Russian Government
Russia is a democratic federation of 89 subnational jurisdictions, classified as republics, oblasts (provinces), autonomous oblasts, autonomous regions, and territories. At the national level, the constitution of 1993 calls for three branches of government—the executive, legislative, and judiciary—but it does not stipulate equal powers for each. In that system, the president of Russia has formidable powers as head of the armed forces and the Security Council. Those powers include the authority to appoint a wide variety of government officials without effective oversight or check. The houses of the bicameral legislative branch have offered only weak opposition because of their constitutional position and because effective opposition parties do not exist. The judiciary, a rubber-stamp branch of government under the Soviet system, has moved only slowly to assert an independent authority. President Vladimir Putin used this structure to enhance the power of his office and dominate the government.
The president, who is the head of state, serves a maximum of two four-year terms. The president appoints the prime minister (who is head of government), the head of the Central Bank of Russia, and the chairman of the highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court. Those nominations require confirmation by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament (the Federal Assembly), although the president may dissolve the Duma if it fails three times to confirm a nominee for prime minister. Several other top-level presidential nominations, however, require no approval from the legislative branch. The president also issues decrees that go into effect without the parliament’s approval. Putin, who was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004, has further improved his position by introducing changes that limit the power of the two houses of the Federal Assembly and through the plurality of his party in the Duma. There is no vice president; if the president is incapacitated, the prime minister succeeds him until a new election is held.
In 2006 the government, headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, included 16 ministries, some of which are important policy-making centers. The three “power ministries”—Internal Affairs, Defense, and the Federal Security Service, which has ministerial status—are concerned with domestic and international security. The Ministry of Finance is the center of national economic policy making, and since 2000 the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade, which merged several Soviet-era ministries, has assumed a powerful economic policy position under German Gref. On many issues, the last two ministries are considered a counterweight to the “power ministries.” Also included at “cabinet level” are the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, and the procurator general, who is the chief prosecutor. Several powerful political “clans,” tacitly united under the Putin administration, are expected to vie for power when Putin leaves office.
In late 2005, Putin authorized the 126-member Public Chamber, a new body designed to streamline public input into legislation and government policy. The appointive membership of the chamber includes accomplished individuals in a variety of civic, academic, and social fields. In its first year of existence, the chamber’s 17 specialized committees intervened in several major policy areas.
The Federal Assembly is divided into two houses, the Federation Council (178 members) and the State Duma (450 members). Members of both houses serve four-year terms. The houses have differing responsibilities; the Duma has the more powerful role of primary consideration of all legislation. Although the Federation Council has the power to review and force compromise on legislation, in practice its role has been primarily as a consultative and reviewing body. In the 1990s, the Federation Council was made up of the heads of government and the legislative leaders of the 89 subnational jurisdictions into which Russia is divided. In 2000 Putin increased his control of the Federation Council by replacing ex-officio membership with a process of appointment by the president. The Duma can vote no-confidence in a sitting government, but the president can ignore the vote and dissolve the Duma if a second such vote is taken within three months. Changes in the constitution require a two-thirds vote in the Duma.
The Duma elections of December 2003 gave a strong plurality (222 seats) to Putin’s United Russia Party, which gained three times as many votes as the second-place Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Between that election and mid-2006, United Russia gained 87 seats as delegates switched party allegiance. In 2006 United Russia had 309 seats; the Communist Party, 45 seats; the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, 35 seats; the Motherland bloc of regional parties, 29 seats; and the People’s Party, 12 seats. Independents held 18 seats, and two seats were vacant. Some 45 members of the Duma and six of the Federation Council were women.
Russia is divided into 89 subnational jurisdictions, each of which has two representatives in the Federation Council. In March 2004, the Constitution was amended to permit the merger of two of the 89 region administrative units, effective in 2005; further consolidation is expected. These jurisdictions vary widely in size, composition, and nomenclature. They include 21 republics, 49 oblasts (provinces), six territories, 10 autonomous regions, one autonomous oblast, and two cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg) with separate oblast status. The autonomous regions and the autonomous oblast are parts of larger subnational jurisdictions. Within the 89 jurisdictions, the next-largest jurisdictional level is the rayon, which is approximately equivalent to a county in the United States.
The chief executive of all 89 jurisdictions is the governor. In December 2004, the selection method of governors was changed, increasing the power of the national executive over subnational governments. Instead of direct popular election in the jurisdiction, governors now are nominated by the president, then appointed by the jurisdiction’s legislature. The legislature can reject a nominee, but after three rejections the president can dissolve the legislature. In 2005 all of President Putin’s more than 30 nominees were approved immediately by the respective legislatures.
In a first step toward overcoming the complexity of this system, in 2000 all of Russia was divided into seven federal districts: Central, Far East, North Caucasus, Northwest, Siberia, Urals, and Volga. The seven federal districts have governors who are appointed by the president, with presidential appointees established in Moscow and six provincial capitals.
Although Russia has committed itself to thorough reform of the rubber-stamp Soviet judicial system, progress in that direction has been slow. Federal judges are nominated by assemblies of judges and approved by the president. The Ministry of Justice administers the judicial system, naming judges and establishing courts below the federal level. However, in the 1990s many judges remained from the Soviet system, and the judiciary became a roadblock for reform programs such as privatization and improved human rights. The independence and professionalism of judges have been damaged by the minimal pay they have received, and funding of the judicial system has been problematic. Although salaries had increased substantially by 2005, bribery of judges remains a frequent practice. Corruption is widespread throughout society, a conclusion supported by domestic opinion surveys, and was extensive in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the federal and regional levels of government. Manifestations included bribery of officials, misuse of budgetary resources, theft of government property, kickbacks in the procurement process, extortion, and official collusion in criminal acts. International organizations gave the country poor marks on corruption issues. In an October 2006 Transparency International report, the country received a score of 2.5 on the organization's 10 point index of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's politicians and public officials, indicating a perception that the country has a serious corruption problem.
Suffrage is universal, and the minimum voting age is 18. Elections are organized and overseen by the 15-member Central Election Commission. The president, the State Duma, and the Federation Council each appoint five commission members to four-year terms. According to the constitution, the chairman of that commission, since 1999 Aleksandr Veshnyakov, is third in Russia’s leadership line behind the president and the prime minister. The 89 subnational jurisdictions have equivalent commissions, which in turn oversee some 2,700 regional election commissions.
In 2006 the single-member constituencies that had elected half (225) of the Duma members were abolished, instead awarding all seats according to national party vote totals and eliminating the possibility of independents gaining seats. To achieve representation, a party must gain at least 7 percent of total votes. The presidential election includes a runoff between the top two vote-getters if no candidate gains a majority on the first ballot. Direct elections also choose legislatures at the subnational levels, although the president has the power to dissolve such legislatures and force the holding of new elections. Chief executives at those levels are appointed by the president. National electoral reforms in 2005, all aiming to reduce opposition party strength, increased the minimum vote percentage required for a party to be represented in the Duma from 5 to 7 percent, prohibited parties from forming electoral coalitions, and stiffened party registration requirements.
Aside from the Communist Party, a remnant of the Soviet era, Russia has had few political parties with national followings. In the immediate post-Soviet years, a wide variety of new parties espoused either some type of Western-style democratic and free-market reform or retaining a form of the strong central government inherited from Soviet times. Parliamentary elections of the 1990s generally fragmented and weakened the reform parties, although State Duma legislation in that period most often was the result of compromise. In that period, party configurations changed rapidly as groups merged and split. In 2001 the United Russia Party was formed, giving the Putin administration an effective voice in the Duma; that party’s triumph in the 2003 parliamentary elections enhanced Putin’s position. In those elections, the failure of any reform party to exceed the 5 percent minimum diminished the already weak political voice of the reform opposition. Ensuing legislation increased the minimum to 7 percent and required parties to have at least 50,000 members and organizations in at least half of Russia’s regions, further enhancing the dominance of the United Russia Party. The major reform parties of the early 2000s, Yabloko and the Union of Rightist Forces, were hindered by the electoral reforms of 2005. A third reform party, the People’s Democratic Union, appeared in 2006. In mid-2006, the reform parties discussed uniting into a single organization to ensure representation in the Duma. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and Rodina (Homeland) parties have nationalist agendas that include abolition of the federal system and expulsion of immigrants. In 2005 Rodina was the fastest growing party in Russia, but it was prohibited from participating in most regional elections in 2006.
The dominant pro-presidential United Russia party received more than two-thirds of the seats in the December 2007 State Duma elections and its candidate, Dmitriy Medvedev, received more than 70 percent of the vote in the March 2008 presidential elections. Both elections were marked by abuses of administrative resources and media bias, denial of registration of opposition parties and candidates, and ballot fraud.
In the midst of a growing economy and the state's control over the political system, space for public criticism of the government is contracting. While civil society and state-sponsored watchdog organizations are generally able to operate, monitor developments, and speak out, there are notable exceptions, and the government restricted some NGOs through selective application of laws, tax auditing, and regulations that increased the administrative burden. Among specific areas of concern, security forces were alleged to have engaged with impunity in torture, abuse, unlawful killings, abductions, and disappearances. Prison conditions were often harsh and frequently life threatening; law enforcement was often corrupt; and the executive branch allegedly exerted influence over judicial decisions in some high-profile cases. Media freedoms were weakened by government ownership and pressure, and unresolved killings of journalists and other violence promoted self-censorship among the media. Access to the internet is largely unfettered, but internet traffic is reportedly monitored by the government. Television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians, is mostly controlled or strongly influenced by the state. Local governments tried to limit freedom of assembly, and police sometimes used violence to prevent groups from engaging in peaceful protest.
