Russian Federation

The Russian Federation emerged in 1991 as a democratic experiment under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin.

Officially, the Russian Federation is composed of eighty-five (85) federal subjects including 46 oblasts, 22 republics, 9 krais, 4 autonomous okrugs, 3 federal cities and 1 autonomous oblast.Two of these federal subjects were added in 2014 after Russia’s annexation and occupation of Crimea from Ukraine and are not internationally recognized as part of the Russian Federation.

In the 1990s, despite the growing power of the presidency, Yeltsin had allowed the republics to take as much autonomy as they could swallow. This had made republics such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan to enjoy significant autonomy in decision-making and implementation. One republic in the North Caucasus, Chechnya even fought for independence from Russia in the 1990s. Russian armed forces could suppress Chechen separatism after two wars. Contrary to Yeltsin, under the presidency of Putin, the Kremlin has diminished the autonomy of the federal subjects to an important extent and strengthened the Russian state’s central authority.

The article 111 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation grants the State Duma the right of rejecting the nominee for prime-ministry.

While the Duma deals with federal legislation and is organized according to the results of parliamentary elections, the Federation Council has larger decision-making power, for example, the removal of the President from office or permitting the use of Russian armed forces outside of the Russian Federation.

450 seats in the Duma are filled by federal elections every five years with the rule of proportional representation from party lists.

Russia has three constitutionally recognized high courts: the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the Higher Arbitration Court.

The 2005 amendment to the electoral rules replacing the mixed electoral system with proportional representation system (with a national electoral threshold of 7 per cent), however, hindered the self-nominated candidates to be elected as legislative members.

Winning each parliamentary elections since 2003 ahead of its nearest rival by over 40 percent and securing a comfortable parliamentary majority, the United Russia emerged as the dominant party.

The political parties and movements in Russia are also classified in two categories: systemic opposition and non-systemic opposition. This categorization is similar to Schedler’s loyal and disloyal opposition parties and movements (Schedler, 1996). 

Systemic opposition refers to the political parties that are officially registered and operate within the established political system. In this regard, opposition parties that have participated in the presidential or legislative elections fall into the category of systemic opposition. The nonsystemic opposition category, on the other hand, includes the political parties and movements that are excluded by the establishment.

The United Democratic Movement founded in 2008 by pro-democratic prominent figures such as Gary Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov, is an example of non-systemic opposition. Russian Opposition Coordination Council (ROCC) founded in 2012 and including civil activists, liberals and left-wing politicians under the leadership of Alexei Navalny is another example of non-systemic opposition groups aiming to challenge the ongoing Putin rule in Russia.

Article 81 of the Constitution states that “any citizen of the Russian Federation not younger than 35 years of age and with a permanent residence record in the Russian Federation of not less than 10 years may be elected President of the Russian Federation.

There are two different procedures for nomination. The first is called self-nomination and requires 300.000 supporting signatures (this number is 100.000 if the person is nominated by an extraparliamentary party). The second procedure can be called party-nomination requiring the support of a parliamentary party for nomination.

The final decision about the candidacy is given by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).

With the amendment to the Constitution made in 2008, the presidential term was extended from four years to six years.

The first presidential election was held in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin won approximately 60 per cent of the vote while Nikolai Ryzhkov, backed by the Communist Party of Soviet Union and winning 17 per cent, came second.

Due to the constitutional limit on the number of terms a president can serve (consecutively two terms), Vladimir Putin was not eligible to run in the 2008 Presidential Election.

Due to the constitutional limit on the number of terms a president can serve (consecutively two terms), Vladimir Putin was not eligible to run in the 2008 Presidential Election. Instead, the prime minister Dimitry Medvedev, backed by Putin’s United Russia Party, won the election in the first round with an electoral support of over 71 per cent. As in the earlier presidential election, the Communist Party’s nominee, Zyuganov, took 18 percent of the vote and followed Medvedev. Immediately after being elected to the office, Medvedev appointed Putin as the prime minister. This started a four-year period of the so-called Putin-Medvedev tandemocracy.

The current Russian political system is highly centralized and gives unprecedented powers to the president.Vladimir Putin has gradually built a system in which the Kremlin has diminished the autonomy of the federal subjects of the Russian Federation and curbed the power of the legislative branch as well as independent political actors.