Abstract
Although the number of laws adopted by the Duma, Council of the Federation, and President was the subject of the previous chapter, it is also important to analyze the stages of the legislative process before the President signs a bill into law. Numerous bills are withdrawn or delayed each year following a veto by the Council of the Federation or President.1 The President’s and Council of the Federation’s power to issue vetoes serves as a check on the Duma’s authority in law-making, but the Duma can override them with a two-thirds supermajority vote.
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Notes
‘Svedeniya o zakonakh, prinyatykh Gosudarstvennoy Dumoy, napravlennykh v Sovet Federatsii, podpisannykh ili otklonennykh Prezidentom Rossiyskoy Federatsii’ (Internal Document, Moscow: Record Office of the State Duma, 1996 to 1998).
Table 2.1 in Ch. 2 and Konstitutsiya (1993) Rossiyskoy Federatsii (Moscow: RAU Press, 1993), Article 107. For a comparative analysis of a president’s veto powers in Russia, France and the United States, see Ara Balikian, ‘The New Russian Federation Constitution: A Legal Framework Adopted and Implemented in a Post-Soviet Era’. Suffolk Transnarional Law Review 18. 237 (19951: 250–3.
According to the 1993 Russian Constitution, the Council of the Federation must consider legislation relating to the federal budget; federal taxes and charges; financial, foreign currency, credit and customs regulation and money issues; the ratification and denunciation of international treaties of Russia; the status and protection of the state border of Russia; and, war and peace (Ibid., Article 106). Even for the bills which the Council of the Federation is not constitutionally required to examine, a two-thirds vote in both houses is still necessary to override the President’s veto on all legislation.
For an in-depth examination of the veto and veto override powers of the President and Parliament in the 1993 Constitution, see M. V. Baglay, Konstitutsionnoe pravo Rossiyskoy Federatsii (Moscow: NORMA-INFRAM, 1998), 520–34. On presidential vetoes, see also ‘Pravo prezidentskogo veto’, in Lev Okun’kov, Prezident Rossiyskoy Federatsii: Konstitutsiya i politicheskaya praktika (Moscow: INFRAM-NORMA Group, 1996), 72–5. On the Duma’s constitutional power to override vetoes, see Aleksandr Shokhin, Vzaimodeystvie vlastey v zakonodatel’nom protsesse (Moscow: Nash Dom-L’Age d’Homme, 1997), 42–6, 65–6.
Ibid., Article 105.
See Eyal Winter (‘Voting and Vetoing’, American Political Science Review 90, 4 (December 1996): 813–21) for a detailed study on the effects of time constraints on veto powers. Winter found that the ‘excessive power of veto members can be reduced if delay is costly or if an exogenous deadline for the negotiations is imposed … [If the deadline for vetoing] is exogenously fixed, the bargaining power of veto members decreases’ (820).
The law ‘On the Formation of the Council of the Federation’ changed the procedure for composing the upper chamber from presidential appointees to elected representatives from Russia’s 89 regions (Vedomosti Federal’nogo Sobraniya Rossiyskoy Federatsii (Federal’nogo Sobraniya Rossiyskoy Federatsii, Moscow: Izvestiya, 1995)). For further discussion of this law and the problems in adopting it, see Stephen White, Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1997), 194–5.
‘Yel’tsin Criticizes the Duma’, OMRI Dailv Digest 1, 125 (25 Sentember 1997): 1.
As confirmed by Anatoliy Eliseev, Head of the Records Office of the State Duma, 6 April 1998 and 26 March 1999.
Thomas Remington and Steven Smith, ‘The Early Legislative Process in the Russian Federal Assembly’, in David Olson and Philip Norton, The New Parliaments of Central and Eastern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 186. Remington and Smith do not state how many vetoes were issued by the Council or the number of vetoes overridden by Deputies.
Yel’tsin threatened to issue a decree on the procedure for parliamentary elections if the Duma did not pass these bills (Anna Ostapchuk and Yevgeniy Krasnikov, Nezavisimaya gazeta (24 May 1995): 1, and Yelena Tregubova, Segodnya (15 August 1995): 2).
Viktor Sheynis, Interview by the author at the State Duma, Moscow, 3 April 1998.
Gosudarstvennaya Duma: Stenogramma zasedaniy (Federal’nogo Sobraniya Rossiyskoy Federatsii, Moscow: Izvestiya, 11 May 1995).
Boris Yel’tsin, as quoted in Nezavisimaya gazeta (17 May 1995): 1.
Anna Ostapchuk and Yevgeniy Krasnikov, Nezavisimaya gazeta (24 May 1995): 1.
Viktor Sheynis, Interview with the author at the State Duma, Moscow, 3 April 1998.
Yevgeniy Yuryev, Kommersant Daily (10 June 1995): 3.
Nezavisimaya gazeta (29 November 1995): 5.
See the policy areas of legislation which the Council of the Federation must approve in fn. 3 of this chapter.
A detailed analysis on the appointment and dismissal of Sergey Kiriyenko as Prime Minister follows in the next chapter.
Aleksey Avtonomov, Interview by the author at the Foundation for the Development of Parliamentarism in Russia, Moscow, 17 April 1998.
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© 2003 Tiffany A. Troxel
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Troxel, T.A. (2003). Vetoing and Overriding Vetoes on Legislation in Russia. In: Parliamentary Power in Russia, 1994–2001. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505735_5
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