Parliamentary Oversight in Putin's Neo-patrimonial State. Watchdogs or Show-dogs?

Abstract

Conceptualising Russia as a neopatrimonial state directs attention to the patrimonial relations that pervaded formal institutions to reveal increasing tensions within the state during Putin's presidency. A case study of parliamentary oversight practices points to the emergence of legitimation as their key purpose, but also to the growing contradictions between the controlling and legitimating impulses of Putin's regime. At the same time deputies responded to the changes in their status and influence by moving their resources towards the patrimonial sphere, most notably utilising oversight institutions for direct and indirect private interests—activities tolerated by the regime in exchange for political loyalty.

Acknowledgments

The author is most grateful for the support of the ESRC (RES-000-22-1132) for the conduct of this research. Special thanks are due to Emilia Kosterina and Andrei Zakharov for their assistance with data collection. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 7th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians (Wroxton College, Oxon, August 2006), the Political Studies Association Annual Conference (University of Bath, April 2007) and the Political Studies Association Legislative Studies Group Conference (Constitution Unit, University College London, June 2009). I would also like to thank Edwin Bacon, Gary Browning, Rico Isaacs, David White, the members of the European Politics and Society Research Group at Oxford Brookes University and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

Notes

Diamond (2002, p. 24) sees electoral authoritarianism as an increasingly common type of hybrid regime that is neither clearly democratic nor conventionally authoritarian rule, having multi-party competition that often masks the reality of authoritarian domination.

All interviews were anonymised and coded. See Appendix 1 for details.

This appeared to be the case for all parliamentarians interviewed, regardless of their party or ideological affiliation. However, here it is not possible to tell if this was due to the subject matter being discussed (the intrinsic relation of oversight to liberal democracy) or to the (British) nationality of the interviewer or both.

Twelve of the 15 deputies interviewed by the author were in the top 20% of most frequent speakers at plenary sessions (Institute ‘Obshchestvennaya Ekspertiza’ 2005, pp. 254–62). In addition, nine of the 15 deputies had served in more than one convocation, as a proportion of respondents were approached because of their perceived interest in oversight and ability to discuss their perceptions of change over time.

Here it is important to distinguish between the informal institutions such as routines, roles and norms that characterise the functioning of all institutions (March & Olsen 1994, p. 52) and the specific non-regularised informal practices that comprise neopatrimonialism such as clientelism, patronage and rent-seeking; see Engel & Erdmann (2006). Ledeneva (2008, p. 20) sees informal practices as ‘players’ creative handling of formal rules and informal norms', a definition compatible with the conception of neopatrimonialism being used here.

For examples, see Gel'man (2004, p. 1031).

For a detailed discussion of the provisions of the Russian constitution and the resultant formal division of powers, see Sakwa (2002, pp. 98–139).

However, the absence of a constitutional oversight role is not unusual, as there is no such provision in the US or German constitutions either.

Along with the constitutional amendments to extend the terms of the president and people's deputies made in late 2008, articles 103 and 114 of the constitution were amended to give the State Duma the right to hear the government's annual report (otchet) on the results of its activity and on the implementation of the federal budget (Federal Law on amending the Constitution of the Russian Federation, 30 December 2008, no.7- FK3 ‘O kontrol'nykh polnomochiyakh Gosudarstvennoi Dumy v otnoshenie Pravitel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 31 December 2008).

On this see below. The details of these formal changes have been well-documented elsewhere (Institute ‘Obshchestvennaya Ekspertiza’ 2005; Wilson 2006).

For details, see Wilson (2006).

Chaisty (2006, p. 198) notes that in the early part of the convocation, some bills were steamrolled through all three readings in one day.

However, Remington (2008) argues that adopting legislation remained costly as far as United Russia deputies constantly required ‘feeding’ resources.

Opposition is a deeply problematic concept in the Duma: for instance in the 4th Duma, part of Rodina, the Communists (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii, KPRF) and especially the LDPR (Liberal'no-Demokraticheskaya Partiya Rossii) were muted in their opposition to the president. Here the term is used simply as a short-hand meaning those outside the United Russia faction.

Only one respondent (S3) argued that parliamentary oversight was robust in Russia.

Postanovleniya Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 10 noyabrya 2004 goda N.1101-IV GD (Sobranie zakonodatel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii 2004, 47, p. 4579).

Postanovleniya Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 20 fevralya 2004 goda N.132-IV GD (Sobranie zakonodatel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii 2004, 9, p. 757).

Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 8 October 2003; Trud, 14 October 2003.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 20 April 2004; Izvestiya, 21 April 2004.

Itogi, 5 July 2005; Kommersant-Daily, 17 September 2005; Novye Izvestiya, 17 September 2005; Izvestiya, 27 September 2005.

The law only allowed investigation of large-scale disasters and mass violations of human rights (excluding during elections).

Kommersant-Daily, 18 October 2005.

Before 2005, the presidential objection to any law on parliamentary investigations had been based on the argument that this provision was not envisaged by the constitution and therefore required a prior constitutional amendment.

Vladimir Pligin quoted in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 19 October 2005 (Shkel’2005, p. 3). Although beyond the scope of this article, the 2008 constitutional amendment granting the Duma the right to hear the government's annual report can also be interpreted in this light. Deputy speaker Oleg Morozov pointed out how the changes were ‘aimed at democratising the political system in Russia’ (‘Konstitutsionniy perevorot’, Ekonomika i Zhizn’, 28 November 2008, p. 29).

The annual numbers of Duma requests for checks to the Accounting Chamber during 1996–1999 were 43, 54, 57 and 34 respectively (with a mean of 47). During the 3rd and 4th Duma the mean number of requests was 17 for each (author's calculations from the annual Otchet o rabote Schetnoi palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii, M: Accounting Chamber from 2004 to 2008).

See Ryzhkov and Dymarskii (2009) for the figures.

Kommersant’, 19 April 2007.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 14 February 2006.

Similar patterns are evident even in the US where Congressmen have felt it ‘unpatriotic’ to question the military (Johnson 2004).

Author's observation, 13 March 2006.

This tendency continued after Putin's presidency as in November 2008 the Duma's right to confirm the distribution of budget allocations was transferred to a special commission comprising seven representatives of each chamber of the Federal Assembly. See Burkaleva (2008, p. 2) for details.

Author's observation, 15 February 2006.

The exception was several non-party member deputies who were vocally critical about the law on parliamentary investigations.

The situation became more absurd after Vladimir Putin became prime minister and the 2008 constitutional amendments in effect obliged United Russia to oversee their leader and patron.

For example, see Fish (2005). The closed nature of the Duma's activities was also problematic. No journalists were allowed into the session chamber of the Duma—instead they sat in a glass-walled room outside the chamber and watched the session on a television screen, where the camera angle and direction made it very difficult to ascertain even how many deputies were present.

Loyal United Russia deputies made the link between the law on parliamentary investigations and the Orange Revolution explicit. See for example, Stenogramma kruglogo stola komiteta po konstitutionnomu zakonodatel'stvu i gosudarstvennomu stroitel'stvu i komiteta po besopasnosti na temu, ‘O protsedure parlamentskikh rassledovannii’ 9 June 2005 (a copy of which was provided to the author by the committee) and Novoe Vremya, 13 November 2005.

Vedomosti, 3 August 2009 reminded readers that Medvedev's key promise as president was to reintroduce the supremacy of the law, while Russia Today, 13 August 2009 reported instructions from the presidential administration to regional governors to register opposition candidates in regional elections (Zlobin 2009 and Borisov 2009 both accessed via Johnson's Russia List, nos 144 (3 August 2009) and 149 (13 August 2009) respectively).