Available in Russian
Author: Arkadiy Lyubarev
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2023-3-150-170
Keywords: elections; electoral legislation; democracy; political parties; electoral systems; State Duma of the Russian Federation; Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; administrative resource
The article traces the development of Russian elections and electoral legislation since 1988. It discusses the influence of changes in electoral legislation on the degree of democracy of elections and on their results. It concludes that the laws on elections and on political parties have had a noticeable impact on elections, but other factors often have had a stronger impact. Some of these were related to legislation: the shaping of electoral districts, decisions of the Constitutional Court, and regulations of the Central Election Commission. Others were related to these laws’ implementation, including “special business practices” and administrative election technologies. The article analyzes the recently proposed classification of amendments to electoral legislation. It disagrees with reference to a number of amendments as anti-democratic and notes that in the period after 2002 there were many amendments that were the opposite, with a new amendment canceling a previous one and returning (at least partially) to what existed before. It also reviews criteria for classifying certain norms as democratic or anti-democratic. In this it argues that the mere fact that an amendment is beneficial to the authorities cannot be such a criterion. The question is whether an amendment is beneficial to society, that is, whether it helps to ensure that elections reflect to a great extent the collective will of the citizens. In analyzing this issue, it is important to combine legal and political approaches. Individual norms and institutions are discussed in more detail (e.g., registration privileges, nomination of candidates by groups of voters, candidate barriers, turnout threshold, “against all” voting, municipal filter, early voting, and proportional and mixed electoral systems), taking into account not only Russian but also foreign experience. It concludes that there is a need for a comprehensive revision of the laws on elections and political parties.
About the author: Arkadiy Lyubarev – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Election Expert, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Lyubarev A. (2023) Kak izbiratel’noe zakonodatel’stvo vliyaet na vybory: analiz 35-letney rossiyskoy istorii [How electoral legislation affects elections: an analysis of 35 years of Russian history]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 150–170. (In Russian).
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