidential administration, chairman of Rosneft', and a former KGB officer). Shvartsman revealed that his firm carries out hostile takeovers of potentially profitable companies, sometimes reselling them at a handsome profit, with the assistance of a network of retired MVD and security police personnel who identify promising targets. In this way, Shvartsman observed, his firm was helping to carry out a ‘velvet reprivatisation’ of assets on behalf of the silovik clan. Maksim Kvashe, ‘Partiiu dlia nas olitsetvoriaet silovoi blok, kotoryi vozglavliaet Igor’ Ivanovich Sechin', Kommersant, 20 November 2007, p. 20.

Nicolas van de Walle distinguishes between patronage and prebendalism; the latter entails selling or granting the right to occupy a public office enabling its occupant to extract bribes and other material favours from granting or withholding public benefits. Van de Walle argues that the civil service was relatively small in post-colonial Africa but that it was relatively cheap for leaders to allow a smaller group of senior officials to enrich themselves by selling public services (van de Walle 2007, pp. 50–58).

See http://Polit.ru, accessed 11 June 2004.

According to the Levada-Center survey data, 52% of Russians believed the proposed reform would hurt the country, 33% believed it would benefit the country, and 15% were undecided. From a Levada-Center survey, ‘Sotsial'naya reforma dlya strany i naseleniya’, 22 September 2004, based on a survey conducted on 10–13 September 2004 by Levada-Tsentr. N = 1,600 in 128 populated points in 46 regions. Margin of error = 3%, available at: http://www.levada.ru/press/2004092702.html, accessed 30 September 2004.

For example, UR boasted that it had ensured that the bill protected the federally-established minimum wage throughout all regions as a basis for calculating benefits and that the federal government would not devolve its responsibility for supporting World War II veterans to regions.

Its first reading was held on 31 March, the second on 28 May, and the third on 4 June.

RFE/RL Newsline, 12 May 2005.

List of instructions as taken from the president's website, available at: http://president.kremlin.ru/text/docs/2005/05/88085.shtml accessed 12 May 2005.

‘Vystuplenie Predsedatelya Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii B. V. Gryzlova na zasedanii Gosudarstvennoi Dumy 8 iyuliya 2005 g. Ob itogakh vesennei (2005 goda) sessii Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, available at Duma website: http://wbase.duma.gov.ru:8080/law, accessed 31 December 2007.

Gryzlov presents a review of the notable accomplishments of the Duma on the last day of each spring and autumn term, and an overview of the convocation's achievements on the last day of the convocation. These are available at the Duma's website, available at:http://www.duma.gov.ru.

In his remarks during the ‘direct line’ call-in session on 18 October 2007, for example, Putin explained why he had chosen to head the United Russia party list in the December Duma election. According to Putin, the parliament had been ‘non-functional’ (nedeesposobnym) in the 1990s. As a result, it had been impossible to pass any well-thought-out policies. Instead reckless, populist laws were passed. ‘Therefore it is extremely important that after the 2007 elections, parliament be functional (deesposobnym)’. The main reason parliament had been functional (deesposobnym) in the last few years was the fact that United Russia had led it. ‘For that reason I decided to head its list.’