Abstract
This chapter discusses the nature of the formation of the Russian parliamentary system while Vladimir Putin ruled the country as Prime Minister as the main candidate (1999), as President for a first and second term (2000–2008), as Prime Minister (2008–2012), and as President for a third and fourth term (since 2012). The chapter describes Putin’s rise in the governmental system created by his predecessor, the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, as well as the periods of the centralisation of power, including that of power in parliament with the help of the presidential party ‘United Russia’, analysing the relationship between Putin and this party of growth. The results of parliamentary elections, as well as the state of political parties at the time of elections and during the inter-election period, offer insight into the dialectics of the processes of personalisation of party politics and presidentialization as well as the political system as a whole in Putin’s Russia.
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Notes
- 1.
In accordance with paragraph 2 of article 1 No. 4 -FKZ “On the Government of the Russian Federation”.
- 2.
2 Regional legislative bodies function in each entity of the federation. Entities of the federation have the right to independently name “parliaments”. As of 2021, there are 32 Legislative Assemblies (Zakonodatel’noe Sobranie), 22 Regional Dumas (Oblastnaia Duma) (by analogy with the State Duma), 6 State Councils (Gosudarstvennyi Sovet), 5 State Assemblies (Gosudarstvennoe Sobranie), 3 Assemblies of Deputies (Sobranie Deputatov), 3 National Assemblies (Narodnoe Sobranie), 3 Khurals, 3 Parliaments and 8 others (single unique) titles in the Russian Federation. From time to time there have been proposals to unify the names of regional legislative bodies in the discourse, but this has not happened yet.
- 3.
All-Russian referendum on 25 April 1993, where 4 questions were submitted:
Do you trust the President of the Russian Federation Boris N. Yeltsin? (“Yes”—58.7% of voters).
Do you approve of the socio-economic policy pursued by the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation since 1992? (“Yes”—53.0% of voters).
Do you consider it necessary to hold early presidential elections in the Russian Federation? (“No”—50.5% of voters).
Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections of the People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation? (“Yes”—67.2% of voters), see: http://www.cikrf.ru/eng/election-commissions/.
- 4.
Zhirinovsky died on 6 April 2022. The new leader of LDPR is Leonid Slutsky, head of the LDPR parliamentarian faction.
- 5.
Starting with the “Ivan Rybkin’s bloc” and Russian Prime Minister (1992–1998) Viktor Chernomyrdin’s “Our Home – Russia” bloc, which took part in the 1995 elections) to this day (at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June 2021, the idea of a two-party system was discussed behind the scenes: A Just Russia will absorb CPRF and a socialist party with a left-wing bias will be created; and the LDPR, sooner or later, after Zhirinovsky becomes a member of the Federation Council, will join “United Russia”.
- 6.
Meeting of the Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov with a group of deputies from the Russian Party of Life on 24 March 2006 in the Russian Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation within the framework of the All-Russian Congress of Deputies from the Russian Party of Life.
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Baskakov, I. (2023). The Presidentialization of Russian Political Parties. In: Glaser, M., Krivushin, I., Morini, M. (eds) The Presidentialization of Political Parties in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25977-7_2
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