As a nuclear power, UN Security Council member, emerging Arctic hegemon and the largest state in the world, Russia -- and its stability -- is of extreme importance in global politics. In the most comprehensive long-term study to date, Derek Hutcheson argues that Russia's legislature, the Federal Assembly, forms an integral part of the country's political system and machinery of governance. Having previously formed a counterweight to presidential power under Boris Yeltsin, the legislative agenda has become more centralised under Vladimir Putin. Successive changes to the electoral and party systems have resulted in the dominance of a four-party 'cartel', with the pro-presidential United Russia party at its centre. A perception that Russian elections are predictable, controlled and pointless to examine has grown, but Hutcheson reminds us that real voters cast real ballots. This book tells the story of how the electoral system has evolved, how campaign strategies have developed and how voting behaviour has changed. Hutcheson has utilised a combination of official data and new primary material to set 25 years of Russian parliamentary elections into context. Putting forward an in-depth analysis of post-Soviet politics, he looks forward to the next stage in Russia's political evolution just as he looked back.

About the Author
Derek Hutcheson is Associate Professor of Political Science at Malmoe University, Sweden. He has published extensively on electoral politics, particularly of the post-Soviet region, and on the electoral rights of transnational citizens. Prior to working in Sweden, he was head of European Studies at University College Dublin from 2006 to 2013 and an ESRC and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Glasgow University (2002-05). In association with his involvement in the Global Citizenship Observatory (formerly EUDO-Citizenship), he was also invited to spend several months at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence as an EU Research Fellow in 2016.

Reviews
Hutcheson is clearly well-versed in theoretical work about electoral authoritarianism and about legislatures in more democratic systems. But the strengths of this volume lie not in any kind of theoretical contributions but more in the historical detail of how one particular legislative system became increasingly less competitive. For scholars interested in that story, Parliamentary Elections in Russia is a gold mine. * Ellen Carnaghan, Saint Louis University, Democratization *
Overall, the book "Parliamentary Elections in Russia" represents an important contribution to the debate on the evolution of the electoral system and the role of elections in the Russian political system. In fact, the author inserts the parliamentary elections in a wide-ranging context of political change in Russia from the late 1980s until the present day. Hutcheson's study is a masterful work for the originality of the approach adopted and for the depth and completeness of the analysis. * Ilmira Galimova, Nomos: Le attualita nel diritto *
For such an empirically rich study with its detailed statistical analysis of election results, voter profiles, party strategies and so on, this is a very readable book, one which is clearly based on many years' experience in the field. * David White, Party Politics *
The text is peppered with fascinating details...This book will be of interest to scholars of Russian politics, electoral politics, legislative politics and authoritarianism. By virtue of its breadth and depth, it will be a key resource in understanding an important dimension of the construction of the modern-day Russian political system by a scholar with unmatched knowledge of the intricacies of the Russian electoral system. * B H. Noble, UCL SSEES, Slavonic and East European Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780197266281
Author Derek S. Hutcheson
Format Hardback
Page Count 356
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 708g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 164mm * 27mm