Background

This three year programme is a joint initiative of the East-West Parliamentary Practice Project in co-operation with the Dutch Parliament, and the Institute for Law and Public Policy (ILPP) in Russia.

In recent years the dominant trend in post-Soviet political development in the Russian Federation has been the centralization of power and the progressive weakening of free and open political competition. This tendency is evident in numerous events of recent years, among them the effective elimination of meaningful competition to the dominant “party of power,” United Russia, as well as in the loss of independence on the part of the governments of Russia’s 89 territorial subjects. The mass media have been subjected to steadily increasing pressure to support the official line on major policies and to avoid reporting on subjects such as Chechnia. Leading figures of big business have been subjected to selective arrests. In both chambers of the Federal Assembly, subservient majorities approve the executive branch’s proposals with little or no debate. In the December 2003 parliamentary elections, independent political parties received a smaller share of votes than ever in the past (the communist vote fell by half, and the two democratic parties, SPS and Yabloko, which together received over 14%, won just over 8% of the vote between them according to official statistics, and both fell below the 5% threshold for party list representation). In the meantime, parties that had been newly created, United Russia and Motherland, surged: Motherland received 9% and United Russia 37.5% of the list vote. Moreover, United Russia’s candidates won nearly half the single-member district seats. The fact that United Russia was closely allied with the presidential administration and regional executives allowed it to take maximum advantage of administrative levers, including pressure on the mass media, courts, state bureaucracy and private employers to ensure its victory. The result was that over two-thirds of the members of the new Duma belong to the parliamentary faction of the United Russia party. The elections, meantime, were seriously flawed from the standpoint of democratic fairness. Both the OSCE and Council of Europe concluded that the results of the election were “fundamentally distorted” as a result of the manipulation of mass media coverage by the authorities and the close ties between administrative officials and the leading party. Turnout in the election was lower than that of previous parliamentary elections, and the number of votes cast “against all” was nearly 5%.

The centralization of power and suppression of rival sources of political power has resulted in the near-elimination of opposition forces from either chamber of the federal parliament, the Federal Assembly. Recent changes in the way in which the State Duma is organized and governed make this evident. In place of the norm of proportionality in the way leadership positions were distributed among party factions, which was a feature of the Duma for its first decade, the new Duma has chosen instead to allow United Russia to control the chairmanship of the chamber, nearly all the deputy chairmanships, and all of the committee chairmanships. The chamber’s steering body, the Council of the Duma, accordingly, has become an extension of United Russia’s political control, and the previous threshold of 35 members for the registration of deputy groups has been raised to 55, making it next to impossible for any new factional organizations to arise that might challenge United Russia’s dominance. As a consequence of these changes, what limited role other parties might otherwise be able to play in parliament to scrutinize the work of the government, the presidential administration, and the federal bureaucracy has been reduced nearly to nothing. The constitutional asymmetry between president and parliament, in which the president can appoint the government with little regard to the balance of political forces in parliament, is further exacerbated by the loss of institutional resources for opposition parties in parliament.

The upper chamber of the Federal Assembly, the Federation Council, has supported the general trend toward the centralization of power in the relations between the federal government and territorial subjects. Its members lack an elective mandate or partisan affiliations, and instead tend to concentrate on bilateral representation of the interests of the governors and legislative assemblies that appointed them, while providing the president with consistently wide margins of support on matters of federal legislation. Thus neither chamber encourages open, active, partisan competition that would give voters meaningful choices over national public policy alternatives.

For this reason, the development of parliamentary institutions that can give citizens opportunities to participate in political life through electoral processes and to be represented in elected legislative bodies that deliberate on and decide policy has slowed substantially since the early 1990s and in many ways has been reversed. Parliamentary bodies at the federal level now act as bases of political support and legitimacy for the current president and presidential administration rather than as institutions scrutinizing and checking the president or a forum for debate over the direction of national policy. For this reason, we believe that the greatest benefits from future international efforts aimed at the strengthening of representative legislative institutions will come from cooperation with legislative assemblies in the 89 territorial subjects. This is particularly compelling in view of a body of recent legislation passed that affects the electoral composition of regional legislatures. Under the new legislation, at least half of the seats in regional legislatures must be elected through party list proportional representation. At the same time, new federal law prohibits parties from forming solely in one or two regions: all parties must have branches in at least half the 89 regions. The intent of the legislation was to stimulate and structure partisan competition and to ensure that party competition strengthens integrative rather than centrifugal forces in the federation.

The new legislation under which regional legislative elections will take place will strongly affect the ways in which members of regional legislatures represent citizens and deliberate on policy. It will influence legislative-executive relations at the regional level, as well as the ties between regional deputies and their counterparts at the federal level. Depending on the circumstances, partisan competition in emerging democracies can strengthen civic participation and the quality of policy deliberation, or can weaken both by focusing politicians’ efforts on activities that benefit them and their parties at the expense of the public good. Strengthening parliamentary institutions in the conditions of nascent party competition is the objective of the present project.

Programme objectives

In Russia, as in many countries, regional legislatures are the training and testing grounds where politicians establish their political careers and gain early experience in public service.

The project goal is to assist the Russian regional legislators to develop professional knowledge and skills that improve their effectiveness in fulfilling their responsibilities as elected representatives and law-makers, with particular emphasis on building professional skills among regional parliamentarians, reinforcing the legislative role of the regional assemblies, strengthening relations between regional legislative assemblies and the executive branch, promoting transparency and accountability, and exposing the regional law-makers to the cumulative experience of older, more established parliamentary democracies by providing them with an opportunity to hear first-hand how parliamentarians in other democracies function.

The primary purpose of the proposed programme is to strengthen the capacity of the legislative branch and increase the state’s ability to recognize and address significant policy problems, and thus ultimately increase the likelihood that Russia’s post-communist consolidation will culminate in a democratic rather than bureaucratic-authoritarian state.

In addition, the proposed programme aims to strengthen cooperation within Russia between the centre and the regions, between the regions themselves, as well as to reinforce co-operation between Russian legislators and members of the Dutch and other European Parliaments. The target group for the purposes of this programme includes both members of the regional legislative assemblies and the Federation Council of the Russian Federal Assembly.

Further, the project partners hope to attain the following long-term objectives:

• to strengthen parliamentary institutions in the conditions of nascent party competition and to foster transparency in the legislative process;
• to contribute to consolidation and long-term development of effective democratic parliamentary systems in the regions of the Russian Federation;
• to improve democratic practice in the field of regional and local self-government by addressing the legislative role of the regional assemblies in the Russian Federation;
• to contribute to the political dialogue within Russia concerning appropriate relations between the centre and the regions, as well as between the regions themselves. The project will enlarge co-operation between members of parliament from Moscow and governmental representatives in Russia’s regions.
• to maintain and strengthen exchanges between legislators of European and CIS countries and members of legislative assemblies of Russian territorial subjects and the members of the Federation Council;
• to reinforce public awareness of the role of regional legislative assemblies;
• to reinforce the recognition of the importance of sound dialogue between federal, regional and local political leaders in the Russian Federation;
• to define and provide familiarisation with rules and techniques of constructive co-operation;

Programme duration

1 January 2005 - 31 December 2007

Funding

The programme “Federalism and Regional Legislative Assemblies in the Russian Federation” is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

Implementing partners

This project is coordinated jointly by the EWPPP in Amsterdam and the Institute for Law and Public Policy in Moscow.

Programme activities

The project's structure is formed around six workshops - five in the regions, and one final conference in Moscow, the Russian Federation.

In-country workshops in Russia

Five workshops will be organized in two and a half year’s time in cities where the federal districts of the Russian Federation are headquartered:

• Moscow for the Central District;
• St. Petersburg for the Northwestern District;
• Ekaterinburg for the Urals District;
• Nizhnii Novgorod for the Volga District;
• Novosibirsk for the Siberian District

Workshops will have a maximum of 40 participants: 8-10 foreign participants, 4-5 members of the Federation Council, 3-4 programme experts, participants from other regions of the Russian Federation. The majority of participants will include representatives of the regional assemblies, representatives of local-self government, and other regional and local officials.

The in-country workshops will last 2 days and be composed of several plenary and consultative working sessions in working groups.

Some of the issues to be discussed during the workshops may include:

The organization of the legislative process in regional assemblies, covering such topics as:

• Relations between majorities and minorities in legislative assemblies, and particularly the role of the opposition, including rights and responsibilities of majorities and minorities in legislative decision-making (rights in initiating legislation; debate; committee activity; amendment activity). How do members of majority and minority factions develop legislative proposals, amend draft legislation, represent the interests of constituents, and monitor the activity of the executive branch?
• What role do factions, groups, and informal caucuses play in the legislative process, and what are the relations between parliamentary factions and national parties?
• What is the relationship between political factions and standing legislative committees and commissions?
• How do members of regional legislative assemblies choose leaders (i.e. speaker, deputy speakers, committee chairs)?
• What are the relations between legislative factions and committees and the parliamentary staff?

Relations between regional legislative assemblies and the executive branch

• The legislative process: development and initiation of draft legislation; cooperation in the development of the long-term and short-term legislative agenda; consultation and negotiation in the course of the legislative process; cooperation in obtaining information about policy needs and effects; monitoring the implementation of legislation;
• Oversight: forms of legislative oversight (kontrol’), such as hearings, interpellations (zaprosy), investigations, and appearances of executive branch officials during plenary sessions; problems of information provision; how oversight affects the development of legislation

“Vertical relations”

• Managing relations between regional assemblies and bodies of state power at the federal and federal district levels, as well as bodies of local self-government;
• The role of the legislature in coordinating the activity of regional organs of federal state power in policy making and policy implementation;
• Cooperation among regional assemblies in federal districts;
• Fiscal federalism: how regional legislative assemblies use their power over taxation and budget-formation to promote regional development, investment, and social well-being;
• Coordinating legislative processes with the State Duma and Federation Council of the Federal Assembly;
• Problems of delegation and autonomy in the development of local self-government;
• Cooperation across levels of state power in the management of public infra-structure (transportation, communications, housing-communal services, provision of electric power and heating services)

Relations between regional legislative assemblies and voters

• Relations with organized social interests, including business, labor, civic associations, and the mass media;
• Regulating the financing of electoral campaigns; controlling the influence of money
• Representation and constituency service; how regional legislators allocate their time and resources to handle the problems of individual voters.

Following each workshop, a workshop report will be published, summarising proceedings during the event. Workshop reports will be made available in Russian and English on the linked EWPPP-ILPP website and will be distributed widely to the target audience and to the legislative and executive institutions of the territorial subjects of the Russian Federation.

An evaluation of the workshop will take place with the project partners and the Russian Consultative Committee after each event. Comments from participants will be obtained through evaluation forms, which will be distributed and collected during the workshops. In this way, interim conclusions can be taken into consideration during the organisation of the following workshops.

Final Conference in Moscow, the Russian Federation

The sixth and final workshop’s focus will be evaluation of the programme. The final conference will provide an excellent opportunity to discuss, assess, and evaluate materials gathered during this three-year programme.

Following the last evaluating workshop in Moscow, a workshop report will be published in Russian and English, containing the workshop proceedings as well as the recommendations and conclusions of the whole project.

2005 Activities

Moscow, Russian Federation, 25-28 May 2005

Launching Meeting

Moscow, Russian Federation, 5 – 8 October 2005

Workshop I, "The Changing Role of Regional Legislatures: Impact of the Current Federal Reforms"

2006 Activities

Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, 16 – 17 February 2006

Workshop II, "The Organization and Activity of Public Authority in Capital Cities, Cities of Federal Status, and Administrative Centers of Regions"

Samara, Russian Federation, 29-30 June 2006

Workshop III, "Public-Private Cooperation in Guaranteeing Citizens’ Right to Housing"

Novosibirsk, Russian Federation, 8-9 December 2006

Workshop IV, "Reforming Self-Government in the Territorial Subjects of the Russian Federation"

2007 Activities

Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation, 22-24 March 2007