Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

The problem of effective representation 155for parties and ideologies (the ‘left-right’ continuum, for example) plays acrucial role in the process of communication between political elites and themasses. Nonetheless, such a model is only effective on condition that deputiesstick to their party programme and party discipline.3. Just as the ‘party’ mechanism of representation correlates with the universalisttype, so the particularist type is to a great extent associated withnon-party representation. In the contemporary world it is rather hard tocome across examples of this model functioning in its pure form. It is customarilybelieved that the US Congress is a reasonable approximation.American congressmen and women are relatively independent of their partyleaders, though they have tenser links with their constituencies, especiallywith influential interest groups operating in those constituencies. Hence, ahuge number of interests are represented in parliament and virtually none ofthe groups of legislators has a majority. Trying to answer the question ofhow decisions are made under such conditions, American researchers haveput forward several theories. Buchanan and Tullock focus on ‘vote exchange’(‘log-rolling’). 15 Proponents of neo-institutionalism have demonstrated thesignificance of institutional rules, such as the discretional powers of thecommittees, the seniority system, etc. 16 Therefore, it is quite clear that thisgiven model can only be effective on condition that there are certain additionalformal and informal institutional structures in place. 17 Utilizing thosestructures, non-party legislators are capable of building relatively stable coalitionsaround certain issues.4. The fourth model of representation at first glance is a hybrid of thesecond and third models. It is, however, a perfectly independent model in itsown right. In certain cases, guided by particularist interests, politicians canfind it useful to form not only a temporary coalition on a certain issue, butalso a more durable organization. Apart from purely rational calculations,this can be facilitated by certain institutional rules (for instance, electoralsystems). Such kinds of parties, however, do not exactly conform to theclassic definition of a political party. They are much closer to ‘cartel parties’,18 which can be seen as tools whereby political leaders exchangeresources necessary for competing at elections and distributing posts withinthe state hierarchy, rather than associations of citizens sharing commonpolitical values and ideas.The model of representation of primarily particularist interests, used as amechanism by a cartel-type party, appears to be less effective than non-partyrepresentation. In the latter case each actor is connected with a certain specificinterest group (or groups), which offer(s) representation to a wide circleof interests. Moreover, political competition works as an incentive for politiciansto expand this circle, and a certain semblance of democracy inSchumpeter’s understanding appears. 19 The creation of ‘cartels’ (even if thereare more than one), on the contrary, reduces the degree of competition.Extending Schumpeter’s analogy between politics and economics, this situationcan be characterized as ‘imperfect competition’ – ‘oligopoly’. As a