single member districts (SMDs) overlap the boundaries between federal units. Thus,
while 225 seats in the State Duma are filled by party lists (PL), the other 225 are elected
in regional districts. However, for most of its post-Communist history, Russia’s national
political parties have not been very effective at penetrating far outside the country’s two
largest and most political cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most party and policy
decisions are made in Moscow, by Moscow based politicians, with sometimes input from
leading Petersburg party members. As a result, Russia’s political parties have, with a few
exceptions, resembled disembodied heads, floating in Moscow without “legs” in the
regions. They have only been able to capture 57% of the seats in SMDs (which number
includes effectively local-based parties), and since over 85% of the party-list votes come
from outside the major cities, party-voting has shown a good deal of volatility: 47% on
average over the four elections from 1993-2003
1
.
Thus, the failure of Russian political parties to compete effectively and build
electoral bases in the regions beyond Moscow and Petersburg is one of the most direct
reasons that the Russian party-system is so weak and fluid. Many of the reasons for this,
as well as the empirics of party participation in regional political life, are well-explained
by Grigory Golosov in his recent work Political Parties in the Regions of Russia:
Democracy Unclaimed. However, his work examines the period up through the middle
of 2003, just before the beginning of Russia's most recent election cycle. It presents an
accurately gloomy view of Russian parties at the regional level for this period. However,
two important factors of the current election cycle suggest that the story may be
changing. The first is the application of the new version of the Russian "On the Main
Guarantees of Electoral Rights and Rights to Participate in a Referendum of Citizens of
1
This represents the most liberal interpretation of continuous parties.
Convention