Electoral Instruments of a Party Hegemony: Recent Developments and the Limits of the Unted Russia Party’s Monopoly
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: The article discusses the impact of the electoral system, in the form of legal rules governing elections, on the state of the party system in the regional and local dimension. The policy implications of reforming electoral systems are analyzed by means of quantitative analysis. The subject of research is identification of limits of strength of political hegemony of “United Russia” in electoral space of national, regional and local level. The main instrument of this hegemony to date has been the establishment of representative institutions, whose composition is distorted in relation to the real structure of the political preferences of the electorate through the selection of combinations of majoritarian and proportional elements of the electoral system, providing the most comfortable conditions of competition for the dominant party and the least convenient conditions for its opponents. Practices such as the widespread adoption of non-electoral caucuses and the strategy of isolating opponents as much as possible from the allocation of any political resources are subject to the same objectives. On the material of electoral statistics, the article gives an assessment of the political results of the reforms of electoral and party legislation on the eve of the 2016 elections, and takes the experience of forecasting the results of the implementation of the new reform program formed by the “party of power” by 2019.
Authors: M. Yu. Martynov, V.V. Markhinin
Institution: Surgut State University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4233234875