Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

courts to toughen the criminal and administrative penalties for violatingelection laws’. 67 Soon afterwards, Veshnyakov was fired from his post ashead of the Central Electoral Commission and replaced by one of Putin’sprotégés, Churov.ConclusionFor elections to be considered democratic all citizens and parties must beprovided with equal opportunities to stand for elections and the rules for theregistration of candidates must be open and transparent. Supervision of theelections must be carried out by independent and impartial electoral commissionswhose decisions are backed up by independent courts. However, aswe have seen, this is far from the case in Russia where in many regionsUnited Russia and the regional governments have effectively merged andthere is no longer any meaningful separation of legislative, executive andjudicial power, and no impartial electoral commissions. Municipal electionsin many of Russia’s regions are now largely ‘decorative’, with no real contestationand no level playing field. Of particular concern is the politicizationand state domination of the courts, procuracy, police, and electoral commissions,and the extensive use of administrative resources to manipulateelections in United Russia’s favour. Putin’s ‘electoral vertical’ has now beenextended from the regions to the municipalities and what Schedler calls‘electoral authoritarianism’ 68 is slowly but surely taking root.NotesMunicipal elections 3011 Federal Law, No. 131, 6 October 2003, ‘Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsiimestnovo samoupravleniya v Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Moscow: Os' 89, 2005.2 Federal Law, 11 July 2001, No. 95, ‘O politicheskikh partiyakh’, SobranieZakonodatel'stva RF, No. 29, 16 July 2001.3 Federal Law, 21 July 2005, No. 93, ‘Ob vnesenii izmeneniiv zakonodatel'nye aktyRossiiskoi Federtatsii O vyborakh i referendumakh i inye zakonodatel'nye aktyRossiiskoi Federtatsii’, 21 June, 2005. In Rossiiskaya Gazeta, No. 161, 26 July, 2005.4 For an excellent dicussion of the new legislation see, A. S. Avtonomov, A. Yu.Buzin, A. V. Ivanchenko, V. I. Krivtsov, A. V. Kynev, A. E. Lyubarev, RossiiskieVybory v Kontektste Mezhdunarodnykh Izbiratel'nykh Standartov, Moscow:Nezavisimaya Institut Vyborov, 2006. http://www.vibory.ru Accessed 9 July 2006.5 A. A. Veshnyakov, ‘Address of Chairman of the Central Election Commission ofthe Russian Federation, to the Users of the Web Site of the Central ElectoralCommission of the Russian Federation’, http://www.cikrf.ru/cikrf/eng/, July 2006,p. 1. Accessed August 2006.6 For an excellent dicussion of the new legislation see, A. S. Avtonomov, A. Yu.Buzin, A. V. Ivanchenko, V. I. Krivtsov, A. V. Kynev, A. E. Lyubarev, Rossiiskievybory v kontektste mezhdunarodnykh izbiratel'nykh standartov, http:/www.vibory.ru, accessed July 20067 Federal Law, 20 December 2004, ‘O vnesenii izmeneni’.8LevLevison,‘Political monetization’, NGO Newlsletter, Issue 87, May–June 2005, p. 1.9 Regional councils could orginally choose their electoral threshold, with a maximumof 7 per cent.