American Democratic Practice, France, and Russia: Institutions, Values, and Alternative Democratic Experience

Abstract

The US emphasis on democratic procedures and property rights profoundly distinguishes the American polity from nearly all consolidated and newly emergent democracies; democracies that place stress on more egalitarian notions of social justice. Interrelating institutional arrangements and democratic values through an application of George Tsebelis's veto players theory and Isaiah Berlin's notions of positive and negative liberty, we juxtapose the American and French democracies as we assess Russia's post-Soviet democratic consolidation. We focus on the policy-making proclivities of these three states, and a combined application of the veto players framework and positive-negative liberty dichotomy reveals a US policy bias toward the status quo as contrasted with a French and Russian system bias facilitating more substantial policy change. The 1993–1995 Clinton health-care initiative, the 1997–2002 Jospin-Left program, with attention to the 35-hour workweek and associated policies, and the 2000–2006 Putin policy agenda, with attention to health care and housing measures, serve as national case studies to illuminate our arguments.

Notes

¹ We thank Mikhail Beznosov, Martin Carrier, David Gibbs, Heath Lauseng, Tim Luke, and the two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions, and Elliot Magruder for research assistance.

² Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), ch. 2.

³ For suggestive discussions, see Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York: Random House, 1965), and Walter Dean Burnham, The Current Crisis in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), especially the introduction.

⁴ George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 82.

⁵ Isaiah Berlin, Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

⁶ We understand that many American observers offer highly negative assessments of Russia's democratic evolution under Vladimir Putin. For example, M. Steven Fish, Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Andrew Jack, Inside Putin's Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 297–351. We clearly draw a very different judgment, more akin to that drawn by most Russian observers and citizens. Concerns over the evolving state of the Russian democracy are not unique: some serious observers of the American domestic scene point to actions of President George W. Bush that are said to profoundly jeopardize the American constitutional system. For example, Elizabeth Drew, “Bush's Power Grab,” New York Review of Books, 22 June 2006, pp. 10–15.

⁷ For a contemporary popular treatment of these American and continental European differences on property and social justice, see Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream (New York: Penguin, 2004), especially ch. 6.

⁸ Berlin, op. cit., p. 36.

⁹ John G. Gunnell, Imagining the American Polity: Political Science and the Discourse of Democracy (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), p. 36.

¹⁰ John G. Gunnell, Imagining the American Polity: Political Science and the Discourse of Democracy (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), p. 36, p. 38.

¹¹ Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent. Based on a public domain edition (London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., 1914), Advertisement Section.

¹² While a consideration of the Westminster system, as best exemplified by Great Britain, would permit us to examine a polity with a unified executive-legislative, we focus on France both given the seminal role of its political values (especially for continental European politics) and its relevance to post-Soviet Russian institutions and values.

¹³ Especially notable are procedural and electoral reforms that have reined in regional leaders, tightened federal controls over the periphery, and constrained aspects of the federal legislature's policy-making powers.

¹⁴ See Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Neil Munro, Russia Transformed: Developing Popular Support for a New Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and John P. Willerton, “Uncertainties of the Putin Hegemonic Presidency,” in Geir Flikke (ed.), The Uncertainties of Putin's Democracy (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2004), pp. 21–40.

¹⁵ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Signet Classics, 1984), p. 303.

¹⁶ Tsebelis, Veto Players, op. cit., p. 82.

¹⁷ See George Tsebelis, “Veto Players and Institutional Analysis,” Governance 13 (October 2000), pp. 442–446 for Tsebelis's graphical representation and explanation of Clinton's health-care reform failure vis-à-vis the veto player analysis.

¹⁸ Haynes Johnson and David Broder, The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1996), p. x.

¹⁹ Hugh Heclo, “The Clinton Health Plan: Historical Perspective,” Health Affairs 14 (Spring 1995), p. 94.

²⁰ Lisa Disch, “Publicity Stunt Participation and Sound Bite Polemics: The Health Care Debate, 1993–4,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 21 (Spring 1996), p. 6. See also Theda Skocpol, “The Rise and Resounding Demise of the Clinton Plan,” Health Affairs 14 (Spring 1995), pp. 66–87.

²¹ See Henry Webber, “The Failure of Health-Care Reform: An Essay Review,” Social Service Review 69 (June 1995), pp. 309–322, and Sven Steinmo and Jon Watts, “It's the Institutions Stupid! Why Comprehensive National Health Care Always Fails in America,” Journal of Health Politics 20 (Summer 1995), pp. 329–369.

²² See also Bryan W. Marshall, “Presidential Success in the Realm of Foreign Affairs,” Social Science Quarterly 84 (September 2003), pp. 685–703. Marshall discusses the importance that the House Committee Reform Amendments of 1974 and Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 had on limiting the power of committee chairmen through the addition of veto players in the agenda-setting and legislation process.

²³ Steinmo and Watts, op. cit., p. 331.

²⁴ Webber, op. cit., p. 314.

²⁶ Steinmo and Watts, op. cit., p. 330.

²⁵ Mark Peterson, “Introduction: Health Care into the Next Century,” Journal of Health Politics 22 (April 1997), p. 291.

²⁷ John A. Rohr, Founding Republics in France and America: A Study in Constitutional Governance (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 1995), p. 190.

²⁸ Robert Elgie, Political Institutions in Contemporary France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

²⁹ Andrew Shonfield, Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).

³⁰ Maurice Duverger, Institutions Politiques et Droit Constitutionnel, 11^th ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970), and Duverger, Echec au Roi (Paris: Albin Michel, 1978).

³¹ Robert Elgie, Semi-Presidentialism in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

³² Rohr, op. cit., p. 194.

³³ Jean-Louis Thiébault, “Forming and Maintaining Government Coalitions in the Fifth Republic,” in Wolfgang C. Müller and Kaare Strøm (eds), Coalition Governments in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 498–528.

³⁴ Rohr, op. cit., p. 179.

³⁵ Jean V. Poulard, “The French Double Executive and the Experience of Cohabitation,” Political Science Quarterly 105 (Summer 1990), pp. 243–267.

³⁶ The Fifth Republic constitution gives much attention to the prime minister's and government's responsibility to parliamentary interests, while concomitantly leaving these governmental actors vulnerable to presidential influences. The evolution of Fifth Republic political institutions through increasingly complex policy-making and administrative conditions (e.g., mounting European integration), as further conditioned by shifting domestic popular preferences and the resultant experience of political cohabitation (i.e., 1986–1988 and 1993–1995), bolstered the potential for a prime minister to govern, should the prime minister be able to manage government ministers while simultaneously enjoying majority support in the parliament. This potential was fully realized during the five-year mandate of Lionel Jospin and his Left–Green coalition. See Frédéric Rouvillois (ed.), La Cohabitation: Fin la République? (Paris: F.X. de Guibert, 2001), Jean Massot, Chef de l'État et chef du Gouvernement: Dyarchie et Hiérarchie (Paris: La Documetation Française, 1997), pp. 95–138, and Georges Vedel, “Variations et Cohabitations,” Pouvoirs 83 (Spring 1997), pp. 101–29.

³⁷ See Marie Eve Malouines, Deux Homes pour un Fauteuil: Chronique de la Cohabitation 1997–2001 (Paris: Fayard, 2001).

³⁸ Cécile Amar and Ariane Chemin, Jospin & Cie (Paris: Seuil, 2002).

³⁹ Daniel Carton, Cohabitation, Intrigues et Confidences (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 2000). Also, Daniel Boy, François Platone, Henri Rey, Françosie Subileau, and Colette Ysmal, C'était La Gauche Plurielle (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2003).

⁴⁰ Barbara Victor, Le Matignon de Jospin (Paris: Flammarion, 1999).

⁴¹ Olivier Schrameck, Matignon Rive Gauche 1997–2001 (Paris: Seuil, 2001), and Sylvie Maligorne, Duel au Sommet (Paris: Seuil, 2002).

⁴² Robert Elgie, “From the Exception to the Rule: The Use of Article 49-3 of the Constitution since 1958,” Modern and Contemporary France 1 (February 1993), pp. 17–26.

⁴³ John P. Willerton and Martin Carrier, “Jospin, Political Cohabitation, and Left Governance,” French Politics, Culture, and Society 23 (Summer 2005), pp. 43–70, and Willerton and Carrier, “Coalition Management in the Face of Ideological and Institutional Constraint: The Case of France's Gauche Plurielle,” French Politics 3 (March 2005), pp. 4–27.

⁴⁴ Jonah Levy, “Partisan Politics and Welfare Adjustment: The Case of France,” Journal of European Public Policy 8 (April 2001), pp. 265–285.

⁴⁵ Eurostat, Statistical Office of the European Communities, 2003, < ec.europa.ed./eurostat>.

⁴⁶ This is not to deny there were important areas, notably pension reform, family policy reform, and education, where there was a lack of agreement within the Plural Left; policy areas that played a role in Jospin's and the left's defeat in the 2002 presidential and parliamentary elections. See Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, Ma Part d'Inventaire (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 2002) and Colette Ysmal, “The Presidential and Legislative Elections of 2002: An Analysis of the Results,” in John Gaffney (ed.), The French Presidential and Legislative Elections of 2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 57–82.

⁴⁷ In stark contrast, a unified right, dominating the national executive and legislature in the wake of the 2002 elections, proved unable in the succeeding years to build a policy record comparable to that of the predecessor left coalition. This failure, however, was reflective of the foibles and incompetence of Jacques Chirac and his allies rather than of defects in the French institutional design.

⁴⁸ Ian Bremmer, “The Russian Roller Coaster,” World Policy Journal 20 (Winter 2003/04), pp. 22–29.

⁴⁹ Lilia Shevtsova, Yeltsin: Myths and Reality (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 1999).

⁵⁰ Richard Sakwa, Putin: Russia's Choice (London: Routledge, 2004).

⁵¹ Michael McFaul, Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); “Vladimir Putin's Grand Strategy… for Anti-Democratic Regime Change in Russia,” The Weekly Standard (November 17, 2003). Also, John Squier, “Civil Society and Challenge of Russian Gosudarstvennost,” Demokratizatsiya 10 (Spring 2002), pp. 166–183.

⁵² Dmitry Furman, Aleksandr Morozov, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Nikolai Petrov, Yury Korguniuk, and Alain Blum, “Politicheskaya sistema Rossii posle putinskikh Reform” (“The Political System of Russia after the Putin Reforms”), Polit.ru, 27 January, 2005.

⁵³ David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).

⁵⁴ Andrei Zakharov and Aleksandr Kapishin, “Gosudarstvennaya Duma i Prezidentstvo Vladimira Putina” (“The State Duma and Presidency of Vladimir Putin”), Vestnik Moskovskoi Shkoly Politicheskikh Issledovanii 1 (2002), pp. 71–79; Boris Mazo, Piterskiye Protiv Moskovskikh: Ili Kto est' Kto v Okruzhenii V. V. Putina (Petersburgers versus Muscovites: or Who is Who in the Entourage of V. V. Putin) (Moscow: Eksmo, 2003).

⁵⁵ Olga Kryshtanovskaya, Anatomiya Rossiiskoi Elity (Anatomy of the Russian Elite) (Moscow: Zakharov, 2004); and Matthew Hyde, “Putin's Federal Reforms and Their Implications for Presidential Power in Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 53 (July 2001), pp. 719–743.

⁵⁶ Oleh Protsyk, “Ruling with Decrees: Presidential Decree Making in Russia and Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 56 (July 2004), pp. 637–660.

⁵⁷ Lilia Shevtsova, Putin's Russia, revised ed. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2005).

⁵⁸ Andrei Zakharov and Aleksandr Kapishin, “Gosudarstvennyi Sovet vo Vlastnoi Sisteme Rossii” (“The State Council in the Power System of Russia”), Vestnik Moskovskoi Shkoly Politicheskiki Issledovanii 3 (2001), pp. 36–40.

⁵⁹ N. Zen'kovich, Putinskaya entsiklopediya (Putin Encyclopedia) (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2006).

⁶⁰ S. Glaz'yev, S. Kara-Murza, and S. Batchikov, Belaya Kniga: Ekonomicheskiye Reformy v Rossii 1991–2002 gg (White Book: Economic Reforms in Russia 1991–2002) (Moscow: Eksmo, 2004).

⁶¹ John P. Willerton, Mikhail Beznosov, and Martin Carrier, “Addressing the Challenges of Russia's ‘Failing State’: The Legacy of Gorbachev and the Promise of Putin,” Demokratizatsiya 13 (Spring 2005), pp. 219–239.

⁶² See George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Archie Brown and Lilia Shevtsova (eds), Gorbachev, Yeltsin & Putin: Political Leadership in Russia's Transition (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001); and, for an insider's view, Anatoly Sobchak, For a New Russia (New York: Free Press, 1992).

⁶³ Suggestive is the country's “stabilization fund,” estimated to be worth approximately US$100 billion, much of which is invested in US treasury notes. RIA Novosti, 1 February 2007, < http://en.rian.ru/business/>. It serves as a financial reserve should a future downturn in energy receipts necessitate a backup funding source for government social welfare spending. Of related significance is the continuing build up of Russia's foreign currency and gold reserves, estimated at over US $300 billion. RIA Novosti, 20 February 2007.

⁶⁴ Jens Hartmann, “Kreml' Delaet Stavky na Gosudarshtennyi Kapitalizm” (“The Kremlin Bets on State Capitalism”), InoSMI.ru, 20 February 2006. Other industries critical to Russia's overall economic (and security) future were similarly targeted for higher governmental involvement, including the aerospace (e.g., Sukhoi Corporation) and automotive (e.g., Kamaz and Vaz) industries. Government-directed centralization of decision-making in these industries was seen as making them more efficient and more competitive in the international arena.

⁶⁵ Private health care is of considerably higher quality, but expensive, and used by less than 5% of the population.

⁶⁶ Veronika Romanenkova, “Putin to Sign Order on Improvement of Russia's Healthcare,” RIA Novosti, 17 October 2005, and “Putin Meets with Cabinet Members to Discuss National Prospects,” ITAR-TASS News Agency, 16 January 2006.

⁶⁷ RIA Novosti, 7 September 2005.

⁶⁸ In 2004, for instance, of total housing demand only 6% was met with mortgages, compared with 24% based on personal funds and informal loans; 70% was left unsatisfied. Prime-TASS, 27 September 2005.

⁶⁹ As of 2005, mortgages did not exceed ten years in duration, they required a high officially declared income and a down payment of roughly 30%. See Russian Business Monitor, 24 October 2005.

⁷⁰ Nina Kulikova, “President Putin Promises to Develop Mortgage Programs,” RIA Novosti, 29 September 2005.

⁷¹ “The Ill-Fated Russian Mortgage,” Gateway to Russia, < http://www.gateway2russia.com>, 22 November 2004, and Scott Peterson, “A Russian Reform Hits Homes: Mortgages,” The Christian Science Monitor, 23 March 2004.

⁷² Most mortgage loans to date have occurred in Moscow and St Petersburg and their adjoining provinces and Irkutsk, Orenburg, and Samara provinces.

⁷³ John P. Willerton, “Putin and the Hegemonic Presidency,” in Stephen White, Richard Sakwa, and Zvi Gitelman (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 6 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 18–39.

⁷⁴ Viewed by many as President Putin's likely successor, Medvedev's portfolio combined policy responsibilities central both to governmental revenue generation and social welfare expenditures.

⁷⁵ In principle, one other actor, the Russian public, could be factored into this discussion, though Tsebelis's definition of “veto players” entails formal institutional actors. Given Russia's tradition of an absence of powerful organized interest groups, organized popular insurrection (bunt) has constituted a potential challenge to any regime, however strong (e.g., the 1962 Novocherkassk uprising against the Khrushchev regime). Putin has taken such possibilities seriously, having unilaterally altered proposals in the face of strong public opposition. This has been evinced in a number of cases, most notably involving the limiting of state subsidies and benefits. The public must be viewed as a constraining force, though it is not a formal actor. Related arguments about the public as a constraint could also be offered in the French case, though the logic for this varies somewhat from that for Russia (albeit with the French tradition of the public's shared responsibility—along with the state—for achieving social justice). Given the powerful role of organized interests in the US, we would not make such a claim for the American public.

⁷⁶ State of the Union Address, January 11, 1944, < http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu>.

⁷⁷ FDR's New Deal and desired post-war “economic rights” initiatives, along with President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society program, reveal that the American system is not “fixed” in its procedural functioning and possible policy outputs. But such extraordinary programmatic efforts, realized and unrealized, do not obviate the basic policy-making proclivities resulting from American institutional arrangements and values.