Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

The problem of effective representation 157The collapse of Russian communism brought about a certain vacuum ofpolitical values, ideas, aspirations, and under these conditions the actors’choice of political strategies was primarily dictated by rational and purposeorientatedmotivations. Therefore, I consider it appropriate to apply rationalchoice theory to explain the weakness of political parties on the regionallevel. Stemming from this, it can be hypothesized that a rational politician,who strives to become a regional parliament deputy, may choose between a‘party’ and ‘non-party’ strategy. Estimating the anticipated benefits and costs(losses) of each of these, rational actors will choose the most beneficialoption.The main advantage of the ‘party’ strategy is access to party resources –image-building, organizational (apparatus, activists), financial, information(party press), etc. A party, however, offers resources to a politician only inreturn for something, such as their membership and certain subsequentcommitments (financial support, obeying party discipline, supporting theparty’s political course, lobbying for certain decisions, etc.). All these are‘costs’ for a ‘rational’ politician. The ‘non-party’ strategy presupposes that apolitician has no access to party resources, but at the same time incurs noassociated costs. Hence, the rational choice of an actor depended on thecorrelation between (1) party and non-party resources; (2) resources andcosts.In the 1990s Russian political parties could not boast an abundance ofpolitical resources. Lack of funds, few activists and other weaknesses weretypical characteristics of regional party organizations. Neither did the partieshave any institutional election preferences. An overwhelming majority offederal subjects used a plural election formula and single-member constituencies.24 Starting from the works by Duverger, 25 it is widely believed thatsuch a system does not facilitate the development of political parties. 26 Thus,it is not surprising that most regional politicians favoured the ‘non-party’strategy. As a rule, they relied on the support of business groups or on personalresources. Theoretically, politicians could also utilize the resources ofcivic (non-for-profit) organizations, but the latter were just as weak as parties.Besides, there was one other political force in the regions that was capableof providing the necessary resources to politicians – the executiveauthority, the governors (usually free from party affiliation) who were veryinterested in the formation of an obedient regional legislature. Thus in realitya politician without one’s own resources had only two options: represent theinterests of either a business group or the governor. The parties, therefore,found themselves in a vicious circle: they had no resources because influentialactors were reluctant to join them, which came about in the first placebecause parties had no resources to attract such figures.In total, regional legislatures reflected the makeup of the respective regionalelites. This characteristic differed immensely from region to region.Aggregating a great deal of research on comparing regional politicalprocesses, 27 the following types of regional elites can be distinguished: