ABSTRACT
A question underlying much recent scholarship on the emergence of new political parties is this: to what degree is a party system the product of strategic choices made by politicians when they adopt social institutions such as constitutions, electoral laws and party rules, and to what degree is it the natural outcome of great historical conflicts of collective interest which themselves ultimately drive the particular choices of individual actors? This study seeks to address this issue by examining the interaction of social and institutional influences on Russia's young post-communist party system.
