Political+Institutions



Executives: Head of state, head of government, cabinets
 * Chief of State: President Dmitri Medvedev
 * Head of Government: Prime Minister Vladimir PutinThe cabinet is composed of the premier, his deputies, and his ministers and are all appointed by the President, the premier is also confirmed by the Duma.
 * First Deputy Premiers: Igor Shuvalov, Viktor Zubkov
 * Deputy Premiers: Dimitriy Kozak, Igor Sechen, Dmitiry Rogozen, Vladislov Surkov.


 * Dual Executive with the Head of State being different from the Head of Government.
 * The president is much more powerful than the P.M, and he is elected for 4 year terms. Constitution provides for a strong presidency.
 * Governors of Russian districts are appointed by the federal government, until recently they were elected by each district's constituents. [[image:2cgrussia/Putin2.jpg width="329" height="403" align="right"]]



Legislatures: >>
 * Bicameral Federal Assembly
 * Upper House: Federal Counsel with 178 seats appointed by the top executives in each of the 89 federal divisions (oblasts, krays, republics, and federal cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg). Four year terms. Each federal district gets two representatives
 * Laws are passed in the Federation Counsel with a simple majority vote or passed // de facto //after 14 days of Parliamentary inactivity
 * Bills that pass the assembly are then signed into law by the President of Russia who can veto the law if he wishes. It takes a 2/3 majority vote to override a presidential veto.
 * A 3/4 majority is needed to create new laws or Constitutional Amendments
 * Lower House: State Duma with 450 seats elected by proportional representation with a minimum party winning of 5%. Elected by a popular vote serving 4 year terms. Only half of the elected members are chosen from parties listed on the ballot, the remaining half are elected individually from electoral districts through out the country.
 * Members serve a four year term
 * One must be 21 years old to run for State Duma
 * Laws passed by a simple majority in the Duma must be sent to the Federal Counsel within five working days
 * Powers of the State Duma
 * *** consent to the appointment of the Prime Minister of Russia ;
 * hearing annual reports from the Government of the Russian Federation on the results of its work, including on issues raised by the State Duma;
 * deciding the issue of confidence in the Government of the Russian Federation;
 * appointment and dismissal of the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia ;
 * appointment and dismissal of the Chairman and half of the auditors of the Accounts Chamber;
 * appointment and dismissal of the Commissioner for Human Rights, who shall act according to federal constitutional law;
 * announcement of amnesty;
 * bringing charges against the President of the Russian Federation for his (requires a two thirds majority);
 * Current Composition of the Duma



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Political parties:
 * Parties are generally weak and leadership mainly personality based. There are about 26 parties in all, but only the Communist Party and the United Russia party really ever do well.
 * The Unity Party was founded in 2001 by oligarch Boris Berezovsky and other new money millionaires who acquired previously state owned industries. Ideologically hard to define except that it is pro Putin, seeing that he is the party’s leader. Has had no serious challengers for office in a while
 * The Communist Party is the second strongest party and is lead by Gennady Zyuganov. Not exactly like the[[image:2cgrussia/United_Russia.jpg align="right"]] old party of the Soviet Union, but it still emphasizes a centralized government with planning and nationalism. It also hints at wanting to regain lost Soviet territory.
 * Yabloko is a consistently reformist party and is an acronym for the founders of the party, but it also means apple. It is very pro democracy and does best among intellectuals. It does not currently hold any proportional seats in the Duma but has 4.
 * Union of Right Forces the “right” means morally right, not ideologically right. It emphasizes the development of the free market and privatization. Currently only has three members in Duma.

Parliamentary and Presidential Systems:
 * The Duma has the power to reject up to three selections of Prime Minister by the President, but should it reject three the Duma is subject to possible dissolution.
 * The President has the power to issue decrees of his own without the consent of the Duma
 * The Duma can impeach the president with a 2/3 majority.
 * Three branch government (president/prime minister, legislature, and a constitutional court)[[image:http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Everyone%20Else/images-11/vladimir-putin-walking-on-water.jpg width="540" height="345" align="right"]]
 * Asymmetric federalism, some areas have much more power than others.
 * The president is much more powerful than the prime minister and is elected for 4 year terms with a limit of 2 consecutively

Bureaucracies:
 * Some stats have the put the number at 1 million bureaucratic positions, with about 1,000 of those be high level executives.
 * Putin says that he is planning on cutting the number of bureaucrats, a move that is widely praised.
 * Much of Russia is influenced by various Russian oligarchs, who do not necessarily have any political power formally given to them despite the definition of the word “oligarch”.

Judiciary > Also hears cases regarding constitutionality of laws, examine appeals by various bodies, and act as the court during an impeachment of the President.
 * Consists of the Constitutional Court, courts of general jurisdiction, military courts, and arbitrage courts (which hear commercial cases)
 * The Constitutional Court hears cases between the Legislative and Executive branch as well as cases between Moscow and regional and local governments.
 * The July 1994 Law limits what the court is able to hear and prohibits the court from hearing cases on its own initiative.
 * The basic layout of the system is that there is the Russian Supreme Court, regional level courts, and district courts.
 * Some reforms have made jury trials available to more criminal cases.
 * Despite attempts to increase autonomy of the court system, many judges see themselves and government officials who are meant to protect the interests of the state.



Levels of Government
 * Still maintains a federal government structure
 * 89 regions, 21 have a non-Russian majority
 * Each region is bound by a treaty to the federation, but not all- including Chechnya- have signed
 * Most of the regions are called republics
 * Many ruled themselves almost completely independently
 * Some are much stronger than others
 * Power is devolved unequally across the country, called asymmetric federalism
 * Putin has cracked down on regional autonomy ordering the army to bomb even Chechnya into submission
 * Federal government



Elections:
 * Presidential have a two round pattern, the top two candidates compete in a runoff two weeks after the first round
 * If you have majority of the votes in the first round the run-off election is not required
 * Honesty of elections is not known.
 * 2001 law seriously restricted the right of small, regional, parties to run presidential candidates, so possible democracy in the future is in question
 * The Duma has 450 seats, half are elected by proportional representation, and the other half by single-member-districts [[image:2cgrussia/voting.jpg width="368" height="228" align="right"]]


 * Too get any seat according to proportional representation, parties need at least 5% of the total vote
 * Elections follow the same two-round model as the presidential elections
 * Referendum-the constitution of 1993 let the president call for national referenda by popular vote on important issues
 * The Russian political system supports three types of national votes
 * The president usually continues rule without opposition
 * Honesty is in question because the media obviously promoted Yeltsin in 1996 and Putin in 2000

Single Member District:
 * Half the Duma elected by proportional system and other half single member district
 * By contrast, the single-member district ballot required a voter to endorse an individual, whose party affiliation, if any, could not be given on the ballot.
 * Single-member district ballot, candidates had to gather the signatures of at least 1 percent of the constituency electorate. The winner in each was the candidate with plurality of votes, regardless of the number of votes cast against all.

Interest groups and interest group systems :
 * Interest groups have no solid footing in civil society since private organizations are weak and the media is more and more under government control
 * Interest groups were only allowed in the Soviet Union under state corporatism, controlled by the government
 * Decision-making is made in the Central Committee and the Politburo
 * The Oligarchy have been a major influence on the policymaking process during the formative years of the Russian Federation
 * They are extremely wealthy insiders who own previously state-owned industries
 * Putin has shown resistance to oligarchics
 * The Russian Mafia controls underworld crime and they control local businesses, natural resources, and banks.

Military and Coercive institutions
 * The FSB which is the KGB’s successor carries out intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, economic crime investigation, electronic intelligence, border control and “social monitoring.”
 * Putin was a former member
 * The Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation serves as the administrative body of the Armed Forces
 * the General Staff has acted as the main commanding and supervising body of the Russian armed forces
 * The Russian military is divided into the following branches: the Russian Ground Forces the Russian Navy and the Russian Air Force[[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Banner_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_the_Russian_Federation_%28obverse%29.svg/784px-Banner_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_the_Russian_Federation_%28obverse%29.svg.png width="494" height="420" align="left" caption="Banner of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Airborne_Troops"]] . There are also three independent //arms of service// : Strategic Missile Troops, Military Space Forces, and the Russian Airborne Troops.
 * Sergei Ivanov said that the defence budget for 2009 will be 1.3 trillion rubles (US$39.4 billion). 322 billion rubles are allocated to purchase weapons, and the rest of the fund will be spent on construction, fuel st[[image:http://img.pcdn.vresp.com/media/e/4/8/e489242aac/6a04c0936e/c48d084d81/library/Russian_Military_Composition2.jpg width="320" height="253" align="right"]]orage and food supply.

Analysis: Like many new democracy's it seems that Russia has used the United States as a model for its structure of government, creating a bicameral legislature with a lower house being much like the U.S House of Representatives and an upper house resembling something like a Senate. Russia has also chosen to create a separation of powers like in the United States. Although the system is parliamentary in name, it actually resembles a congressional system in that the executive is separated from the legislative and unlike the United States, the Russian executive is much, much stronger than the legislative. The Russian Federation has also developed a Constitutional Court which very much resembles the Supreme Court of the United States but does not wield as much power.

By: Jared Jacobs and Philip Coffin

Sources:

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[|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma#History]

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[] [|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma#Powers] [] "Russian Federal Assembly." //World History: The Modern Era//. ABC-CLIO,  2012. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. Russia Packet