Toward a New Model of Coalition Politics in the Russian State Duma

Abstract

Article 10 of the 1993 Russian Constitution provides that “State power in the Russian Federation is exercised on the basis of the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers. Bodies of legislative, executive and judicial power are independent.” At the same time, the constitution gives the president powers that are exceptionally wide by the standards of constitutional democracy (cf. Frye 1997), and the recent history of the Russian state offers ample evidence that, on occasion, the president has been willing to ignore those constitutional limits on his power that do exist. Moreover, the Russian Constitution is silent about the informal powers exercised by the president and other actors. The influence of insider “clans” and patron-client networks, of “oligarchs” and powerful state firms, of statutorily free-floating structures such as the Security Council, is not described by the constitution. Yet no constitution ever completely regulates power relations in a political system, and there is also ample evidence from the record of the past several years that in Russia the constitution has indeed restrained both executive and legislative actors in their exercise of power. On several occasions, Yeltsin took actions he was otherwise inclined not to take because of legislative or judicial pressure, and he appears to have taken into account the cost, in terms of public reputation, of some anti-constitutional actions he considered taking — such as canceling the 1996 presidential election. Confrontations between President Boris Yeltsin and his opponents in parliament periodically erupted between 1994 and 1999, over Yeltsin’s nominations of candidates for prime minister (for instance, Sergej Kirienko’s and Viktor Chernomyrdin’s nominations in 1998), over impeachment in May 1999, and the Duma’s vote of no confidence in the government in 1995. Yet they never resulted in the dissolution of parliament, let alone a constitutional impasse. Each such collision was resolved through negotiation and compromise.