ABSTRACT
Politics in the contemporary era, in contrast to former traditional ‘dynastic states’ and ‘empires’, is based to a large extent on democratic discourse. Even under authoritarian regimes ruling elites, while attempting to remove opposition from the political arena, try to reinforce their legitimacy by convincing the population (the masses) that they truly represent the interests of the people. In competitive regimes this issue is even more pressing because power is sought by various political forces, each of which tries to make itself look appealing to the masses. It is only when the masses perceive the ‘political class’ as their own representatives that a legitimate political order arises and the effectiveness of political representation can be discussed as an issue. It is our understanding that this problem is one of the key issues in
modern Russia. Under Soviet authoritarianism the leaders used to inculcate amongst the masses the idea that communism is the embodiment of popular expectations and aspirations, and the regime remained durable as long as people continued to believe that the Communist Party did express their will. The disillusionment that was mounting in the 1970s and 1980s became one of the precursors of Perestroika. In post-Soviet Russia a radical redistribution of resources has taken place: instead of a unitary political actor (the Communist Party) a multitude of actors have appeared. At the same time democratic political procedures have been introduced. These developments preconditioned the transition to a competitive type of political process but were hardly sufficient enough to solve the problem of the ‘effectiveness of political representation’. Political representation is an extremely complex and multi-faceted phe-
nomenon. In different combinations its various dimensions bring about a different outcome in terms of its effectiveness. The aim of this chapter is to determine which characteristics of representation dominate in modern Russia, to explain why, and to analyse the consequences of our findings from the viewpoint of their effectiveness. At the same time we focus on the regional level of Russian politics, which has been far less researched than the national level.1
