The September 8 election and its aftermath may become a watershed for developing Russia’s party and political system. This election is starkly different from the one in the fall of 2012, when the opposition parties competed in the regions where the situation was unfavorable for them and the system parties were distraught by the tumultuous events of the late 2011—beginning of 2012. Just like in 2012, the regime initially sought to run this election according to the inertia scenario—but failed miserably. As the basis of this strategy, it threw full support behind the United Russia Party and was willing to provoke low voter turnout and lower its own legitimacy—all for the sake of obtaining the desired vote percentages. This desire has spawned such specific election technologies as moving the election date to the beginning of September, public smear campaigns against any opposition force, and splitting the protest vote through spoiler effect, masking, imitation of protest rhetoric, etc. The authorities were focusing on fighting with the strategy advocated by their opponents “Vote against any other party” and the inevitable threat of the “mutation of satellites” which could only be countered through the liberalization of party legislation. But this came at a price: the ruling party itself started to disintegrate as a side effect of splintering the protest vote. After all, the entire party system was artificial, and first of all the United Russia Party itself.
The elites at different levels were previously forced to join only the seven officially registered political parties; however, as soon as they had been allowed to decide who to be friends with and which party line to run on, the system started crumbling. This effect was not yet possible in 2012, since the parties then were just being created (while 16 to 27 parties were able to run in 2012, as many as 48 to 54 political parties could participate in 2013 elections). Besides, the political context then was not favorable to the proliferation of political parties. Now we are both witnessing changes in the political scene, and the regions where elections will take place are those where competition is far more likely (8 have direct elections of regional leaders, 16 elect heads of regional parliaments, 12 have elections of municipal councils, and 8 regional centers elect their mayors).
Changes in the party system format and in the number of registered parties have already also started to produce some qualitative differences which are likely to grow further. As a result, the artificially-created conglomerates of elite groups and certain politicians’ personal clienteles are being gradually dismantled. In the past, these emerged under the registered party labels as a byproduct of limited competition and managed party system. Now in some regions there emerge a whole number of new significant regional players able to attract the electorate, as well as campaign contributions and media attention. These new figures appear not only in the new parties such as The Civic Platform, Rodina, The Green Alliance—People’s Party, but also in the traditional parties that have been political outsiders—Yabloko and The Patriots of Russia. In fact, a party that plays a role of a spoiler in one region may act as a serious political player in another region. Also, as the popularity of the United Russia declines, the attempt to preserve a broad coalition of pro-regime parties under the umbrella of the supra-party structure People’s Front—for Russia (previously known as ONF) leads to greater attrition in the United Russia ranks as some candidates join the ranks of other members of the People’s Front (for instance, The Patriots of Russia or Rodina).
The regime understands the threat posed by the new developments, hence the hysterics among the elites and their efforts to remove a part of the players off the ballot (the starkest example is the removal of the Civic Platform and Yevgeny Urlashov from elections in Yaroslavl). However, it was already impossible to stop every candidate from running, and thus the pressure became selective and sought to contain the threat of electoral defeat. However, this does not cause the inevitable success of a number of new projects (which could have been bigger). The election results will most probably be a signal for others and trigger a domino effect in other regions, removing the fears of those who would like to leave their old parties but have so far been afraid to do so.
Alexey Navalny’s participation in Moscow mayoral election has exacerbated the crisis of the concocted party system even more. Navalny has turned the election into a bipolar struggle by becoming a more serious opponent of the regime than all of the old political parties combined. At the finish line, the regime was actually trying to rescue the position of the old parties the best it could. The overly complex election laws adopted in the recent years turned out to be totally ineffective in a new informational reality when the traditionalist electorate susceptible to time-tested manipulations and administrative pressure is losing its positions as the most active player; it is becoming upstaged by a more progressive class of “angry urbanites” that have entirely different means of communications at their disposal and with whom all the election legislation of the 2000s is completely unable to cope.
Alexander Kynev is a director of regional programs at the Foundation for Information Policy Development.