Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000
Timothy J. Colton
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0815715358
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Twice in the winter of 1999-2000, citizens of the Russian Federation flocked to their neighborhood voting stations and scratched their ballots in an atmosphere of uncertainty, rancor, and fear. This book is a tale of these two elections—one for the 450-seat Duma, the other for President. Despite financial crisis, a national security emergency in Chechnya, and cabinet instability, Russian voters unexpectedly supported the status quo. The elected lawmakers prepared to cooperate with the executive branch, a gift that had eluded President Boris Yeltsin since he imposed a post-Soviet constitution by referendum in 1993. When Yeltsin retired six months in advance of schedule, the presidential mantle went to Vladimir Putin—a career KGB officer who fused new and old ways of doing politics. Putin was easily elected President in his own right. This book demonstrates key trends in an extinct superpower, a troubled country in whose stability, modernization, and openness to the international community the West still has a huge stake.
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drawing support from the broadest political forces, ensure the continuation of reforms in Russia.”4 In early September the violence in Chechnya and Dagestan spread into the heartland. Three hundred lives were snuffed out in nighttime terror bombings of apartment houses in Moscow and two southern towns; the Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed to have evidence incriminating pro-Chechen fanatics. Having limited itself to counterinsurgency in Dagestan, the Kremlin now decided to send tanks and
and efficient, since it invested regional leaders in the electoral process at the place where they could be most effective. OVR gave priority to regions where its leaders were in charge.50 Thirty-four of its nominations were in the nine regions where the governor was on the OVR national list or (in Bashkortostan, Ingushetiya, and Tatarstan) had helped set up the bloc. Candidates with ties to OVR bigwigs sometimes ran as independents. This was the norm with incumbents from the Regions of Russia
the regions with gubernatorial contests, local leadership was slack, and OVR ended up expressing support for more than one candidate: two in Moscow region and three in Tver.52 The reliance on established leaders was testimony to the well of resources OVR had to tap. But there was nothing like a sufficient number of strong leaders in the OVR camp to blanket the country. The typical governor had either never backed OVR or trimmed his sails at the insistence of the central authorities. Another
Makarenko observed during the campaign, the governor’s capacity for helping out was a function of his control of the regional political scene, and that varied from place to place. “Whereas the executive authorities in Moscow and many ethnic republics, and for APR deputies in the rural districts, will be able to extend effective assistance, in St. Petersburg and many other regions with a high level of political pluralism it will turn out to be clearly insufficient.”54 The unevenness in resources
member in our survey sample recalled being canvassed by the KPRF during the campaign. Red governors surely did deliver some votes to the KPRF, if not a huge number, to judge from the regional vote totals. In all nine regions with pro-KPRF governors (counting Kemerovo’s Tuleyev for these purposes as pro-KPRF), the party’s vote share surpassed its national mean, as had happened in seven of those same regions in 1995.38 But the vote for the KPRF in its five most productive regions, 19.38 percent of