Duverger's Law in Russia: A Multi-Party System

Duverger’s Law in Russia: A Multi-Party System

            The electoral system in Russia for the State Duma (the lower house in the bi-cameral legislature) has undergone many changes since its inception in 1993. Just in the last three years, the law on Duma elections has undergone 17 amendments.[1] Throughout this period of instability, parties in the Duma have had to adapt to various regulations and changes. This blog focuses on determining whether the electoral system currently used by Russia supports Duverger’s Law governing how many effective parties exist in the system.

            The seats in Russia’s State Duma are awarded by proportional representation. There are 450 seats in the State Duma; all of which are chosen during the same election every five years.[2] The district magnitude is all of the 450 seats in the Duma, as Russia is considered one nationwide constituency for these elections.[3] The formula used to allocate seats is proportional representation using the Hare method, which divides the total number of valid votes by the total number of seats, and each party’s total valid vote is divided by that quotient.[4] The list structure is closed, or non-preferential. The parties designate who will represent them based on inner party rankings and service. Candidates are not permitted to switch party affiliations and only 50% of the candidates on each party list are required to actually be members of that party.[5] The threshold to receive any seats in the Duma is currently at 7%; however, in January 2013, the threshold will be lowered to 5%. Currently, any party that receives between 5-6% of the votes is awarded one seat in the Duma and any party that can gather 6-7% of the votes is awarded two seats in the Duma, but these parties may not participate in forming coalitions or blocs.[6] Only parties that are represented in the previous Duma may participate in the upcoming elections, unless they collect 150,000 signatures and register with the Central Electoral Commission.[7]

            The results of the most recent elections (December 2011) in the State Duma are as follows:

Parties and alliances[8]	Seat composition
	Seats		%
United Russia	238		52.88%
Communist Party	92		20.46%
A Just Russia	64		14.21%
Liberal Democratic Party	56		12.45%
Total	450		100.0%

Because no other party was able to garner more than 7% of the total vote, only 4 parties wereallocated seats in this election. After applying the equation to determine the number of effective parties to the data from the table above, I have calculated that the number of effective parties in Russia’s State Duma is 2.79. According to Duverger’s Law, this means that Russia’s electoral rules support a multi-party system. The results from Russia support Duverger’s Law on the effective number of parties within this electoral system.

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[1] Russian Analytical Digest No. 106, 21 December 2011

[2] The Levada Center. (2012, March 1). Duma: Russia Votes. Retrieved November 1, 2012, from Russia Votes: http://www.russiavotes.org/duma/duma_electoral_system.php

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Inter-Parliamentary Union. (2012). Retrieved November 1, 2012, from IPU: http://ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2263_B.htm

[8] Wikipedia. (2012, November 1). Elections in Russia: Wikipedia. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Russia