Local elections and parties

In this chapter, I analyse two major rounds of municipal elections that took place over the periods 1995-8 and 2004-5. These are the election rounds for which we have the most detailed (if still incomplete) information, as published by the Russian Central Electoral Commission.1 They were also the fi rst major rounds of elections to the new bodies of local self-government created after the adoption of the 1995 and 2003 laws on local self-government, respectively.