Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Resisting the State
- 1 W(h)ither the Russian State?
- 2 Apparatchiki into “Entrepreneurchiki”: The Sources of Russia's Weak Central State
- 3 Governing Russia: Patterns of Regional Resistance to the Central State
- 4 Inside the Russian State: Assessing Infrastructural Power in the Provinces
- 5 Retrenchment over Reform: Obstacles to the Central State in the Periphery
- 6 Weak National Parties, Weak Central State
- 7 The Comparative Implications of Russia's Weak State Syndrome
- Index
6 - Weak National Parties, Weak Central State
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Resisting the State
- 1 W(h)ither the Russian State?
- 2 Apparatchiki into “Entrepreneurchiki”: The Sources of Russia's Weak Central State
- 3 Governing Russia: Patterns of Regional Resistance to the Central State
- 4 Inside the Russian State: Assessing Infrastructural Power in the Provinces
- 5 Retrenchment over Reform: Obstacles to the Central State in the Periphery
- 6 Weak National Parties, Weak Central State
- 7 The Comparative Implications of Russia's Weak State Syndrome
- Index
Summary
One way in which the Russian state might have become better vertically integrated in the past, and might perhaps do so in the future, is through the creation of unifying political institutions. In other political systems, political parties have served as links between national and local political actors. Political parties within the context of a competitive electoral system are one method by which to interrupt the collusive relationship between regional business and government that can be so detrimental to the creation of a unified political, economic, and legal expanse.
Political parties are key institutions for building democracy and also key institutions in maintaining a cohesive state. Parties serve as conduits between civil society and the state, and also between center and periphery. They can promote coherence in policy platforms across nation-states. In short, parties can solve collective action problems by integrating the polity as well as by aggregating interests.
But with the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, and the limited role that both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin ascribed to political parties in their respective presidencies, it is hard to see a truly national party system that stretches from center to periphery developing in present-day Russia. Indeed, Putin's moves by 2004 away from electoral democracy at the regional level may well have permanently doomed the process.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Resisting the StateReform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia, pp. 111 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006