Independents and Party Formation: Elite Partisanship as an Intervening Variable in Russian Politics

No modem democracy has existed without some type of political party. In fact, it is scarcely imaginable how democratic governance could function in nation-states with millions of inhabitants without political parties to frame electoral options, aggregate and articulate social demands, and translate them into public policy.' Given their centrality to modern democratic governance, political parties and party systems have received significant attention from scholars interested in democratic transitions. The literature on democratization has been engaged in an ongoing debate between structuralists and transitionists.2 In regards to party development during regime change, structuralists have focused on social prerequisites for the formation of a competitive party system and social cleavages upon which political parties can build their constituencies.3 The literature on transitions has tended to tie party formation to founding elections, emphasizing the importance of the timing and sequence of elections, the impact of electoral systems, and the favorable influence of elite pacts.4 Relatively little attention has been given to party building. Political parties are not born as nationwide organizations with networks of local organizations stretching across a state's territory. They typically start out as small, geographically concentrated organizations or as cliques of governing elites in the capital. Only with time, effort, and luck do parties expand their influence and organization, eventually contesting elections in all of a state's regions and at national, state, and local levels of electoral competition. This study addresses party building in democratization by examining the factors affecting elite partisanship in the Russian Federation. Russia is a particularly interesting case because its long history of Communist Party rule has produced a strong antiparty sentiment among elites and voters alike. The nascent Russian party system is a fluid conglomeration of parties with little continuity from one election to another. With the partial exception of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), even those parties that have shown some staying power lack the organizational form, coherent ideological program, and reliable social constituency of parties in established democracies and many democratizing states. Russian voters display a general lack of party identification. According to survey research, 78 percent of Russian voters do not have a party identification, compared with 13 percent in the United States and 8 percent in Great Britain.5 The weakness of Russian parties has