Mandating Party Development in the Russian Federation: Effects of the 2001 Party Law

For the first 10 years of competitive elections, Russian party development remained behind party development in many Central and East European states, let alone the rest of Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly then, one of President Putin's first reforms entailed requiring political parties to register regional branches in a majority of Russia's 89 regions. While the declared intent of the law was to spur the development of a national party system, the requirement – 100 registered members in at least 45 regions – appeared more like a formality than either a carrot or a stick motivating parties to develop regional organization. Moreover, the Putin administration has pursued various other reforms widely considered undemocratic. Given the ambiguity of Putin's actions while president of the Russian Federation, this paper takes a closer look at one of the most commonly overlooked presidential reforms – the 2001 law on political parties – to determine whether the legislation correlated with greater party organization during the 2003 Duma election.