Regional Opposition in Russia: Aliens in a Hybrid Regime

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-290
Author(s):  
Nikolai Grishin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
National Level ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Regime ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Hybrid Regime ◽  
Orderly System

This paper views the regional political opposition in Post-Soviet Russia as a specific phenomenon that contradicts the practices of the existing political regime and differs from the opposition at the national level. The Russian regional opposition is considered in the context of the heterogeneity of the political process at the federal and sub-national levels: it is a phenomenon that is more relevant to a democratic regime than a hybrid authoritarian polity. The article analyzes the methods used by the authorities to limit the abilities of the regional opposition. Due to institutional factors, the opportunities of the provincial opposition are restricted at all levels. Federal political parties are used as a means of suppressing the regional opposition. Nevertheless, the Russian regional opposition remains intact and it has the potential to disrupt the power vertical and the orderly system of the hybrid regime.

Elites and Color Revolutions: The Logic of Russia’s Response

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-453
Author(s):  
Kirill Petrov
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Regime ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Color Revolutions ◽  
Political Warfare ◽  
Russian Politics

Abstract The phenomenon of color revolutions has occupied a prominent place in Russian politics for a good reason. The major threat of color revolutions as modern political warfare designed by Western countries deeply affected the political process in Russia since 2005. It may have appeared that the imperative of resisting them was the result of a non-democratic regime reacting to neighboring countries’ uprisings. Some portrayed it as authoritarian learning. This paper suggests that the counteractions stemmed from the interests of disunited Russian elite groups who were seeking opportunities to reinforce their dominance and capitalize on the idea of significant external threats. The phenomenon reshaped the balance within elite groups and led to the consolidation of law enforcement networks on the eve of Putin’s third term. Further, the prevailing perception of color revolutions discouraged any elite splits that could lead to proto-democratic rules.

How Do Mainstream Parties ‘Become’ Mainstream, and Pariah Parties ‘Become’ Pariahs? Conceptualizing the Processes of Mainstreaming and Pariahing in the Labelling of Political Parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Benjamin Moffitt
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
Mainstream Party

Abstract How does a political party become ‘mainstream’? And what makes some parties receive arguably the opposite designation – ‘pariah party’? This conceptual article examines the processes by which parties’ mainstream or pariah status must be constructed, negotiated and policed, not only by political scientists in the pursuit of case selection, but by several actors actively involved in the political process, including media actors and political parties themselves. It explains how these actors contribute to these processes of ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘pariahing’, considers their motivations and provides illustrative examples of how such processes take place. As such, the article moves beyond the literature on the ways in which mainstream parties seek to deal with or respond to threats from a variety of pariah parties, instead paying attention to how those parties have been constructed as pariahs in the first place, and how these processes simultaneously contribute to the maintenance of mainstream party identities.

POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE RUSSIAN REGIONAL POLITICAL PROCESS

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 63-67
Author(s):  
T. Beydina ◽  
◽  
N. Zimina ◽  
A. Novikova ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Government ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Regional Interests

Political parties today are important elements of the regional political process. Parties, along with other political institutions, participate in the implementation of state policy within the region. The practice of recent years shows a negative trend in the creation of political parties, but those parties that are already registered and are actively fighting for political power at all stages of the Russian elections. Political parties participate in the regional political process to embrace the advantages of the political party space. These advantages are due to both objective factors (territorial potential, the economy of the region) and subjective reasons (personal factors associated with the rating of the leader, both the governor and the party coordinator, the nature of his acquaintance with the central financial department, and more). The study of the organization of power in the regions allows us to talk about its various modifications due to these factors. Political parties are a political institution, they represent an ideological, conceptual, personnel and electoral resource of any government. Regional branches of political parties in today’s political situation fully personify the needs of the regions and represent them at elections. They reflect regional interests, as well as the degree of democracy of the regional government

Independent Candidates and Political Representation in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
SACHA KAPOOR ◽  
ARVIND MAGESAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
The Political ◽  
Standard Deviation Increase ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Independent Candidates

We estimate the causal effect of independent candidates on voter turnout and election outcomes in India. To do this, we exploit exogenous changes in the entry deposit candidates pay for their participation in the political process, changes that disproportionately excluded candidates with no affiliation to established political parties. A one standard deviation increase in the number of independent candidates increases voter turnout by more than 6 percentage points, as some voters choose to vote rather than stay home. The vote share of independent candidates increases by more than 10 percentage points, as some existing voters switch who they vote for. Thus, independents allow winning candidates to win with less vote share, decrease the probability of electing a candidate from the governing coalition by about 31 percentage points, and ultimately increase the probability of electing an ethnic-party candidate. Altogether, the results imply that the price of participation by independents is constituency representation in government.

Romania thirty years later: from a totalitarian dictatorship to a deep state?

2021 ◽  
pp. 254-268
Author(s):  
Nikolai N. Morozov
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
Deep State

This chapter combines an analysis of the party-political system of post-communist Romania with the impressions of a direct witness to the most important historical events in the country, tracing the political evolution of Romania over the 30 years after the December revolution of 1989, which led to the overthrow of the totalitarian regime of Ceauşescu. A review of political parties and alliances is presented, which may be of practical benefit to researchers working on this period in Romanian history. On the basis of numerous sources and direct interviews with Romanian politicians, some specific characteristics of the political process in the country are identified. An attempt has been made to show the mechanisms of political power that have emerged since the collapse of the former totalitarian system.

The Management of Identities in and by Turkey’s Political Parties

2018 ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Elise Massicard
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Personnel Management ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Total Failure ◽  
Double Constraint

This chapter explores the partial, and at times total, failure of mobilizations via mechanisms aiming to neutralize the political weight of identity within political parties. In Turkey, identity politics has become a means of claiming and proclaiming particularist rights since the 1980s, although such questions are often settled and regulated outside “legitimate” policies. Demands based on issues of identity—which are illegal—are quasi-taboo for the political parties, which are reluctant to become public relays for these sorts of demands, particularly on the national level. The parties consider the identity dimension as a central parameter in their relations with voters, however, and they incorporate it for this purpose, particularly in terms of personnel management of candidates and party officials. In order to face this double constraint, they use specific modes of communication that are characterized by connotation and ambiguity.

The European Dimension of Minority Political Representation

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Spirova ◽  
Boyka Stefanova
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Political Process ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
The Political ◽  
East European ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
Challenging Tasks ◽  
The Eu

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to their political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the elections for members of the European Parliament. This article presents a comparative study of the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the participation of ethnic political parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 and 2009 electoral cycles of the European Parliament.

The Child'S Acquisition of Regime Norms: Political Efficacy

1967 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Easton ◽  
Jack Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Minimal Level ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Political Interaction ◽  
General Goals ◽  
Minimal Constraints

In its broadest conception, a political system is a means through which the wants of the members of a society are converted into binding decisions. To sustain a conversion process of this sort a society must provide a relatively stable context for political interaction, a set of ground rules for participating in all parts of the political process. We may describe this context variously as a constitutional order, a set of fundamental rules, or customary procedures for settling differences. But however this context is defined, it usually includes three elements: some minimal constraints on the general goals of its members, rules or norms governing behavior, and structures of authority through which the members of the system act in making and implementing political outputs. To these goals, norms and structures we may give the traditional name “political regime” or constitutional order in the broadest, nonlegal sense of the phrase.We may hypothesize that if a political system is to persist, one of its major tasks is to provide for the input of at least a minimal level of support for a regime of some kind. A political system that proved unable to sustain a regime, that is, some relatively ordered and stable way of converting inputs into outputs, could not avoid collapsing. Each time a dispute arose it would have to seek to agree on means for settling differences at the same time as it sought to bring about a settlement of the substance of the issue, a virtually impossible combination of tasks for a society to engage in continuously.

Risks and Constraints of Sub-Federal Politics in Russia under Vladimir Putin

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-111
Author(s):  
Marat Grebennikov
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hybrid Regimes ◽  
Regional Politics ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Political Configuration ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Vladimir Putin

Russia’s political system can be best understood as an electoral patronal regime in which key actors are organized into a single pyramid of authority that dominates the political arena, particularly in the ethnic republics. It is argued that the asymmetric federalization of post-Soviet Russia and centralization of governance were stabilizing for the state because, during the tumultuous transition from Communism, they have acted as counterweights to such centrifugal forces as nationalism and religious radicalism. The article addresses this question: Does the political regime under Putin limit the behaviour of regional elites by structuring and prioritizing their agendas or, on the contrary, does this regime gradually devolve to match the underlying political configuration of the state? The article concludes that in multi-ethnic hybrid regimes that preserve contested elections, as does Russia, regional politics matters more than in typical authoritarian regimes. Since Putin’s popularity and power are closely tied to Russia’s economic stability and anti-Western sentiment, protracted economic stagnation coupled with growing social discontent at the regional level will trigger a long-awaited centrifugal change in political authority and may eventually lead to political fragmentation after Putin.

The Politics of Pension Reform in Latin America

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 687-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARMELO MESA-LAGO ◽  
KATHARINA MÜLLER
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Legal Constraints

Latin America has been a world pioneer of neoliberal, structural reform of social security pensions (‘privatisation’). This article focuses on the diverse political economy circumstances that enabled such reform, analysing why policy makers have chosen such a costly strategy and how they have managed to implement it. First, in nine countries with diverse regimes (authoritarian and democratic) it examines the internal political process that led to the adoption of reform. There tends to be an inverse relationship between the degree of democratisation and that of privatisation, but the political regime alone cannot fully explain the reform outcomes in all cases. To expand the search for explanatory variables, other key factors that might have influenced the reform design are studied, among them relevant political actors (driving and opposing forces), existing institutional arrangements, legal constraints, internal and external economics and policy legacy.

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