THE PARTY LAW

This analysis is based on Christer Pursiainen's and Ira Jänis's text in The Condition of Democracy in Russia, the Party System and the State Duma, - Russia beyond 2000, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2000, and has been up-dated by Ira Jänis in October 2001.

The current party system has widely acknowledged as being ineffective. However, consensus about what can be done to improve it has not been yet reached. For many, a chaotic party system is just a natural consequence of the transition from a single party system to a multiparty system. They see the current situation as a natural development that leads to the situation where smaller parties will eventually emerge as larger, more functional parties. The supporters of this idea take the previous Duma elections as evidence of this development, where bigger parties have constantly gained more votes. In this situation, they do not support the idea of government trying to control this development by issuing political parties law.

The opposite opinion supports the idea of governmental guidance in developing the party system. However, a consensus on how this should be done has not been reached. Many experts see that changing the current election law should perform this guidance. Although the current law was aimed to have an impact on the development of a functioning party system in the very beginning in the 1993 Duma elections, everyone has agreed that it has been unsuccessful in doing so. Later modifications to the law have also attempted to improve the system without noticeable success. In the most recent modification, for the 1999 Duma elections, it attempted to eliminate small parties by ordering a "guarantee" as an alternative option to the collection of signatures as evidence of support, but at the same time disqualifying them from future elections if they did not manage to cross the threshold or to pay the guarantee back.

These actions, however, have not convinced others that they would lead to a genuine, functioning party system. In the final years of Soviet Union the need for party law was brought up. There were several drafts, and finally in 1995 the Duma passed the party law. The law was never ratified, since the Federation Council rejected it in 1996.

The idea of the need for this kind of law nevertheless survived. As a part of president Putin's reform programme, it was once again brought up in the autumn of 2000. The arguments in support of the new law concerned the violations of the law and attempts by the fascist and criminal elements to participate in the Duma and regional elections. The new law was intended to prevent these violations and attempts in future elections.

The discussion of the need and content of the party law started immediately. There were three different draft versions for the new law, each of which compete with each other. As was predicted, the Kremlin's initiative for the new law was taken as the basis for the further debate in the Duma.

The draft law was widely discussed among the representatives of the political movements and parties, researchers and in the press. It got full support only from the representatives of the Unity party. The Communists were also favourable to the new law, since it did not change their position dramatically. While other parties and movements took an almost neutral position in dispute, the reformers objected to the Kremlin's draft version and demanded a number of changes. The reformers were those who suffered most from the new law, since their organisations have been traditionally loose.

The researchers and the press generally took a more negative attitude to the suggested new law, but the reasons for opposing the law varied. The majority of them, however, expressed the idea that the new law was incapable of eliminating the very reasons for the problems that the current party system suffered. For this, in their opinion, changes to the constitution and election law were needed. Many of the opponents to the new law were also afraid that it would increase the State control over the parties and political movements within the society.

The Duma made some minor changes to the draft during the hearings and the party law was finally ratified at third hearing. According to the new law, in order for a party to be registered, it has to have at least 10 000 members nationwide, and regional branches with at least 100 members in each in half of the 89 subjects of the Russian Federation. In addition it rejects the registration of parties which are formed (or named) on the basis of expressing the interests of ethnic, religious, social or professional groups.

The new law defines strict rules for the parties on financing, formation and publicity procedures. In this way the new law attempts to control the areas that the current election law has failed to do. According to the new law, only registered parties can nominate candidates and participate in federal and regional elections. It does allow, however, as does the current election law, the formations of alliances with other social organisations and movements, and in this way it allows the same kind of alliances in the elections that we have seen in previous Duma elections.

In many ways the new law has failed both optimistic and pessimistic expectations. It does increase State control, but given the traditional governmental practice in Russia, it is not yet clear that all the requirements of the new law will stand. The new law allows much room for interpretation and court cases. For example, the current election law requirements on financing have been widely used to eliminate opponents, but this has been the weapon for both pro-Kremlin candidates as well as their opponents in previous election campaigns.

The new law has been also criticised because the restrictions on financing and requirements of publicity of donations will only increase illegal financing. The amount of the sum of legal donations and state support is said to be too small. In order to succeed in the elections, parties are forced to lean on illegal funding. In many ways, the restrictions for financing will effect the possibilities for the new parties to campaign in the election, if they even pass the registration process. On the other hand, state support will continue for a while for those parties which have crossed the threshold in the elections, but later fail to meet the requirements of the law. This will support the electoral alliances of "parties in power", since they usually lack permanent grass-root support.

The new law will not effectively reduce the number of small parties, since the requirements of minimal membership are low in the case of Russia and are easily met. However, the new law bans the regional parties, which many commentators consider to be worrisome for the further development of democracy in Russia. On the other hand, many regional parties, with few exceptions, have been only nominally independent, because in most cases in federal elections they have been allied with the national parties. Some say that the new law will only make this alliance official. Nevertheless, the new law does not encourage the formation of "grass-roots" parties, but on the contrary will enforce the further development of parties which are built from "above".

If all the effects of the new law on future party system are still unclear, the fact that it has been now ratified has already had an effect on the current Duma parties. Since the new law defines the structure of parties which can participate in the 2003 elections, many of them have now started to think about their future and are acting accordingly. Since the new law generally secures the positions of both United Russia (former Unity) and the KPRF, this situation affects mostly the Yabloko and the SPS and the LDPR.

In this group, the LDPR differs somewhat from the others. It has a well organized party structure in many regions and it does not have to worry about the membership requirements. Nevertheless, its financing system is not transparent and it might have difficulties with issues related to its programme.

Yabloko, on the other hand has different problems to solve. Its whole existence hangs on its defeats in the most recent Duma and presidential elections, and the power dispute within the party itself after those defeats. Yabloko started negotiations with the SPS, which has had also problems to meet the requirements of the new law, but so far these negotiations have failed. The situation has led to a fierce criticism of Grigori Yavlinski, who has been accused of dictatorship in the party.

Nevertheless, after the ratification of the new law, it seems that most of the parties within the Duma will manage to modify their structure to meet the new law. The new party initiatives, such as the new Social Democratic Party of Russia, will attempt to meet the requirements of the new law. The new law has not yet prevented the emergence of new parties, but it remains to be seen how the new law will fail, when potentially strong parties, which could contest the current political elite, emerge.

The 2003 Duma elections will show if the Russian party system is developing to a two or three-party system, or if it continues to kaleidoscopic-like shifting different parties and alliances in the ever changing political arena.