Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

122 Aleksandr KynevThis phenomenon may be explained by reference to the concept of historicinstitutionalism. Thus, according to Peters, an initial institutional choice (ofboth a structural and regulatory nature), made in the historical past for someindividual feature or overall system, will have a profound effect on all subsequentpolitical decisions. 2 Hence the country’s historical and institutionalpast places unavoidable and insurmountable limits on any attempts at electoraland political reform; it has a specific effect on the actual results of theapplication of one or another form of electoral mechanism. Thus, in acountry where a party like the CPSU dominated for seventy years, any subsequentattempt to create a mass party with a strictly fixed membership willinevitably lead to the creation of bodies like the Communist Party of theSoviet Union. Chernomyrdin’s words –‘here any party will end up as theCPSU’ –perfectly encapsulates this phenomenon. If no attention is paid tothe country’s institutional inheritance when adopting the most importantlaws, then the intended result of their adoption will be considerably distorted.One could assume that the establishment of a super-presidential formof republic in 1993, with very weak representative governing bodies andwhere the power of the president is almost as absolute as the power of theCPSU during the Soviet period, would make the establishment of state controlover public institutions just a matter of time.1 The reforms of December 2003–May 2005: approval of the newelectoral system in regional electionsAs has already been mentioned, the effective implementation of the newelectoral system for regional assembly elections started on 14 July 2003.Elections to regional legislative assemblies during this period can be brokendown into three groups:• combined with elections to the State Duma on 7 December 2003 (sevenregions)• combined with the presidential elections on 14 March 2004 (six regions)• held at various times between September 2004 and May 2005 (19regions); these elections were held after the initiative of the RussianPresident in September 2004 to abolish the direct election of governorsThus between July 2003 and May 2005 thirty-two electoral campaignstook place under the new voting system for elections to regional legislativeassemblies. A mixed voting system was used everywhere, with theexception of the Sverdlovsk Oblast where, as previously, one chamber (theChamber of Representatives) of the Legislative Assembly was elected entirelyusing the majority system and the other chamber (the Regional Duma) waselected entirely by the proportional system (with half the membership beingre-elected every two years). The ratio between the proportional and themajority parts varied across the regions from 50:50 (in most regions) to 7:5