The Transformation of Russia's Party System

Author(s): Vladimir Gel'man
Editor(s): Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic, Heiko Pleines, Hans-Henning Schröder
Series: Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)
Issue: 19
Pages: 12-14
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen
Publication Year: 2007

Russia's party system has swung like a pendulum from the one party control of the Soviet era, to the hyperfragmentation and volatility of the 1990s, to an attempt to restore centralized control in the 2000s. The danger of the new system is that it will cause the death of the political opposition. Now Russia may be developing a Dresden style political system, in which one main party controls several satellite parties that have little political power. Such a system could be in place for a long time, though it is unlikely to be permanent.

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