Extensive literature shows that businesspeople thrive on political connections. Most research, however, does not differentiate between types of political connection, thus effectively assuming that economic return on being connected should not differ systematically between federal and regional, legislative and executive, formal and informal connections. We collect a unique comprehensive dataset on Russia’s richest businesspeople in 2003–2010 and demonstrate that only certain types of connections work, depending on the political context. Our analysis shows that as Russian politics became centralized and the federal executive more powerful during the 2000s, businesspeople with informal connections to the federal executive increased their fortunes much faster compared with everyone else—including those with any other type of connections. Businesspeople’s wealth thus dynamically reflected these important political changes. This suggests a procedure for inferring nominally unobservable changes in the political system from politically connected businesspeople’s fortunes, while also shedding additional light on the institutional origins of informality in Russian politics today.

No abstract

The Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) has over time developed a practice of adopting so-called “Positive inadmissibility decisions” (Pozitivnoe Opredelenie) which complements (but also undermines) the existent formal procedure of only delivering decisions on merits with Judgments (Postanovlenie). The paper explores the uses of this peculiar practice. I show that the Positive inadmissibility doctrine is used by the Court to overcome the rigidity of the formal procedure where this is necessary for reasons of inter- or intra-organizational expediency. To do that I construct and analyze quantitatively a unique comprehensive dataset of all decisions handed down by the RCC in 1995–2015. I show that “Positive inadmissibility decisions” are handed whenever a subpar case is deemed too important to be simply dismissed: in particular, if it is submitted by a powerful petitioner, or when the case is assigned to a longer serving member of the Court for judicial report.

Of the 206 amendments introduced to the Russian constitution and adopted on July 1, 2020, 24 deal directly with the Constitutional Court, its organization, functioning, and the role it plays in the political system. Compared to many other, these are also rather precise and detailed, ranging from the number of judges on the bench, their nomination and dismissal, to the Court’s inner procedures, new locus standi limitations, and the primacy of the Constitution over Russia’s international obligations. Most changes only reproduce amendments brought to the secondary legislation over the last twenty years, and are therefore meant to preserve the status quo rather than change anything significantly. At the same time, a number of amendments aim at politicizing and instrumentalizing the Court for the president’s benefit, marking a significant departure from the previous institutional development.

Legal scholars distinguish between two main models of judi cial review — the American model and Austrian (European) one. In the American model, the scope of discretion and the relative role of the constitutional court in the political system are noticeably higher than in the Aust rian one. The author traces the history of the origin of these two models, explains the differences between them and raises the question of whether the boundaries between these two ideal types are too rigid or whether a gradual transition from the Austrian model to the American one (without formal constitutional reform) is possible. The author provides the answer drawing on the real case of such transition that occurred in the European Court of Justice in the 1960s. This case is unique precisely because the change in the system of the judicial review was the result of the gradual “migration” from one model to the other, rather than the result of an outside reform. Similar to Baron Munchausen, who pulled himself out of the swamp by his own hair, the European Court of Justice was able to independently, through its own decisions, alter the order of the judicial review in the European Union, bringing it closer to the American model. In the final part of the article, the author places this transition into a broader historical context, demonstrating that the success of the construction of a new European legal order was not predetermined and consisted of the decisions taken by the judges in each specific case. However, any national constitutional court finds itself in a similar situation after a change of the political regime. As a rule of thumb, new constitutional courts are created according to the Austrian model and are institutionally similar to the legislative branch of government, but in order to make judicial review efficient, they need to transform into the American model, becoming more similar to the courts of general jurisdiction. In this respect, the experience of the European Court of Justice can be extremely useful for them.