Parties, elections, and the end of history

Korgunyuk Yu.G.

Abstract

Book review: Alexander V. Kynev, Arkadii E. Lyubarev, Parties and Elections in Russia 2008-2022: A History of the Decline. Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2024.

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In the early 2010s, two well-known experts in the field of Russian party and election research, published a book called "Parties and Elections in Modern Russia: Evolution and Devolution" [2]. Now, they have written a "sequel" [1], which is not so much a finale of a sad tale, but rather a thoughtful ellipsis in the developing subject area.

The previous book covered the period from the beginning of the post-Soviet era to 2009. The new one covers the history up to 2022. This period was witness to a lot of events, most of which were not particularly cheerful: suffice it to say that the list of colleagues to whom the authors express their gratitude includes four who were declared foreign agents and two who passed away.

Nevertheless, Alexander Kynev and Arkadii Lyubarev remain impartial with a healthy amount of formalism when they compile a generalized picture of what happened during these years.

The authors have divided the covered 14 years into four "phases", each of which is described in a separate chapter. The four phases are separated by three events: Vladimir Putin's return as president (March 2012); the appointment of a new CEC (March 2016); and the preparation of a nationwide referendum on amendments to the Russian Constitution (February-March 2020).

All chapters are structured in a uniform manner. First, the authors review changes in electoral and party legislation during the relevant period. The review is followed by an outline of the content of election campaigns and election results shaped by the electoral policy of the Russian government. Then there is a description of changes in the party system, followed by a paragraph on the participation of political parties in specific election campaigns, which seamlessly transitions to a report on the representation of political parties in public government bodies. The chapters close with summaries and conclusions.

The presentation is very detailed, but not too heavy with references; the authors refer mostly to their own work. This step is quite justified: abundant facts and figures require increased concentration of attention as they are. Besides, as early as in the preface the authors indicate that they described in detail almost all mentioned events in numerous previously published books, reports and other materials, and, naturally, provide references to these works.

Reading the book, one wonders how much has happened over the past 14 years, how many different processes have unfolded, wrapped up and reversed.

For example, in 2008-2012, there was a combination of "forced partisanship" (ever wider introduction of party lists in elections at ever lower levels) with ever more restrictive party legislation and the dismantling of actual multiparty system; unification of the electoral process and political life in the regions; increased privileges for "parliamentary" parties (including exemption from the need to collect signatures and a sharp increase in state funding), spiced with a touch of "nano-democratization" (such as reducing the minimum number of party members first to 45,000 and then 40,000); extending the terms of office of the President and the State Duma; abolition of the election deposit; depriving non-partisan public associations of the right to nominate candidate lists for municipal elections, etc. And then there was also the drafting of the Electoral Code by a group of public activists, the Duma and presidential campaigns of 2011-2012, which were accompanied by an explosion of protest activity.

April 2012 – April 2016: the 2012 "party reform" that included the actual abolition of the minimum party size and lead to a party-building boom; electoral reform that introduced the transition to direct voting for the election of the heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation (albeit with an addition of the municipal filter), the abolition of the collection of signatures for parties wishing to participate in elections to representative government bodies of various levels, the reduction in the number of voter signatures for participation in presidential elections, the return to a mixed system in the elections to the State Duma, and the introduction of the Single Voting Day (instead of the previous two in spring and fall).

The party reform, however, was quickly replaced by a counter-reform that, among other things, brought back signature collection for election participation for most parties. In the area of electoral legislation, there was a continuous raising of obstacles to election observation. In particular, public activists were virtually barred from participating in observation as media correspondents. As a result, the authors believe that the country has developed a "managed partisanship 2.0": while there is a large number of registered parties, the institutional platforms where they can succeed are extremely few. With regard to the elites, the policy of forced co-optation into the "party of power" was replaced by the principle of "sharing responsibility" in the form of transferring some positions, including governor offices, to representatives of the systemic opposition.

April 2016 – February 2020 is the period marked by the arrival of Ella A. Pamfilova as Chairperson of the Central Election Commission. The authors do not hide the fact that they had many hopes associated with this appointment, noting, in particular, that Pamfilova "began to actively cooperate with party and independent experts, including those who were critical of the current legislation and the practice of its application, with various observer associations, including the Golos movement, which was disparaged by the previous CEC leadership" [1: 243]. These hopes were fueled not least because Ella Pamfilova "almost immediately recognized that the current electoral legislation is unsatisfactory and in need of reform" [1: 244]. Under her leadership, the CEC held an applied research conference called "Russia's Electoral System: Existing Knowledge of Construction and Prospects for Development" (November 2016), created a working group to prepare amendments to the electoral legislation, and later established the Scientific and Expert Council. However, none of the proposals of these bodies (including those to scale down the municipal filter and remove a number of restrictions on observation) ever turned into specific draft laws. In fact, this period saw a decreased intensity of amendments to the electoral legislation.

At the same time, a law on remote e-voting began to be drafted, the Single Voting Day was moved from October to September (the most inconvenient month for voters), and a "petal" slicing of single-seat constituencies was introduced for the State Duma elections, which, according to the authors, corresponds to the concept of "gerrymandering" ("In most regions, the center was artificially cut into several parts, to which the territory of the rural periphery was added. This resulted in reduced opportunities for electing representatives of the opposition, whose support in the regional centers was significantly higher than in the rural periphery") [1: 253]. At the same time, the process that the authors defined as "devolution of the party system" began: only three new parties were registered, while 29 were disbanded [1: 272-273].

In general, according to the authors' assessment, this period saw the continuation of the trend towards the diminishing role of parties as such, which was manifested, among other things, in the dismantling of elections by party lists. The dismal state of the party system, the authors believe, was evidenced by the 2018 presidential election: "Of the four parliamentary parties, two did not nominate a candidate, another nominated a non-partisan citizen, and the fourth nominated its 71-year-old leader, who has been in office for 27 years" [1: 360] (after the 2024 presidential election, the previous one is remembered almost with fondness).

Finally, the last period — from March 2020 to June 2022 — began with President Vladimir Putin's motion to hold a referendum on amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, continued with the 2021 State Duma election, and ended with the entry of the state into a completely new stage of its existence, which, to put it very mildly, can be called "non-peaceful". What the authors call the main feature of this period is "the transition of the political system to existence in emergency conditions, first at the plebiscite on amendments to the Constitution, and then at all elections": "the possibilities of conducting public campaigning activities were sharply restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and poorly controlled elements of voting organization (multi-day voting, mass usage of remote e-voting) were introduced and expanded" [1: 435].

In the closing remarks, it is hard to resist the temptation to quote the concluding paragraph of the book: "The special military operation in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, meant, among other things, the final transition of domestic political life to operating under extraordinary conditions of maximum restrictions: the ban on and disposal of most opposition media, new criminal charge articles and repressions for criticism of the special military operation, emigration of a significant part of the political activists and many prominent representatives of civil society. There is no doubt that the consequences will change the political system of the country dramatically, and the end of the special operation in the long term may also mean the end of the entire party and political system that took shape in Russia by 2022. The establishment of a new system and the direction it will take (even more rigid authoritarian regime or new democratization) no longer depends mostly on electoral factors, but on foreign policy and personal factors" [1: 440].

The appendix to the book contains two extremely valuable sources of information: "References on political parties that existed in 2008-2022" and "Statistical data on Russian elections in 1989-2022". Both may render as much invaluable assistance to an inquisitive reader as to a professional political scientist.

Received 01.05.2024.

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References

1. Kynev A.V., Lyubarev A.E. Parties and Elections in Russia 2008-2022: A History of the Decline. Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2024. 488 p. (In Russ.)
2. Kynev A.V., Lyubarev A.E. Partii i vybory v sovremennoi Rossii: Evolutsiya i devolutsiya [Parties and Elections in Modern Russia: Evolution and Devolution]. Moscow: Fond “Liberalnaya missiya”. 2011. 792 p. (In Russ.)