CPSU Legacies and Regional Democracy in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of Communist historical legacies on the variation of sub-national regimes in a federal state. It focuses on the Russian Federation and studies the role of sub-national variations of membership rates in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the 1970s and 1980s as a predictor of regional democracy in Russia in the 2000s. Using a unique dataset collected by the authors, the article shows that past CPSU membership rates continue to have a significant and negative impact on democracy at the sub-national level. The article also investigates possible mechanisms of this effect and links them to the persistence of Soviet bureaucracies and their role in exercising control over regional economies. These findings contribute to understanding the complex nexus of federalism and sub-national democracy and to the study of the role of communist legacies in democratisation.

Federalism, gubernatorial power and the incorporation of subnational authoritarianism in Russia: A theory-testing empirical inquiry

“…Note that Russia's regional regimes of the 1990s were not necessarily undemocratic. Some of them closely replicated the national model of disorderly yet rather competitive politics, while others could be viewed as hubs of subnational democracy (Golosov, 1999), which continuously exerted some impact on regional political patterns in the 2000s and thereafter (Obydenkova and Libman, 2013;Libman and Obydenkova, 2014b). However, the bulk of the available evidence clearly indicates that already by the end of the 1990s, deviations from authoritarian rule in the regions became increasingly rare and unusual.…”

Corruption and Trust in the European Union and National Institutions: Changes over the Great Recession across European States

“…This study, however, also pays attention to the importance of public opinion of states neighbouring the EU to account for existing research on the EU's impact on democratization, society, institutional development and even on freedom of mass media beyond the EU's Member States (Gawrich et al, ; Lankina et al ., ; Obydenkova, , ; Schweickert et al ., ). Here, the impact of national corruption on public opinion about ‘distant’ institutions might be ambiguous due to the influence of autocratic external factors and, more importantly, the role of historical legacies (Lankina et al, ; Libman and Obydenkova, , ; Obydenkova and Libman, ). Populations of non‐EU Member States with high levels of national corruption might perceive ‘distant’ institutions as more transparent and honest.…”

Understanding the survival of post-Communist corruption in contemporary Russia: the influence of historical legacies

“…In the regions with a higher CPSU membership share in the past, first, newcomers into the regional bureaucracy could have been recruited from former CPSU members, and second, the public perception of bureaucratic continuity (given stronger normative power of the former Communists) should also have been more favorable. Indeed, Libman and Obydenkova (2014), using the data for early 2000s, show that in regions with a larger share of CPSU members in the past there was a greater continuity of street-level bureaucracies, where the old Soviet cadres remained in office. However, they concentrate on a period when the share of former Soviet bureaucrats in Russian public administration was relatively large.…”