Party Development in Russia: Partisanship and the Effects of Parties in Multiple Electoral Settings

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The investigators conduct a survey-based investigation of partisanship and party influences on voting during the 2003-04 election cycle in Russia, until recently a communist dictatorship but now an incompletely democratized, post-communist country with considerable electoral competition. This election cycle will include votes for the lower house of the national parliament (the Duma) in December 2003 and for the presidency in March 2004. In cooperation with survey scientists at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the investigators will conduct four types of voter survey: (1) A post-parliamentary election survey examining the party-list half of Duma voting; (2) A post-presidential election survey, done as a panel re-interview of the sample for #1; (3) The concluding wave of an unusual long-term panel survey, revisiting citizens first interviewed in a panel launched by the PI in 1995-96 and interviewed again in 2000; (4) A survey of four Duma districts, carefully chosen from the 225 that make up half of the Duma. NSF funding would be synergistic with modest funding for study components secured or anticipated from other sources (the post-parliamentary and two of the Duma district surveys) and enables the investigators to strengthen the project in crucial directions. It will provide public goods to the field by extending a singular time-series effort at tracking political behavior and attitudes in Russia. NSF support also allows inclusion of this major transitional country in the current round of the collaborative Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project by administration of its question module in the post-presidential survey and timely data archiving. The study makes three signal intellectual contributions. First, it continues the important task of tracking the evolution of voting behavior and partisanship in the Russian Federation ten years after that transitional polity's first multiparty elections. Most exciting, political scientists have never fielded a multi-wave panel study spanning a period of party realignment, even in the US, not to mention the kind of initial alignment being witnessed in Russia. The fact that we have in place a panel that can be stretched out to cover nearly a decade of Russia's formative era as a contested polity represents a historic scientific opportunity. If we forego it now, it will be irrevocably lost. Second, the project sheds light on the foundations of emerging partisanship and the influence of political parties on voting behavior by engaging research programs laid out by leading new works on American and comparative mass politics that have not yet been tested adequately in transitional contexts. Third, the project is the first to exploit the scholarly opportunity provided by election contests in which citizens have the option not merely of voting for the candidate of one party as opposed to that of another party, but of casting a ballot for a nonpartisan candidate. Such options are regular features of both the presidential contest and the single-member-district Duma races, where many candidates eschew parties and instead seek the backing of .party substitutes. such as local political machines and politically active business elites. Broader impacts of the activity. Baring the roots of Russia's underdeveloped party system may help to show the way to future reforms. Closer to home, American policymakers need to grasp political alignments in a nation that remains the world's second-ranking nuclear power and is essential to post-9/11/01 security. President Vladimir Putin's power rests significantly on his personal popularity and electoral clout and on his following among Duma deputies from district seats. Insights into Putin's political base will aid in understanding his policy choices and the extent of his decision-making autonomy as president. In related activity, the investigators will work together with scholars from the United States, Russia, and Israel to better inform Russian voters and the international community about the Russian elections of 2003-04. They will publish findings in public-policy outlets, scholarly journals and a major academic press.