Since Russia is a strongly presidential country, it has two electoral systems that need attention in this chapter: the one employed to elect the lower house of parliament, and the one under which the president is elected. Before examining the electoral systems in detail, we will briefly discuss the political background.

Political background

Russia resumed its independent statehood in December 1991, following an agreement between its president Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to withdraw from the treaty under which the USSR had originally been established. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on 25 December; the following day the upper chamber of the Soviet parliament adopted a declaration approving the dissolution of the USSR and power passed into the hands of Boris Yeltsin and the other leaders of what were now fifteen independent republics. But supreme authority was contested between the parliament, which had been elected on a largely competitive basis in the spring of 1990, and the president, who had secured his own popular mandate in the summer of 1991. A deepening tension was resolved when Yeltsin, in an acknowledged departure from the constitution, dissolved the parliament in September 1993 and then ordered the army to bombard it into submission. A new constitution had been under discussion to replace the much‐amended Russian constitution of 1978. The version that was published in November 1993 and approved in a popular vote the following month was much more strongly presidential, and its adoption marked the establishment of a presidential or—some argued—even super-presidential republic.

The 1993 constitution included a formal commitment to political pluralism, a multiparty system, and the rule of law. It also established a new legislature, the Federal Assembly, with an upper house (the Federation Council) representing Russia's eighty‐nine republics and regions, and a lower house (the State Duma) representing the population at large. The lower house consists of 450 seats, half of which are filled by a national party‐list contest and half of which are filled by a quite (p.314) independent series of contests in individual constituencies (this is, in other words, a mixed‐member parallel system—see Appendix A). Under current plans, the next elections, in 2007, will see a shift to an entirely party list‐based contest, although it will be conducted at a regional level rather than as a single nationwide exercise. The prime minister is nominated by the president, but must be approved by the Duma; if the same nomination is rejected three times in a row the Duma must be dissolved and new elections called. Other members of the government are appointed by the president on the proposal of the prime minister.

The Duma has one further sanction, which is that it can vote no confidence in the government as a whole. If it does so twice within three months, the president must either replace the government or call elections. The Duma may also impeach the president, but only in the event of treason or a crime of similar gravity, and only if the full membership of both houses vote in favour by a two‐thirds majority. In practice, the president dominates the law‐making process, although the relationship was a confrontational one up to the 1999 elections at which pro‐Kremlin parties—thanks, among other factors, to the active involvement of the presidential administration and its use of state television—secured a working majority. The president is not, by convention, a member of a political party, and government does not necessarily reflect the party composition of the Duma. Government, indeed, is effectively an agency for the implementation of presidential strategy, and the prime minister surrenders his mandate to a newly elected president rather than to a newly elected Duma.

Elections took place to both chambers of the Federal Assembly in 1993, and to the Duma alone in 1995, 1999, and 2003 (see Table 15.1). There were presidential elections in 1996 (when Yeltsin won a second term in a runoff against Communist challenger Gennadii Zyuganov), in March 2000 (when Vladimir Putin was elected as his successor in the first round), and March 2004, when Putin was re‐elected, again in the first round, with a still larger majority; all of these elections took place at the intervals prescribed by the constitution, and were generally described as free and fair by international observers. Nonetheless, it seemed premature to regard Russia as a democracy of quite the same kind as its Western neighbours. Many of the basic human rights, including freedom of the press and of religious practice, were subject to serious qualification; the electoral process was heavily influenced by the authorities themselves, particularly through their use of public office (‘administrative resource’) and the electronic media; and although there was nominally a rule of law, it appeared to do little to protect ordinary citizens or to limit the actions of the rich and powerful.

Origins of the electoral system

The Soviet electoral system had never precluded the possibility of a choice of candidate, and after the ‘leading role’ of the Communist Party was removed from the constitution in March 1990 there were no remaining obstacles to the formal establishment of multiparty politics. The first competitive party‐based elections, in (p.315)

(p.316) the event, took place in December 1993, as part of a more general attempt to place the political system on a new and different basis after the end of seventy years of Communist rule. The principles introduced at this time have proved remarkably durable. In particular, elections to the lower house have been based throughout on a 50:50 split between a nationwide competition among party lists and a separate constituency‐level contest among party‐sponsored and independent candidates, although there have been repeated attempts to change this balance to what the various actors have perceived to be their own advantage.

The electoral system in its present form emerged from a contentious debate that began almost as soon as the new Duma met for its first session (Razmustov 1995; Postnikov 1996; Remington and Smith 1996; Moser and Thames 2001: 266–74; Birch et al. 2002: 137–40). In the end, countervailing pressures from the presidency, the Federation Council, and the Duma resulted in a new law that was not very different from the regulations that had governed the December 1993 contest. In particular, the 50:50 balance between single‐member and national party‐list seats remained intact. The national lists, however, were to consist of a central section containing no more than twelve names, together with a much longer regional list; members of the central list could not stand elsewhere, while members of the regional list could also put themselves forward in the single‐member seats. The president had argued for a 50 per cent minimum turnout requirement, or else a second round between the two leading candidates in single‐member constituencies; here too the law retained the Duma's preference for a 25 per cent turnout requirement and a single round of voting. The new law was signed by the president on 21 June (for the text of the law as adopted, see ‘O vyborakh’ 1995a).

The election that was fought on this basis in December 1995 generated further controversy, in that forty‐three groupings took part in the national party‐list contest but only four reached the 5 per cent threshold. This meant that almost half the party‐list vote was ‘wasted’, and that the parties that did reach the threshold secured almost twice as many seats as their share of the popular vote would otherwise have warranted: a degree of disproportionality that made the 1995 Russian election ‘the most disproportional election result of any free and fair proportional election’ (White et al. 1997: 227). Standing in the party‐list contest was arguably ‘irrational’ in these circumstances (ibid.: 198–204), in that the more parties that competed, the fewer could hope to secure representation. But there could be payoffs of other kinds, in that all the party‐list contenders were provided with public funds and free publicity; and the media exposure of their leading candidates could be expected to assist their chances in a presidential election that would be held shortly afterwards (these indirect advantages lost some of their attraction from 1999 onwards, when the electoral law began to provide that public funds and the costs of free advertising would have to be repaid if support fell below a specified level).

The results of the 1995 election were challenged in court on the grounds that such a degree of disproportionality could not be reconciled with the constitutional provision that the ‘multinational people’ were the only legitimate source of authority. The challenge was unsuccessful; but for the 1999 election a floating threshold (p.317) was introduced that sought to ensure a more representative result (additional parties would be allocated seats if those that cleared the 5 per cent threshold did not among them account for at least 50 per cent of the party‐list vote). The 1999 election also saw the introduction of a deposit system for the nomination of party lists and individual candidates, as an alternative to the collection of signatures; and candidates were required to make a full statement of their income and property, and of any undischarged court sentence—this, it was hoped, would help to keep out criminal elements (White and McAllister 1999; for the text of the law as adopted, see ‘O vyborakh’ 1999).

In the event, six parties cleared the 5 per cent threshold in December 1999, representing 81 per cent of the party‐list vote among them, and so there was no need to resort to the complicated procedure of a floating threshold to correct gross disproportionalities. The principle, however, was retained in the law that was adopted in December 2002 and which governed the Duma election of December 2003. The new law retained another feature that had been introduced in 1999, the facility to nominate candidates or parties by means of a deposit, which would not be returned if a candidate in a single‐member constituency secured less than 5 per cent of the vote or if a national party list secured less than 3 per cent and if neither the candidates or parties concerned had been awarded any seats. The new law raised the permitted level of campaign spending, and made further efforts to tighten the restrictions on the sources from which campaign funds could be obtained and the use that could be made of them. Perhaps the most significant change was to provide that the 5 per cent threshold would be raised to 7 per cent for future elections from 2007 (see pp. 326–7), in a further demonstration of the Kremlin's determination to use its control of the legislative process to fashion a more coherent and manageable party system (see ‘O vyborakh’ 2002).

A corresponding series of laws dealt with presidential elections, although there were fewer changes and less controversy. Boris Yeltsin had been elected President of Russia in June 1991, but of a Russia that was still a part of the USSR. The first post‐Communist law on the election of a president was adopted in 1995, with further laws adopted in December 1999 and January 2003. Yeltsin, in April 1995, had initially proposed that the number of signatures required to make a valid nomination should be increased from 100,000 to two million; the Duma reduced this to a million, but left unchanged the requirement that no more than 7 per cent of signatures could come from a single republic or region (‘O vyborakh’ 1995b). The 1999 law maintained the requirement that at least a million signatures should be collected in support of nominations, but this time specified that at least 70,000 should come from each of the country's republics and regions (‘O vyborakh’ 2000). In January 2003 the number of signatures was raised to two million, with at least 50,000 from each of the republics and regions; the limits on campaign spending were increased again, and this time were index‐linked (‘O vyborakh’ 2003). In another change that advantaged the larger parties, those that had secured seats in the preceding Duma election were to be allowed to nominate presidential candidates without collecting the signatures that would otherwise have been necessary.

(p.318) How the electoral system works

Under the Russian constitution and election legislation, all citizens who have attained the age of eighteen on the day of election are entitled to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections, including citizens resident outside the national territory, but excluding those pronounced incompetent by a court or who are under preventive detention on the basis of a court decision. Voting takes place between 0800 and 2000 local time (Art. 77 of the current Duma legislation), which means that results are available—although they are not declared—in the Far East before voting has been completed in the heavily populated parts of European Russia. Early voting is permitted during a period of fifteen days before polling day (Art. 78), and there is provision for the casting of ballots in people's homes where health or other circumstances make it difficult for them to visit a polling station (Art. 79). It is also possible to obtain an absentee certificate if electors are obliged to be elsewhere on the day of the election (Art. 76).

Voters, accordingly, receive two ballot papers in Duma elections, one for their own constituency and the other for the national party‐list contest, and a single ballot paper in the case of a presidential election. The 225 constituencies are formed on the basis of equal numbers of registered electors, with several qualifications: variations in the numbers of electors per constituency within each of the country's republics or regions should not exceed 10 per cent, or in remote locations 15 per cent; the constituency should normally consist of a territorial whole and lie within a single subject of the federation; and there should otherwise be the most equal representation possible of each of the subjects of the federation. The Central Electoral Commission, formed on an equal basis by each of the houses of parliament and the presidency, is responsible for these arrangements and for making corresponding proposals to the Duma (Art. 12 of the current Duma legislation).

The form of the ballot paper is closely regulated in election legislation. In single‐member constituencies it lists the candidates in alphabetical order, including their year of birth, residence, place of work, and the basis of their nomination. There is a facility to vote ‘against all candidates’ and where relevant, the ballot paper should also note any undischarged criminal sentence or foreign citizenship. In the national party‐list contest the ballot paper records the parties standing, in an order determined by the drawing of lots, and shows their names and official emblems (see Figure 15.1). In the case of electoral blocs or alliances, their constituent parties must be identified. The drawing of lots is carried out by the Central Electoral Commission at least thirty‐five days before polling; the party or bloc that is first to be drawn receives the number 1, and the others follow it in descending alphabetical sequence. The party name must include the first three members of its national and, where relevant, regional list of candidates. In addition, there is an entry for ‘against all federal lists of candidates’.

Under the terms of the law on elections to the State Duma that was adopted in December 2002, candidates in single‐member constituencies may be nominated by (p.319)

(p.320) citizens themselves or by parties and electoral blocs, which may not nominate more than a single candidate in each constituency (Arts. 38, 39; electoral blocs are ad hoc associations of two or three registered parties). Lists of candidates for the national party‐list contest are put forward by parties or electoral blocs, and need not be limited to citizens who are members of those parties or blocs. The party itself establishes the order of the candidates included in its federal list; the list may consist entirely of candidates put forward in particular regions, or may consist of a national list and associated regional lists. The maximum number of candidates that may be included on a party list is 270, although list candidates may also stand under the same auspices in single member constituencies (Art. 40).

Candidates in both the single‐member and party‐list contests are nominated on the basis of the signatures of electors, or by the payment of a deposit amounting to 15 per cent of the maximum permitted election expenditure. Independents standing in single member seats must obtain the signatures of at least 1 per cent of the registered electors in the constituency; if there are fewer than 100,000 registered electors, at least a thousand signatures are required (Art. 42). The same procedures apply if a political party or bloc wishes to nominate a candidate in a single‐member constituency (Art. 43:1). A party or bloc wishing to put forward a federal list of candidates must collect at least 200,000 signatures, of which no more than 14,000 may be drawn from any single republic or region (Art. 43: 2). Other regulations apply to campaign expenditure, which must not exceed 6 million roubles (about $200,000/€170,000) in the case of a candidate in a single‐member constituency, or 250 million roubles (about $8.3/€7.1 million) in the case of a party or bloc, adjusted for inflation in both cases on an annual basis from January 2004 onwards (Art. 66).

The Russian president is elected every four years. He or she is the head of state, and under the constitution ‘defines the basic directions of the internal and foreign policy of the state’. Candidates must be Russian citizens of at least thirty‐five years of age, who have lived in the Russian Federation for at least the previous ten years. No Russian president may serve for more than two consecutive terms. Under the terms of the legislation adopted in January 2003, candidates for the Russian presidency are put forward by ‘initiative groups’ consisting of at least 500 citizens (Art. 34:2 of the current law), and also by parties or electoral blocs (Art. 35); the candidate need not necessarily be a member of any of the parties involved. Campaign spending, in all cases, is limited to 250 million roubles (about $8.3/€7.1 million), adjusted from January 2005 onwards on an annual basis to take account of inflation (Art. 58).

Under the terms of the Duma election law of December 2002, the winner in a single‐member constituency is the one who receives the largest vote total (in the event of a tie, the winner is the candidate who is first to register). The election is declared void and has to be repeated, however, if the vote ‘against all’ is greater than the vote for the most successful candidate, or if the turnout is less than 25 per cent of the registered electorate (Art. 83). For those who were responsible for drafting the first election laws, the option of voting ‘against all’ had seemed desirable not only in itself but also as a means of raising the level of turnout. It has certainly been a (p.321) popular innovation, and more so than its modest share of the vote might suggest. In the December 2003 Duma election, for instance, those who voted ‘against all’ the lists of candidates were nearly three million in number, which put it ahead of all but four of the twenty‐three parties on the ballot paper, and three single‐member seats were actually ‘won’ on the same basis. ‘Against all’ is indeed a ‘real competitor during State Duma elections’, even though it is a criminal offence to campaign in its favour unless one is a candidate oneself (Oversloot et al. 2002: 36–7).

In the national party‐list contest seats are allocated to all the parties or electoral blocs that secure at least 5 per cent of the vote, provided at least three of them reach the threshold and that they receive at least 50 per cent of the party‐list vote among them. Failing this, additional parties are included in the allocation of seats in descending vote order until the parties allocated seats on this basis reach at least 50 per cent of the total party‐list vote and at least three such parties are included. If fewer than three parties receive 50 per cent or more, other parties are included in declining vote order until at least three are included in the allocation of seats (Art. 84). From 2007 onwards a 7 per cent threshold will apply, and at least four parties will have to share the allocation of party‐list seats (Art. 99). The entire party‐list contest is declared void if turnout is less than 25 per cent, if none of the parties secures 5 per cent of the vote, or if all parties together do not win more than 50 per cent of the list vote (which is theoretically possible given that invalid votes and votes ‘against all’ are included in the list vote total). The procedure for converting votes into seats is also set out in the election law; it follows the LR–Hare method (see Appendix A).

In the presidential contest, a candidate is elected on the first round if the vote in favour of that candidate exceeds half of the total number of votes cast. In order for the election to be valid at least half of all registered electors must take part, and the vote for the successful candidate must exceed the vote against all of the candidates (Art. 76 of the current law). If no candidate is elected on the first round a second round takes place within twenty‐one days between the two candidates with the largest vote totals. On this occasion the successful candidate is the one with the larger vote total, provided this exceeds the votes cast against both candidates (Art. 77). The minimum turnout requirement for the first round of presidential elections is rather higher than in the single‐member and party‐list contests for the Duma, and must reach at least 50 per cent of the registered electorate (Art. 76); no minimum is prescribed for the second round.

Political consequences of the electoral system

The politics of electoral reform

Just as Russia's 1993 electoral system reflected the play of rival interests, the system that has developed since that time has reflected the pressure of a multitude of rival forces. Chief among these has been the presidency, working through the parties it controls and which have provided it with a stable majority in the Dumas that were elected in 1999 and 2003. The move to a 7 per cent threshold from 2007 will obviously benefit the larger parties, which will be able to consolidate their (p.327) dominance of the legislature, and at the same time it will give the Kremlin a more coherent party system that will more easily be able to manage. The larger parties will also benefit disproportionately from the state funding of parties that was introduced in 2004 at a level roughly corresponding to a rouble for every vote they received. Meanwhile, the law on electoral guarantees of 2002—the ‘framework law’ that governs elections and referendums—has extended the privileged position of parties to Russia's regional assemblies. Up to the present, only a small minority of seats in these—in 1998–2000, about 15 per cent—have been held by candidates sponsored by political parties. For the future, half the seats in each regional legislature will be reserved for candidates nominated by the parties—which means registered parties, operating at a national level—in a manner that parallels the Duma itself.

Further changes were under consideration as President Putin's first term came to an end of a kind that were also likely to strengthen the larger parties. One of these was suggested by Putin himself, in his annual address to a joint session of parliament in April 2003: a ‘government of the parliamentary majority’, drawn from the parties that had won most seats in a Duma election (this, it was pointed out, would not require a constitutional amendment, only a change in political practice, but it was likely to take place only if the Duma majority was strongly supportive of the president and his policies). Other changes that were being considered included the introduction of an open list form of PR, as in Lithuania. As the chairman of the Central Electoral Commission pointed out, it was voters, not party officials, who were able to choose their deputies under such a system, and it would make it less easy for places on the party list to be traded, or even sold. There was evidence that, in Lithuania, it had also helped to raise turnout by as much as 15 per cent (Gosudarstvo i pravo, no. 3, 2003: 107).

The reform agenda of the early years of the new century extended across large‐scale constitutional change to more limited alterations in electoral mechanisms. As in some other countries, there has been a discussion of postal voting, at least at regional level. The minimum turnout could be reduced, perhaps to 20 per cent, to help to reduce the number of elections that failed to produce a winner. Or there might be no minimum threshold for a repeat election, and for similar reasons (Zinov'ev and Polyashova 2003: 95, 97, 98). A much more fundamental change, introduced by a presidential address in September 2004 that was nominally a response to a hostage‐taking crisis in the southern town of Beslan, was the abolition of the single‐member constituencies and their replacement, from 2007 onwards, by an entirely party‐based contest—a move that had already been suggested by the Central Electoral Commission. Governors, at the same time, would cease to be directly elected but would be nominated by the president and approved by regional assemblies (Izvestiya, 14 September 2004: 1–2, 4; the text of the new Duma election law was published in Rossiiskaya gazeta, 24 May 2005: 22–32). It was a move of doubtful constitutionality, particularly in this second respect. More obviously, it represented a further strengthening of executive authority and a further reduction in the capacity of the electoral system to communicate the preferences of voters to government rather than the instructions of government to the population at large.

(p.328) Conclusion

Neoinstitutionalists have much to say about the operation of electoral rules, but rather less about who makes them. The politics of electoral design in Russia has been a game in which the Kremlin has held almost all the cards, and in which the interests of ordinary citizens have scarcely been represented. The privileging of political parties, for instance, gave the Kremlin an additional means of imposing its authority upon an otherwise disorderly and unpredictable series of contests. The more the larger parties were advantaged, the more the minor parties would be marginalized or obliged to merge with a larger entity in which their own concerns would be submerged (feminists or environmentalists, for instance, would be unable to secure representation in their own right and would have to pool their identity within larger parties with less distinctive agendas). The more the parties, and particularly the larger parties, were financed by the state, the less they would have to seek the contributions of their members—and the less they would have to seek members at all. And the more the parties as a whole enjoyed a monopoly of representation, the less likely it was that the concerns of the overwhelming mass of citizens would be articulated within the formation of public policy.

For some Russian scholars, changes of this kind are part of a wider ‘authoritarian adaptation’ of the electoral process. Recent Russian elections, they argue, have been characterised by ‘dirty tricks’, political corruption, and the buying of voters and officials. Places on party lists are sold to the highest bidder, and votes in the Duma itself are traded wholesale in a sort of ‘political industry’, allowing oligarchs, officials, and legislators themselves to promote laws that advance their own interests. Improper use is made of the mass media, pressure groups are organized whenever necessary, and ‘electoral technologists’ look after everything else—from the collection of signatures to their hire of professional candidates who are prepared to stand for election for anyone who is prepared to pay them. As a result, write Zinov'ev and Polyashova, not only have recent elections failed to overcome the alienation of government from the population—‘on the contrary, they have only deepened it’ (2003: 8).

According to the survey evidence, Russians are firmly attached to the principle of competitive elections; but they are less persuaded that the elections that actually take place allow them an effective means of influencing the government that speaks in their name (see for instance Pammett 1999). An electoral system that is shaped even more strongly by the presidency and that excludes opinion outside the mainstream is likely to become an electoral system that loses its legitimacy; turnouts are likely to fall further, even more of those who take the trouble to turn out are likely to vote ‘against all’, and increasing numbers are likely to seek to advance their interests by industrial and other forms of action outside the electoral arena entirely. Certainly, institutions matter; but so do the relations of dominance and subordination within which they operate. The more the Russian system is shaped by the self‐interested preferences of those who monopolize its government, the more they run the risk that (p.329) an alienated society will find other ways of asserting its different and sometimes conflicting priorities.