ABSTRACT
The development of a national party system was undermined by the ability of regional executives to control patronage and to influence electoral outcomes. The use of so-called ‘administrative resources’ by central and
regional authorities, above all the manipulation of the ‘virtual’ world of the media and public relations, tended to set up a parallel sphere of politics that by-passed parties. Russia’s party system in any case had developed in a peculiar way, with no shortage of parties but few enjoying extensive and consistent support.3 Russia’s political parties did not legitimise the authority of the government, while the executive authorities at both the regional and federal levels strove to remain independent of parties. Nevertheless, while it is common to berate the flaws in Russian party development, the distance that it had travelled in a relatively short time since the official end of the Communist Party’s monopoly in February 1990 is impressive. Party systems in the mature democracies, moreover, are subject to increasing fluidity, seen with particular force in the collapse of the partitocrazia (partitocratic) system in Italy in 1992, and the defeat (if only temporary) of the hegemonic Liberal Democratic Party in Japan in 1993.
