ABSTRACT
The Western literature on political parties provides a rich array of theories and hypotheses for testing in the Russian context. Recent research on Russian political parties has revealed new insights into several areas of party activity: the nature of society and its impact on party formation and party strategies, programmes and platforms; the political system and its impact on party development; parties in parliament; party organization; fragmentation of the party system. The nature of authority patterns in both state and society, and the degree of congruence between those authority patterns, is a key factor in assessing state-society relations in a stable democratic political order. Political parties are particularly important 'congruencerelevant' social units because of their high degree of adjacency to government and their function of boundary exchange between the state and other social units.
