Party-system institutionalization and democracy: the case of Russia

Kenneth Wilson

No 91, UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series from UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES)

Abstract: Party-system institutionalization and its implications for democratic consolidation is an important sub-field in the study of political parties. The conventional view is that an institutionalized party system is better for democracy than an under-institutionalized one. This article considers the case of party-system institutionalization and democracy in Russia, and its implications for our understanding of the relationship between party-system institutionalization and democracy. The analysis finds, contrary to the expectations of the literature, that this relationship has been inverse in Russia i.e. as the party system has institutionalized democracy has declined. The Russian case shows that the link between party-system institutionalization and democracy does not necessarily hold and suggests that the conditions in which party-system institutionalization has democratizing effects need to be specified more precisely.

Keywords: party systems; institutionalization; democratization; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17454/1/17454.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:see:wpaper:91

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series from UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().