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Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 5
POST-SOVIET TRANSFORMATION
DOI: 10.19266/1829-4286-2016-02-05-38
Eurasian Multipartism: Variations on a Theme
PETRA STYKOW
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Germany
The paper analyzes the structure and competitiveness of party systems, the degree of
institutionalization of parliamentary parties, and the role of parties in making and
breaking governments in Eurasia’s twelve minimal and non-democratic countries.
Within the hegemonic party systems of Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan,
Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, personalist dominant parties translate presidential
power into the electoral and legislative arenas. However, they are not ‘ruling
parties.’ By contrast, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine, and to a lesser
degree Armenia feature more pluralist, competitive national and legislative party
systems that are plagued by the high instability of organizations and their coalitions.
Only in this group have parties also become the key actors in government formation
and termination. The two patterns mirror the structure and dynamics of network-
based ‘power pyramids’ in patronal regimes rather than a genuine ‘partyization’ of
politics akin to Western democracies.
Keywords
Party system, political party, political regime, governments, Eurasia.
Introduction
The collapse of communism in the European East and Southeast
at the end of the 1990s and the dismantling of the Soviet Union spurred a
large–scale natural experiment. Not only the majority of the citizens in
the postcommunist countries, but also Western observers assumed they
were witness to a fundamental and simultaneous transition to democracy
and market economy in more than two dozen countries. As part of a
historically unique ‘catch–up’ process, parties and party–based govern–
ments were to become the lynchpin of the new political systems, reenact-
ting in a short time span the centuries-long evolution of the West, where
modern democracy emerged as a “by-product of party competition”1.
1 Schattschneider E. E., Party Government. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942,
p. 4.
6 Petra Stykow
Yet, the postcommunist real–world development unfolded neither
quickly nor in the form scholars originally had expected. This is
especially true for the Eurasian successor states of the Soviet Union.
With the exception of the three Baltic republics, none of them has
transformed into a liberal democracy over the last quarter century, nor
have political parties become the key players in politics. Nevertheless,
not only do parties and party systems exist, but they also display
considerable variation all across the region. The spectrum of party
systems ranges from pluralist to hegemonic configurations. Legislatures
in the region are virtually party–free, structured by well–disciplined
parties but tightly controlled by presidents, or fragmented and highly
fluid but ‘real’ multiparty parliaments. Finally, party–based governments
have become common in some countries but not in others.
The present paper aims to systematize this variation by mapping
Eurasia according to three major dimensions of party system institution-
nalization. This concept has been elaborated in comparative research in
order to understand party and party system development in the so-called
‘third–wave democracies’ that have emerged in the last third of the
twentieth century. After adapting this concept to the Eurasian condition
of ‘patronal politics,’ I analyze the structure and competitiveness of party
systems, the degree of institutionalization of parliamentary parties, and
the role of parties in making and breaking governments in the twelve
post–Soviet countries under scrutiny. In all three dimensions, the
bewildering diversity of Eurasian politics can be boiled down to a few
patterns. I will interpret the empirical findings from the perspectives of
democratization, on the one hand, and of ‘patronal politics’, on the other
hand, showing that the Eurasian party and party system dynamics are best
understood as one of the manifestations of the emergence, consolidation
or breakdown and reshuffling of network-based ‘power pyramids.’
1. Party System Institutionalization in Patronal Regimes
Liberal democracy is virtually unthinkable without political
pluralism, organized in parties2. Parties integrate societies by bringing
2 Lipset S. M., The Indispensability of Political Parties, Journal of Democracy,
2000, 11, 1, 48–55.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 7
together different people with similar interests. They aggregate, shape
and represent these interests in politics, providing the electorate with
political alternatives and channeling the political participation of citizens.
They strive to win elections, to build governments and to implement
policies. However, in newly emerging democracies, parties and party
systems cannot be taken for granted. Even under the most favorable
conditions, they take time to become institutionalized.
Thus, even more than two decades after the onset of
democratization, most of the postcommunist countries in Central and
Eastern Europe are still plagued by volatile parties and party systems3.
Nevertheless, in these young democracies political parties are now
considered to be the key players in politics4, and parliamentary party
groups have become the basic building blocks of the internal organization
of parliaments as well as the main actors in government formation5.
The same cannot be said about the Soviet successor states. Here,
drawbacks and problems in the development of parties and party systems
are more forceful, more protracted and of a very different kind.
Compared to the countries in East Central Europe, the Eurasian new
nation-states started under far less favorable conditions, such as the lack
of democratic traditions, highly personalized politics, president-centered
constitutions and less democracy aid from the West. True, since the last
country in the region, Turkmenistan, legalized party pluralism in 2010,
all twelve Eurasian countries also have multiparty systems in the formal
sense of the term. Likewise, important processes of institutionalization
have occurred, particularly during the early twenty-first century. This
notwithstanding, parties and party competition in the post-Soviet space
remain markedly different from other parts of the postcommunist world.
These differences constitute one of the major aspects of the “enormous
3 Casal Bértoa F., Mair P., Party System Institutionalization across Time in Post-
Communist Europe. Keman H., Müller-Rommel F. (eds.), Party Government in the
New Europe, pp. 85–112, London: Routledge, 2012. Haughton T., Deegan-
Krause K., Hurricane Season. Systems of Instability in Central and East European
Party Politics, East European Politics and Societies, 2015, 29, 1, 61–80.
4 Ibenskas R., Sikk A., Patterns of Party Change in Central and Eastern Europe,
1990-2015, Party Politics, 2017, 23, 1, 43-54.
5 Olson D. M., Ilonszki G., Two Decades of Divergent Post-Communist
Parliamentary Development, Journal of Legislative Studies, 2011, 17, 2, 234–55.
8 Petra Stykow
divide” that has been diagnosed by scholars in the early twenty-first
century, separating the “mostly democratic East Central Europe” from
the “largely autocratic former Soviet Union”6. Yet, there is also impress-
sive variation within the Eurasian region which is far from being as
homogenous as this statement about the ‘postcommunist divide’ suggests.
The starting point of the present intra-regional analysis is ‘party
system institutionalization,’ the core concept in comparative research on
parties and party systems regarding newly emerging democracies. It can
be defined as the process “when the patterns of interaction among
political parties become predictable and stable over time”7. In the litera-
ture, this concept is usually operationalized by (a) the stability in rules
and patterns of interparty competition, (b) the strength of party-voter
linkages, i.e. of party roots in society, (c) the consensus of the main
political actors about the legitimacy of parties and the electoral process,
and (d) the relative independence of parties as collective actors from the
interests of their leaders8.
Empirical analyses of young democracies show that they are
often plagued by weak party and party system institutionalization. This
means “less regularity in patterns of party competition; weaker party
roots in society; less legitimacy accorded to parties; and weaker party
organizations, often dominated by personalistic leaders”9. On the face of
it, this description also seems to be appropriate for Eurasia, where apart
from minimal – democratic Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, more or less
authoritarian regimes prevail. However, this diagnosis is far too shallow.
A first closer look at the region reveals that the second and fourth
dimensions of party (system) institutionalization cannot be described
simply as ‘weak.’ In fact, parties are not anchored in the respective
6 Way L. A., Levitsky S., Linkage, Leverage, and the Post-Communist Divide, East
European Politics and Societies, 2007, 21, 1, 48–66; Møller J., Skaaning S., The
Three Worlds of Post-Communism. Revisiting Deep and Proximate Explanations,
Democratization, 2009, 16, 2, 298–322.
7 Casal Bértoa F., Mair P., Op. Cit, p. 87.
8 Mainwaring S., Scully T. R. (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party
Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA, Stanford Univ. Press, 1995; Mainwaring
S., Torcal M., Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the
Third Wave of Democratization, Katz R. S., Crotty W. J. (eds.), Handbook of Party
Politics. London, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006, pp. 204–227.
9 Mainwaring S., Torcal M., Op. cit, p. 207.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 9
societies at all. All countries deliver rather extreme evidence for what has
been described in the literature as clientelistic and personalistic voting,
meaning that the linkages between parties and their electorate are not
based on programmatic or ideological positions10. Further, most parties
are leader-centered ‘political machines’ with almost no ‘party capacity’,
defined as the ability of membership–based organizations “to maintain
consistency as collective actors in democratic politics–nominating candi-
dates, aggregating voters’ interests by proposing platforms and running
competitive national campaigns, and managing government power”11.
The reason for this extreme underinstitutionalization of parties is
the context of ‘patronal politics’ shared by all regimes in the region. This
is politics “where individuals organize their political and economic
pursuits primarily around the personalized exchange of concrete rewards
and punishments through chains of actual acquaintance”12. As a
consequence, the political realm is structured by extended political–
economic networks that pervade the state, society and the economy. Such
networks consist of more or less loosely coupled individuals and groups
striving for access to power, rallying around patrons and opportunis-
tically reshuffling alliances with other networks, thus forming ‘power
pyramids.’ In this context, political parties may exist and occasionally
play important roles, as I will show below. Yet, in essence they consist of
rather ephemeral manifestations of patronal networks. While party com–
petition in the electoral and legislative arena, the forging and breaking of
(coalition) governments and the emergence and decay of parties certainly
reflect intra-elite struggle and bargaining over the resources of the state,
they do not necessarily organize and structure this struggle. Rather,
political parties are ‘labels’ or ‘shells’ that these networks adopt in order
to pursue their interests in different political arenas.
As a consequence, the question of party system institutiona–
lization must be reformulated when applied to Eurasian politics. What is
at stake is not merely the ‘stability’ of party systems and the ‘legitimacy’
10 Mainwaring S., Torcal M., Op. cit.
11 Samuels D. J., Shugart M. S., Party ‘Capacity’ in New Democracies. How
Executive Format Affects the Recruitment of Presidents and Prime Ministers,
Democratization, 2014, 21, 1, 137–160.
12 Hale H. E., Patronal Politics. Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative
Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 10.
10 Petra Stykow
of parties as political actors. Rather, the important questions are
somewhat narrower and more basic than the initial focus on parties as the
main actors of democratization suggests. They concern the place of
parties as forms of elite coordination within patronal regimes. How are
the party systems structured? Is there party competition in the electoral
arena, and what does this mean in terms of ‘patronal politics’? Do parties
play a role in the legislative and governmental arenas at all?
2. Eurasia’s Party Systems
2.1. Types of Parties and Party Systems
While the European multiparty systems are typically structured by
ideological party families, the Eurasian party systems are not. Their
constituent parts are more adequately distinguished by their structural
position within the overall system.
The core element of every party system in the region, apart from
Belarus, is the so-called ‘party of power.’ During the 1990s, such parties
were amorphous coalitions of political-economic networks supporting the
president. They mostly emerged in the run-up to legislative elections, but
soon afterwards became inactive or disappeared altogether. With the
beginning of the second postcommunist decade, however, these electoral
machines consolidated in some countries. Parties of power are carefully
engineered in order to deliver incentives for the elites to join the ruling
coalition. With their privileged access to administrative resources in
exchange for supporting the president, successful instances of this party
type are able to mobilize voters and to organize (often commanding)
electoral victories13.
As organizations, parties of power are fundamentally different
from voluntary organizations based on formal membership typical for
liberal party-based democracies. Their very existence depends on the
credible and steady commitment of the president who is either the
13 Turovsky R., Party Systems in Post-Soviet States: The Shaping of Political
Competition. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 2011, 12, 2, 197-213;
Makarenko B. I., Postsovetskaya partiya vlasti: ‘Edinaya Rossiya’ v sravnitel'nom
kontekste, Polis, 2011, 1, 42–65 (in Russian).
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 11
organizational patron or the party’s chairman or both. Interactions
between the party leader, the party officials and affiliated politicians are
rather driven by loyalty and the exchange of clientelistic goods than by
ideological or programmatic affinity or organizational rules. In political
practice, formal party structures and procedures are nearly irrelevant for
the party’s functional operations, such as candidate nomination and
legislative activity. Their organizational capacity remains low, while
there is high identification of the party with the leader14.
The research literature on ‘authoritarian institutions’ usually
subsumes Eurasia’s parties of power under the label of ‘dominant
parties’, a party species in semi- and non-democratic settings that can be
found in several regions of the world15. The dominant party is an
organization which “controls access to many (…) important political
offices, shares powers of policy–making and patronage distribution, and
uses privileged access to state resources to maintain its position in
power”16. More precisely, the Eurasian variety of the dominant party is
that of a ‘personalist dominant party’17 arising out of the patronal nature
of post-Soviet politics.
However, not all parties of power are the same in the region.
First, differences in degree lurk behind the overall similarity of strong
personalism. At the outward personalist end of the continuum are parties
such as Kazakhstan’s Nur Otan party18, the People’s Democratic Party of
14 Kostadinova T. Levitt B., Toward a Theory of Personalist Parties. Concept
Formation and Theory Building, Politics & Policy, 2014, 42, 4, 490–512.
15 Greene K. F., The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single-Party Dominance,
Comparative Political Studies, 2010, 43, 7, 807–834; Magaloni B., Kricheli R.,
Political Order and One-Party Rule, Annual Review of Political Science, 2010, 13,
123–143.
16 Reuter, O. J., Turovsky R., Dominant Party Rule and Legislative Leadership in
Authoritarian Regimes, Party Politics, 2014, 20, 5, 663–74; Reuter, O. J., Gandhi
J., Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties. British
Journal of Political Science , 2011, 41, 1, 83–110.
17 Isaacs R., Whitmore S., The Limited Agency and Life-Cycles of Personalized
Dominant Parties in the Post-Soviet Space. The Cases of United Russia and Nur
Otan, Democratization, 2014, 21, 4, 699–721.
18 Isaacs R., Party System Formation in Kazakhstan. Between Formal and Informal
Politics. London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 116-7.
12 Petra Stykow
Tajikistan and Yeni Azerbaijan1 9, while Armenia’s Republican Party, for
example, occupies a moderate position. It has already survived several
leadership turnovers – a sign of at least some impersonal institution-
nalization – and is somewhat less president-centered20. United Russia can
be located somewhere in between, combining “a personalistic party with
strong bureaucratic elements”21. Finally, political alliances such as
Georgian Dream22 and Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko Bloc23 are still
barely formalized electoral and government coalitions, consisting of
different personalized power networks with only a small degree of
cohesion.
Second, not all parties of power have managed to consolidate as
dominant parties. Failed or abandoned ‘projects’ of pro-presidential
networks easily outnumber successful instances. For example, in Russia
such electoral machines have been forged in the run-up to every election
since 1993. However, it was only with President Vladimir Putin that
United Russia emerged as the modal case of a Eurasian dominant party24.
The differences in the ability of these parties to hold onto power and to
consolidate are the most important feature distinguishing the more
competitive political regimes in the region from their more authoritarian
neighbors, as will be shown below. For convenience, I operationalize the
category of ‘consolidated dominant party’ as a ‘party of power’ that
controls the legislature for at least two consecutive legislative periods,
holding more than 45 percent of mandates.
Related to the strength of the party of power is the degree to
which party pluralism is formally allowed or tolerated. Post-Soviet party
systems also vary according to whether they embrace the opposition and
19 Hale H., Patronal…., Op. Cit., p. 474; Ishiyama J., Political Party Development
and Party ‘Gravity’ in Semi-Authoritarian States. The Cases of Azerbaijan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 2008, 4, 1, 33–53.
20EuFoA (European Friends of Armenia), Armenia 2012: An Introduction to the
Political Party Landscape, 2012,
http://www.eufoa.org/uploads/ArmeniaPoliticalPartyGuide.pdf (25.02.2017).
21 Roberts S. P., Putin's United Russia Party. New York: Routledge, 2013, p.185.
22 Fairbanks Ch. H., Georgian Democracy. Seizing or Losing the Chance? Journal
of Democracy, 2014, 25, 1, 154–165.
23 Fedorenko K., et al, The Ukrainian Party System before and after the 2013–2014
Euromaidan, Europe-Asia Studies, 2016, 68, 4, 609–630.
24 Roberts S. P., Op. cit.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 13
whether oppositional parties are represented in the national assembly. For
convenience, I set out three categories of parties25 that can be found along
with the parties of power. First, ‘satellite parties’ are actively created or
at least supported by the ruling group representing appendices to the
party of power. Most of them are ‘spoiler parties’ charged to divert votes
and support from the more ‘real’ opposition. The second category
consists of ‘semi–opposition parties’ that potentially offer some
challenge, but do not make claims for fundamental regime change. These
parties declare themselves as the ‘constructive opposition,’ implicating at
least some loyalty to the president. Their leaders are in an ambivalent
position because they simultaneously remain outside the ruling group yet
are integrated into the overall regime architecture. Third, the ‘principal’
or ‘non-systemic opposition’, in contrast, consists of parties or
individuals that openly challenge the existing regime. All constitutions in
the region to some extent restrict the political ideologies, strategies and
goals of political parties, but some parts of the principal opposition
generally enjoy legal status. Their activities are constrained by rigorous
party and electoral laws erecting seemingly technical hurdles of party
registration and election participation. In the same vein, repression is
often camouflaged by administrative and judicial means or by negative
campaigning and the launching of political ‘kompromat’, directed against
opposition party leaders and activists.
The party systems in the region vary along the degree of domina-
tion exerted by the parties of power. When referring to the traditional
typology of party systems as proposed by Sartori26, three categories are
relevant. First, in ‘hegemonic party regimes’ multiparty elections are
regularly held but “the possibility of a rotation in power is not even
envisaged” as long as the regime is intact, so that opposition parties are
“second class, licensed parties”27 rather than competitors. In Eurasia,
there are two varieties of hegemonic party regimes that feature fig-leaf
party pluralism at best. In Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, consolidated
25 cf. Gel'man V., Party Politics in Russia. From Competition to Hierarchy, Europe-
Asia Studies, 2008, 60, 6, 913–930; White D., Re-Conceptualising Russian Party
Politics, East European Politics , 2012, 28, 3, 210–224.
26 Sartori G., Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976.
27 Sartori G., Op. cit., p. 230.
14 Petra Stykow
dominant parties hold more than three-fourths of the seats in the national
legislature. By contrast, in Russia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the
respective parties of power also fulfill the criterion of consolidated
dominant parties, but it is only with the help of satellite parties that they
control from 75 to 100 percent of the mandates.
In other cases, parties of power are forced to compete under
conditions of ‘real’ but more or less constrained party pluralism and
‘real’ but more or less flawed elections. Here, we find ‘predominant party
systems’ where opposition parties are not only permitted to exist but
regularly challenge the dominant party even if this is not effective.
Granted that it is rather impossible to define the category of predominant
party system in a universal sense28, I will reserve the term for party
systems where, first, there is a consolidated dominant party as defined
above, i.e. holding a (near to) absolute majority of seats over at least two
consecutive legislative periods. Second, in predominant party systems
some principal opposition parties are represented in the national assembly
in a non – negligible quantity.
All other party systems with a meaningful opposition and parties
of power that fail to meet the last criterion shall be grouped together
under the label of ‘pluralist party systems.’ When charting the Eurasian
cases according to this framework, the following picture emerges (see
table).
2.2. Mapping Eurasia
Stable Hegemonic Party Systems. A first group of countries displays
hegemonic party systems. The typical cases are Azerbaijan, Tajikistan,
Kazakhstan and Russia (since 2003). Here, at least a few semi-opposition
and non-systemic parties have taken part in every parliamentary election
since independence. On Election Day the number of registered parties,
however, is regularly cut by half and more. This especially affects the
principal opposition, which is regularly excluded from the assembly,
whereas the presidential party of power routinely wins the legislative
majority or supermajority.
28 Sartori G., Op. cit. pp. 192-201.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 15
The Nur Otan party, founded by President Nursultan Nazarbaev
in 1999, has dominated Kazakhstan’s party system since 2004.
Opposition parties have been either co–opted into the regime or
marginalized29. The legislative election in March 2016 produced an
assembly with Nur Otan holding 82.2 percent of the seats and two parties
of the ‘constructive opposition’ each winning seven out of the 98 seats.
In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon’s People’s Democratic
Party (PDPT), founded in 1998, has had a hegemonic position right from
the election in 2000, when it won two thirds of the seats. During the first
decade after the civil war, the regime was somewhat constrained by a
power-sharing arrangement with the opposition30 so that bargaining with
the opposition and co-optation as well as the creation of two satellite
parties were the prevailing strategies of the ruling group. During the last
couple of years, however, restrictions and repression have become more
intense. In 2015, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), the
only religious opposition in Central Asia enjoying a legal status, was de
facto banned. It is no longer represented in the current assembly. In
addition to the PDPT, which now holds 76 percent of the seats, five
parties each obtained between one and five seats in the 2015 election. All
of these parties are regarded as pro-presidential, with the Communist
party (two seats) representing the single semi–oppositional ‘constructive
opposition,’ labeling the election a ‘political farce’31.
Azerbaijan’s party of power, founded in 1992 by late President
Heydar Aliyev, has been in control of the country’s assembly since the
29 Isaacs R., Op. cit.; Nurumov D., Vashchanka V., Constitutional Development of
Independent Kazakhstan, Elgie R., Moestrup S. (eds.), Semi-Presidentialism in the
Caucasus and Central Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 143–172;
30 Borishpolets K., Elections in Central Asian State. Political Rivalry in a
Transitional Society, Central Asia and the Caucasus, 2006, 1, 37, 25-37;
Markowitz L. P., Tajikistan. Authoritarian Reaction in a Postwar State, Finkel E.,
Brudny Y. M. (eds.), Coloured Revolutions and Authoritarian Reactions, London:
Routledge, 2013, pp. 98–119.
31 Mardon M., Neodnoznachnaya otsenka godovoi deyatel'nosti tadzhikskogo
parlamenta, Radio Ozodi. 17/06/2016 (in Russian),
http://rus.ozodi.org/a/27805100.html (21.09.2016); Mardon M., Naskolko dolgo
prodlitsya ‘molchanie’ politikov v Tadzhikistane? Radio Ozodi. 20/06/2016 (in
Russian), http://rus.ozodi.org/a/27809688.htm (21.09.2016); Mardon M., Talbakov:
Kompartiya trebuet vernut' svoyu sobstvennost'. Radio Ozodi. 23/07/2016 (in
Russian), http://rus.ozodi.org/a/27876396.html (21.09. 2016).
16 Petra Stykow
1995 election. The case is special, because Yeni Azerbaijan has never
held a legislative majority on its own. Instead, it assures the near–to 90
percent majority of the party of power by relying on additional 30 to 50
loyal deputies masquerading as independent mandate-holders. Overall,
the countries party system is densely populated with about 70 registered
parties, remaining highly fragmented and fluid32. In the 2015 legislative
election, which was boycotted by the major opposition parties, Yeni
Azerbaijan won 69 of 125 seats. It is also supported by 43 independents
and at least three deputies belonging to small satellite parties.
While Russia’s party system was pluralist and ‘hyperfragmented’
during the first postcommunist decade, since 2003 it has become clearly
dominated by United Russia33. The September 2016 Duma election
brought back the constitutional majority for the presidential party, a
position it had already held in the period 2003–2011. The three satellite
respective semi – opposition parties in the Duma are the same as before34.
Also, a number of non–systemic opposition parties have run for mandates
in every election since 1993, but none of them was able to overcome the
seven percent threshold in the 2007 and 2011 elections, when the Duma
was elected by proportional vote only. After the restoration of parallel
voting in 2016, one candidate of the semi–opposition party Civilian
power won a single–member constituency. This is much less than in
2003, when the same electoral system was used for the last time and eight
parties which had polled below the electoral threshold managed to gain
mandates in the first–past–the-post tier of the voting system.
32 LaPorte J., Hidden in Plain Sight. Political Opposition and Hegemonic
Authoritarianism in Azerbaijan, Post-Soviet Affairs, 2015, 31, 4, 339–366;
Sultanova S., Challenging the Aliyev Regime. Political Opposition in Azerbaijan.
Demokratizatsiya, 2014 22, 1, 15–37; Allahyarova T., Mammadov F., Political
Parties in Azerbaijan. From One Election to Another. Baku: Center for Strategic
Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 2010.
33 Gel'man V., From ‘Feckless Pluralism’ to ‘Dominant Power Politics’? The
Transformation of Russia's Party System, Democratization, 2006, 13, 4, 545–561;
Smyth R., Political Preferences and Party-Development in Post-communist States,
Demokratizatsiya, 2012, 20, 2, 113–132; Roberts S. P., Op. Cit.
34 Gel'man V., Party …, Op. cit.; White D., Op. cit.; Wilson K., How Increased
Competition Can Strengthen Electoral Authoritarianism. Party-System Pluralization
in Russia, Problems of Post-Communism, 201, 63, 4, 199–2096.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 17
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are extreme instances of hegemo-
nic party systems where party pluralism is a bold, outright fake. All four
elections in Uzbekistan since 1999 and the first ‘multiparty’ election in
Turkmenistan (2013) – all of them officially showed an 85 percent to 90
percent voter turnout – reveal the same pattern: All registered parties
running for seats win mandates, the ratio of which is obviously fixed ex
ante. Remarkably, the presidential party is assigned not the majority of
seats but only about a third of the overall number. The ‘best loser’ wins
somewhat less than three quarters of the winner’s share and the other
parties follow in a hierarchy. While this distribution seems surprising at
first glance, it makes perfect sense from the perspective of presidents
who do not lean on parties of power in the strict sense, but on what could
be called orchestrated ‘party systems of power.’ They are composed of a
manageable number of organizations each representing a certain cluster
of ‘values’ or social groups. Thus, in Turkmenistan, the Democratic
Party is surrounded by the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the
Trade Union, the Women’s Union and the Youth association. In
Uzbekistan all parties bear the label ‘democratic’ with a qualifying
adjective – they are Liberal, Social, People’s and National Revival
Democrats. In addition, the Ecological Movement appoints 15 deputies.
Hence, the distribution of seats rather reflects the president’s vision about
the appropriate range and hierarchy of social groups or ideological issues.
Conceptually, there is no place for even a semi–opposition. This is
demonstrated, for example, by the lack of distinction between the parties’
electoral manifestos35 but also by Uzbekistan’s late President Karimov’s
routine of regularly changing the party that was honored to nominate him
for the next presidential election.
35 Ismoilov S., Saidov S., On the Results of the Parliamentary Elections in
Uzbekistan, Central Asia and the Caucasus, 2010, 11, 1, 63-78.
18 Petra Stykow
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 19
20 Petra Stykow
Oscillating Predominant – Pluralist Party Systems. In the other
countries of the region, parties of power also regularly emerge but their
position is less dominant, more fragile and more short–lived than in the
hegemonic systems. Moldova, Georgia and Armenia have party systems
that oscillate between the predominant and the pluralist variety. Here,
parties of power have sometimes been able to stabilize over a certain
period.
While the first two presidents of postcommunist Moldova were
disinterested, unable or deliberately reluctant to create parties of power,
the situation changed in 2001. The Party of Communists of the Republic
of Moldova (PCRM), founded in 1993 as the successor of the Soviet-
Moldovan communist party, had a strong hold between February 2001
and April 2009. As the president’s party it controlled the majority of seats
in the parliament, cutting the threshold to a predominant party system.
However, in 2010, the party system became clearly pluralist36. At
present, the Moldovan party system is in heightened flux. Taken together,
in the last two elections (2010-2014) 31 parties have participated, 18 of
them for the first time.
Georgia has thus far experienced three spells of a predominant
party system. Eduard Shevardnadze’s Citizens’ Union of Georgia,
founded in 1993, was firmly in control of the parliament between 1995
and 200337. After the regime was ousted by the Rose revolution in 2003,
the new incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili managed to establish a
predominant position for his United National Movement, commanding
constitutional majorities in the 2004 and 2008 assemblies. Yet, in 2012
the newly formed, extremely amorphous opposition coalition Georgian
36 Way L., Lucan Pluralism by Default. Weak Autocrats and the Rise of
Competitive Politics. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2015, ch. 4;
Popescu N., Moldova's Fragile Pluralism., Russian Politics and Law, 2012, 50, 4,
37–50; Saran V., Moldova’s New Cabinet. A Hope to Overcome the Political Crisis
2016? University of Nottingham: Party Systems and Governments Observatory,
2016, http://whogoverns.eu/moldovas-new-cabinet-a-hope-to-overcome-the-
political-crisis-in-2016 (24.09.2016).
37Christophe B., Understanding Politics in Georgia. DEMSTAR Research Report,
22. Aarhus: University of Aarhus, 2004.Christophe 2004; Nodia G., Pinto S. Á.,
The Political Landscape of Georgia. Political Parties: Achievements, Challenges and
Prospects. Delft: Eburon, 2006.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 21
Dream seized 57 percent of the seats38. With the triumph of Georgian
Dream in the next (2016) parliamentary election winning more than 76
percent of the mandates, it became obvious that a third period of a
predominant party system had commenced.
Armenia’s party system was on the cusp of a predominant party
system between 1991 and 1998, but the Armenian National Movement
(ANM) never held a formal parliamentary majority. After a reshuffling of
the party system between the late –1990s through until the mid – 2000s,
the Republican Party (RPA) consolidated as the new party of power.
From 2000, party leaders were prime ministers, and in 2008, party
chairman Serzh Sargsyan became the country’s third president. After
having won the biggest share of mandates in Armenia’s fragmented
national assembly in 1999 and 2003, it reached a majority in the 2007,
2012, 2017 elections consolidating as a predominant party. Observers
note that Armenian political space while being more close than
Georgia’s, remains more open and competitive than that of Azerbaijan, it
other neighbor39.
Pluralist Party Systems. In Ukraine, over the entire post-Soviet period,
as much as 150 different parties have participated at least once in the
seven national elections since 1994, but only 38 have ever held mandates,
22 of these gaining them by joining coalitions or electoral blocs40. Using
the criteria developed above, the party system has always been of the
pluralist variety, afflicted by major instability41. Even the strongest party
38Berglund C., Georgia between Dominant-Power Politics, Feckless Pluralism, and
Democracy. Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 2014,
22, 3, 445–470; Nakashidze M., Semi-Presidentialism in Georgia. Elgie R.,
Moestrup S. (eds.), Semi-Presidentialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia,
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119–142, 2016.
39 Way L., State Power and Autocratic Stability. Armenia and Georgia Compared,
Wooden A. F. and Stefes C. H. (eds.), The Politics of Transition in Central Asia and
the Caucasus. London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 103–123. Hale H. E., 25 Years After
The USSR. What’s Gone Wrong? Journal of Democracy, 2016, 27, 3, 24–35;
Markarov A., Semi-Presidentialism in Armenia. Elgie R., Moestrup S. (eds.), Semi-
Presidentialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.
61–90.
40 Fedorenko K., et al, Op. Cit.
41 Rybiy O., Party System Institutionalization in Ukraine, Demokratizatsiya , 2013,
21, 3, 401–423.
22 Petra Stykow
failed to gain the majority of seats, surpassing its closest rival only rarely
by more than a slim margin. While Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine,
Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions and the Petro Poroshenko
Bloc fit the definition of a party of power, none of them was ever able to
command the party system for two legislative periods and to establish
hegemony.
In Kyrgyzstan, party – affiliated deputies have been the exception
rather than the rule over a long period of time. Only by the mid-2000s
was party development pushed by President Askar Akaev’s attempt to
build a party of power modeled after United Russia and Nur Otan.
However, it failed spectacularly with the Tulip revolution in early 200542.
The project of the next President Kurmanbek Bakiev seemed to succeed
at first. The new party of power won nearly 80 percent of the seats in the
2007 parliamentary election, but was ousted three years later by another
mass mobilization43. With the new 2010 constitution capping the number
of deputies for a single party at 54 percent, and a new electoral law in
2011, a pluralist party system emerged with as many as 194 officially
registered parties by August 2014 in a country with less than three
million adult inhabitants. Two elections produced a fractious parliament
with almost evenly distributed seats among five parties in 201044 and a
somewhat stronger presidential party in 2015 (38 seats), surrounded by
five opposition parties holding between 11 and 28 seats45.
Formally, Belarus also has a pluralist party system. In fact,
however, this pluralism is completely feckless mirroring the absence of a
party of power. The fluid system embraces parties ranging from satellites
42 Elebaeva A., Pukhova M., Political Transformations in Kyrgyzstan (1991-2006),
Central Asia and the Caucasus, 2007, 2, 44, 67–78.
43Marat E., Kyrgyzstan: A Parliamentary System Based on Inter-Elite Consensus.
Demokratizatsiya, 2012 20, 4, 325–344; Cummings S., et al, State, Regime, and
Government in the Kyrgyz Republic (1991–2010): Disaggregating a Relationship,
East European Politics , 2013, 29, 4, 443–460.
44 Huskey E., Hill D., The 2010 Referendum and Parliamentary Elections in
Kyrgyzstan, Electoral Studies, 2011, 30, 4, 876–879.
45 Juraev S., The Evolving Role of Political Parties in Kyrgyz Politics, Marlene L.,
Johan E.l (eds.): Kyrgyzstan beyond ‘Democracy Island’ and ‘Failing State’. Social
and Political Changes in a Post-Soviet Society, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015,
pp. 21–38; Fumagalli M., Semi-Presidentialism in Kyrgyzstan, Elgie R., Moestrup
S. (eds.), Semi-Presidentialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016, pp. 173–206.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 23
to the non-systemic opposition, but these are not the relevant players
even in the electoral arena, where the bulk of candidates remain nonpar-
tisan46. Thus, in the last elections to the House of Representatives
(September 2016), 94 independent candidates succeeded, one of them
considered to belong to the opposition. At the same time, nine parties ran
for seats, five of which won a combined total of 16 mandates - 14 were
obtained by three regime – loyal parties, whereas the ‘constructive’ and
the non-systemic opposition each gained one seat47. Although the number
of partisan mandates seems low, it had doubled the share compared to the
previous assemblies.
2.3. Discussion: The Structure of Party Competition in Eurasia
In summary, after a quarter century of evolution it is underinsti-
tutionalization, fragmentation and high party volatility that still plague
the pluralist or predominant party systems of Armenia and Georgia,
Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine. In contrast, the hegemonic party
systems in the other countries have seemingly been ‘frozen’ over time,
revolving around a consolidated dominant party, that is orbited by
underinstitutionalized and fluid satellite or opposition parties.
It is important to note that in all cases parties remain weakly
organized, personalistic and programmatically weak. Instead, the core
difference between the pluralist/pluralist-predominant and the hegemonic
party systems can be found at the level of competitiveness within the
party system, not in the nature of the parties as organizations. It is
therefore not surprising that the different patterns of party competition
roughly correspond to the democratic quality of political regimes (see the
first column of the table). All authoritarian regimes – as diagnosed by
Freedom House – feature stable hegemonic party systems, with
46 Charnysh V., Kulakevich T., Belarusian Political Parties: Organizational
Structures and Practices, http://charnysh.net/documents/Parties.pdf, (23.02.2017);
Glavachek P., Politicheskie partii i obshchestvo v sovremennoj Belarusi, Polis,
2010, 2, 64–74 (in Russian).
47 CEC: Soobshchenie Tsentral'noi Komissii Respubliki Belarus’ po vyboram i
provedeniyu respublikanskikh referendumov ob itogakh vyborov deputatov Palaty
predstavitelei Natsional'nogo sobraniya Respubliki Belarus’ shestogo sozyva (In
Russian), http://rec.gov.by/ru/Elections-PPNS6-Gol. (12.11. 2016).
24 Petra Stykow
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as the least free countries being accom-
panied by the most extreme variety of fig-leaf pluralism. In contrast, none
of the minimal democracies in the region – Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia–
or the relatively competitive regimes of Kyrgyzstan and Armenia have
ever reached the stage of hegemonic party systems. Instead, their party
systems are pluralist, with some occasional predominant spells48.
However, it is not party pluralism per se that matters, but rather
the condition of the party of power. This is the main factor defining
whether there is meaningful political competition or not, mirrored by
higher or lower democracy scores. This becomes particularly obvious in
the exceptional case of ‘pluralist’ Belarus as well as when comparing the
dynamics of the party systems in the region. In the more competitive
countries, between one and three major party system turnovers have
taken place over the last two and a half decades. This has been linked to
the decay of parties of power that have been unable to stabilize in the
long run, being ousted by mass mobilization in Georgia (2003), Ukraine
(2014) and Kyrgyzstan (2005, 2010) or by losing elections in Moldova
(2009) and Georgia (2012). In contrast, parties of power have managed to
become consolidated dominant parties in the authoritarian countries of
the region.
Thus, on the face of it, the variation in the structure of party
systems seems to echo alternative political trajectories leading to either
delayed and inconclusive democratization or authoritarian consolidation.
Yet, a more fruitful interpretation of these dynamics refers to the
network-based particularities of ‘patronal politics’49. Stable hegemonic
systems with intact parties of power correspond to the situation of what
Hale calls ‘single – pyramid systems,’ characterized by the existence of a
comprehensive, nation – wide presidential power network with political
contention being almost invisible or absent altogether. Predominant party
systems reflect a similar constellation, but the presidential pyramid is
somewhat less powerful or less consolidated, facing challenges from
other networks. In pluralist party systems, the party of power is far less
comprehensive and routinely forced to compete with other network
48 Freedom in the World 2016, Freedom House,
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016 (17.10.2016).
49 Hale, H. E., Patronal…., Op. Cit.; Hale, H. E., 25 Years…., Op. Cit.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 25
pyramids. In these network – based interactions, party labels serve as
focal points for elite coordination in the electoral arena.
The logic of patronal politics tends to produce regime cycles that are
shaped by the emergence of integrated power pyramids, their occasional
decay, reshuffling or replacement by a new ‘single – power pyramid’ or
the fierce competition between rivalling networks50. In the electoral
arena, regime crises and breakdowns causing changes in network
configurations condense in thrusts of party development and the
restructuring of party systems. In the more authoritarian countries, the
first post-Soviet single-pyramid systems have survived thus far, taking on
the shape of stable hegemonic party systems in the early 2000s. In
contrast, Eurasia’s more competitive regimes feature less stable parties
and party systems. The oscillation between different types of party
systems echoes alterations of parties of power and the reconstruction of
power pyramids. Thus, the reported empirical evidence can be interpreted
in terms of regime cycles. For example, at present, on the eve of a major
change in national leadership, combined with a constitutional switch
from semi-presidentialism to parliamentarism, Armenia’s single-pyramid
system is under heavy pressure. In Kyrgyzstan and Moldova several
‘pyramid-parties’ are competing on a more or less level playing field. In
contrast, in Georgia and Ukraine a fragile centripetal trend is underway,
leaning towards constellations with two broader political coalitions as the
main competitors and a number of smaller parties on the fringes.
Although the challenger coalitions are smaller and weaker than the
current party of power, rotation on power is definitely an option in future
elections.
3. Parties in the Legislative and Executive Arenas
3.1. Legislative Parties
In Western democracies, parties are not only the single relevant
players in electoral politics, but also in the legislative and executive
arenas. Legislative assemblies are complex institutions that are organized
through two different ‘channels’ – committees, on the one hand, and
50 Hale, H. E., Patronal…., Op. Cit.
26 Petra Stykow
‘parliamentary party groups’ (PPG), often called ‘clubs’ or ‘factions’, on
the other hand. These channels overlap in several ways: Committees, on
the one hand, consist of members that are nominated by party groups,
they are the arena where parties negotiate and bargain over policy issues,
and both channels share floor debates51. PPGs, on the other hand, unite
deputies from the same (extra-parliamentary) party. They aggregate
political and ideological interests, linking mass suffrage with political
organizations and national parliaments. By providing electoral
accountability of the elites to the voters they ensure the legitimacy of the
democratic system. In addition, in parliamentary democracies, PPGs
promote system stability and efficiency because they deliver a coherent
base for government formation and policy – making52. Committees, in
turn, stress technical expertise and professionalism in legislation and are
organized along different policy domains53. This is the background
against which the party structure of the Eurasian national assemblies,
more precisely, their lower houses54, shall now be analyzed.
Nonpartisan Assemblies. In most countries, the institutionalization of
PPGs has been a long and protracted process which has both mirrored
and endorsed the institutionalization of the national party system in the
wider electoral arena. Currently, all but three Eurasian national
assemblies have a dual – channel design including parliamentary party
groups as well as committees. As of May 2015, when I conducted an
analysis of the composition of all Eurasian national assemblies, only the
legislatures of Belarus, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan stand out in their
nonpartisan, single – channel, committee – centered design that is
reminiscent of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. In Azerbaijan,
the formation of PPGs is not precluded by legislation, however. With a
51 Olson D. M., Democratic Legislative Institutions. A Comparative View. Armonk,
N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1994.
52 Heidar K., Koole R. A., Approaches to the Study of Parliamentary Party Groups,
Heidar K., Koole R. A. (eds.), Parliamentary Party Groups in European
Democracies. Political Parties behind Closed Doors, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.
4-22.
53 Ostrow J. M., Comparing Post-Soviet Legislatures. A Theory of Institutional
Design and Political Conflict. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2000.
54 Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Tajikistan have bicameral systems.
None of the upper houses is organized along party structures.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 27
minimum level of 20 percent of mandate-holders, though, the technical
hurdle is very high, and the incentive to unite is low because the usual
rights granted to parliamentary groups, such as access to resources and
facilities or representation in the leading body of the assembly, are not
conferred. The only party that meets the formal requirements is Yeni
Azerbaijan, but it renounced organizing into a PPG55. Similar to this
pattern is Tajikistan, where the presidential party is also the only party
that overcomes the minimal threshold of five (out of 63) mandates but
has been organized as a faction56.
Multiparty Assemblies Dominated by Parties of Power. All other
countries in the region have assemblies that are well structured along
party lines and display officially recognized PPGs. Yet again, there are
different patterns. In Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, all mandate-
holders of the assemblies are members of three to four PPGs.57
In Russia, the decision to break with the Soviet committee system
fell immediately after the constitution of the first Duma in late 199358.
This drove the process of party-building and bolstered the parliament’s
capacity to bargain and compromise with the executive, even if during
the 1990s the PPGs were only moderately disciplined and the assembly
lacked stable majority coalitions59. After 2003, in accord with the
emergence of a hegemonic party system, the Duma moved towards a
strong majoritarian direction. As in the other two countries, all legislative
parties have a stable personnel composition and display a highly
55Alieva L., Political Party Regulation in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Baku: Center
for National and International Studies, 2012.
56 Mardon M., Neodnoznachnaya otsenka godovoi deyatel'nosti tadzhikskogo
parlamenta. Radio Ozodi. 17/06/2016, http://rus.ozodi.org/a/27805100.html,
retrieved 21 September 2016.
57 In addition, the assemblies of the latter two countries also contain two nonparty
groups that are not subjected to popular elections.
58 Haspel M., Should Party in Parliament Be Weak or Strong? The Rules Debate in
the Russian State Duma, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics,
1998, 14, 1-2, 178–200.
59Chaisty P., Party Cohesion and Policy-Making in Russia, Party Politics, 2005, 11,
3, 299–318; Remington T. F., The Russian Federal Assembly, 1994-2004, Journal
of Legislative Studies, 2007, 13, 1, 121–141.
28 Petra Stykow
disciplined voting behavior60. While in the 1990s party switching was
extremely frequent in Russia61, this practice was precluded by the
introduction of new rules after 2003. In addition, organizational changes
prompted United Russia to gain control over the presiding and agenda-
setting organ of the assembly, the Duma council62.
The internal organization of Armenia’s national assembly is
rather similar to this pattern. It is organized in six stable party groups and
seven independent deputies (as of September 2016). The existence of a
dominant party in parliament seems to make a fundamental impact on the
legislature’s overall stability as well as its capacity to serve as a
transmission belt for presidential power. Interestingly enough, the
Moldovan experience during the 2000s was quite similar, even if the
country was a parliamentary republic with a seemingly weak, assembly-
elected president. When the Communist Party was dominant and formed
a large and disciplined PPG, President Vladimir Voronin was able to rule
with an “executive dominant ‘vertical power’ style of governance”63.
However, with the decay of the PCRM as the party of power, the
situation changed fundamentally.
Pluralist Multiparty Assemblies. The structure of the remaining
parliaments is more complicated. It consists of two layers, that of the
parliamentary parties proper and that of inter – party coalitions. In
Georgia’s assembly, at the first level, twelve parliamentary groups
organize parties and independent deputies. At the second level, a
superstructure is imposed with six factions building the ‘majority’, and
four building the ‘minority’ (as of September 2016). Both ‘superfactions’
have their own infrastructure and resources. While the superstructures
60 Remington T., Patronage and Power: Russia’s Dominant Party Regime,
Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 2008, 49, 2, 213–228.
61 Mershon C., Shvetsova O., Parliamentary Cycles and Party Switching in
Legislatures. Comparative Political Studies, 2008, 41, 1, 99–127.
62 Chaisty P., The Federal Assembly and the Power Vertical, Graeme J. Gill and
James Young (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society, London:
Routledge, pp. 92–101, 2012.
63 Crowther W., Second Decade, Second Chance? Parliament, Politics and
Democratic Aspiration in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, Olson D., Ilonszki G.
(eds.): Post-Communist Parliament. Change and Stability in the Second Decade,
London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 32–56; Hale H. E., Patronal…., Op. Cit., ch. 10.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 29
staunchly divide the assembly into the government coalition and the
opposition, below the surface some reshuffling has been underway across
the entire legislative period (2012–2016), in the form of individual party
switching as well as coalition rearrangement. After the 2016 legislative
election, Georgia became the third country in the region, whereas in
Russia and Kazakhstan–a pro–presidential PPG holds a supermajority of
more than three quarters of seats. Whether this will stop the structural
instability of the parliament will be seen in the future.
In Kyrgyzstan as well as in Ukraine, the parliamentary rules of
procedure also permit intra-group alliances in order to support or oppose
the government. Both parliaments have flexible, if not unstable structures
creating a heightened level of competition between several elite groups
that coordinate or break up majority coalitions64. The Fifth Kyrgyzstani
Zhogorku Kenesh (2010-2015) has experienced a considerable amount of
individual party switching, several readjustments in the composition of
the assembly’s majority and the formation of three new groups in
addition to the five existent factions65. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada has
been plagued by highly conflictual factional politics with unstable PPGs
over the entire postcommunist period66. The current parliament, elected
in October 2014, is organized into eight factions and 46 independent
candidates. During the two years that have passed since then, the
governing coalition has lost three PPGs, later gaining the support of two
others to create a new cabinet. Party switching, being a major problem
especially in the period before 200467, continues to take place
occasionally. Finally, Moldova’s parliament at present consists of five
factions, the size of which is unstable. Major defection occurred in early
2016 when 14 of the 20 members of the communist faction transformed
into independents and the Liberal – Democratic party group was halved68.
To sum up, the assemblies of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and
After-PCRM-Moldova mirror not only the chronically weak
64 Marat E., Op. cit.
65 Juraev S., Op. cit.
66 Crowther W., Op. cit.
67 Thames F. C., Searching for the Electoral Connection. Parliamentary Party
Switching in the Ukrainian Rada, 1998-2002, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2007,
32, 223-256.
68 Saran V., Op. cit.
30 Petra Stykow
institutionalization of the pluralist party systems but also a rather high
degree of party system fragmentation and polarization. The internal
structure of these parliaments is less coherent, including both party-
bound and independent mandate – holders. PPGs are less stable, and
party discipline is far less pronounced than in those legislatures that are
unequi–vocally dominated by parties of power. Another important feature
of the pluralist multiparty assemblies is their comparatively high degree
of institutional autonomy from the executive. While legislatures are
‘rubber stamp’ parliaments in countries such as Tajikistan69, Uzbekistan70
or Russia71, this cannot be said about the assemblies in the pluralist coun-
tries and, probably, Armenia. Yet, even the most pronounced cases of this
group, Ukraine and Moldova, have been granted far less autonomy from
the executive than their counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe72.
3.2. Technocratic and Party-Based Cabinets
In Western democracies, two patterns of party participation stand
out in the executive arena. The strength of legislative parties is rather
irrelevant to the election of presidents as well as to the composition of
cabinets in presidential systems, but crucial in parliamentary and semi-
presidential systems of government. Since in these constitutional formats
cabinets are collectively accountable to the assembly and therefore
dependent on the continuing support of the parliamentary majority,
parties are key for both the formation and the survival of governments.
Against this background, scholars tend to take party-based cabinets as the
constitutional norm when looking at those Eurasian countries which are
formally parliamentary (Moldova 2000-2016) or semipresidential
(Armenia, Belarus, Georgia since 2004, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Moldova 1994-2000 and since 2016, Russia, Ukraine). However, the real
picture is far more complicated.
69 Mardon M., Neodnoznachnaya… Op.Cit.
70 Tolipov F., Democratic Structuralizing in Uzbekistan. The Multiparty System and
the Opposition, Central Asia and the Caucasus, 2011, 12, 1, 132–140.
71 Remington T. F., Op.Cit. p. 123; Roberts S. P., Op. cit. p. 122.
72 Olson D. M., Ilonszki G., Two Decades of Divergent Post-Communist
Parliamentary Development, Journal of Legislative Studies, 2011, 17, 2, 234–255.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 31
Nonparty governments. As expected, and in full accordance with the
presidential format, governments in Turkmenistan73, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan are presidential cabinets. Overall, the presidents unilaterally
select prime ministers and the members of the cabinet, and the assemblies
approve these decisions ex post. It is striking, however, that the situation
in formally semi-presidential Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia
is very similar. Here, not a single party–based government has existed
thus far. As in the pure presidential countries, governments are
presidential ‘technocratic cabinets’ instead, meaning that they have been
formed without the effective participation by legislative parties and/or are
composed of more than 50 percent of nonpartisan ministers, and the
prime minister himself is nonpartisan74. Yet, the formation of party
governments is not constitutionally precluded in these countries. In all
four countries the assemblies formally approve prime ministers who have
been nominated by the president, and cabinets are accountable to both the
president and the legislature. In Kazakhstan (2007) and Uzbekistan
(2011), constitutional amendments have even assigned parliamentary
parties a formal role in the process of government formation. This
notwithstanding, the ultimate decision about government formation and
dismissal lies with the head of state who also firmly controls the
assembly through the presidential party of power as mentioned above.
Party-based governments. By contrast, in the five more competitive
regimes, which feature pluralist or predominant party systems and
pluralist multiparty parliaments, governments are based on (mostly
majoritarian) coalitions of parliamentary parties. Surprisingly, however,
clear-cut party-based cabinets are of rather recent origin, emerging after a
more or less prolonged transitional period when de facto party cabinets
were headed by nonpartisan ministers or composed of more than half of
independent ministers, or de facto presidential cabinets enjoyed the
73 Here (as well as Georgia until 2004), the president is simultaneously the head of
government.
74 cf. Schleiter P., Morgan-Jones E., Who's in Charge? Presidents, Assemblies, and
the Political Control of Semipresidential Cabinet, Comparative Political Studies,
2010, 43, 11, 1415–41.
32 Petra Stykow
parliamentary support of a dominant party of power (see the last column
of the table).
Armenia saw exclusively technocratic cabinets until the end of
the 1990s. The first government backed by assembly majority was
formed in June 1999, but until June 2003 the overwhelming majority of
ministers remained formally unaffiliated to any party75. Since then, all
cabinets have relied on majority coalitions in the assembly centered on
the RPA as the ruling party. As in the parliamentary arena, however, the
cohesion of the coalition is also rather low in government: between 2000
and 2014, the government had been reshuffled eight times, because
smaller parties had left or entered the coalition.
Moldova had two majority governments in the first postcommu-
nist decade and three technocratic cabinets76. While the communist-
controlled cabinets during the period 2001-2009 remained formally
technocratic, all governments since fall 2009 have enjoyed explicit
partisan support by a majority coalition in parliament.
In Ukraine, the first de facto party coalition cabinet was formed in
November 2002 after the president had dismissed a technocratic cabinet
amidst a severe political crisis, but between 2010 and 2013, the
government was again ‘presidentialized’ by Yanukovych. Similarly, in
Georgia the first party government was formed by the winning coalition
of the Rose revolution in November 2003, lasting until February 2005.
Until 2012, however, cabinets became de facto presidential, notwithstan-
ding the parliamentary support of Saakashvili’s United National
Movement. It is only since 2012 that cabinets have been regularly based
on party coalition majorities77. Kyrgyzstan is the third case where the
first ‘near’–party–based cabinets after the Tulip revolution in 2005 were
soon substituted by de facto presidential cabinets. Governments
supported by majority party coalitions in the assembly became routine
only after the next regime ouster in 201078.
75 Markarov A., Op.cit., p. 81–2.
76 Protsyk O., Intra-Executive Competition between President and Prime Minister.
Patterns of Institutional Conflict and Cooperation under Semi-Presidentialism.,
Political Studies, 2006, 54, 2, 219–244.
77 Berglund C., Op. cit; Nakashidze M., Op. cit.
78 Fumagalli M., Op. cit., p. 195-6.
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 33
Cross-country as well as within-country comparisons reveal that
presidential cabinets are very durable. The all–time record is held by
Azerbaijan’s current prime minister, who has served since November
1996, but tenures of office exceeding five years can also be found in
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In contrast, the longest-
living explicit party cabinet survived little more than three years in
Armenia (April 2009-June 2012). More often than not, the flipside of
party government in the context of weak party system institutionalization
is not ‘democratic normalcy,’ but government instability, sometimes
reaching exceptional levels and triggering acute political crises. In
Moldova, for example, the average lifespan of the seven party
governments between September 2009 and January 2016 was 11 months,
while the five Ukrainian party governments between January 2005 and
March 2010 lasted 12.5 months, and Kyrgyzstan’s seven party and
caretaker cabinets between December 2010 and October 2016 survived
for only ten months on average.
4.3 Discussion: Patronal Politics and Party Government
Similar to the electoral arena, the role that parties play in the
legislative and executive arena corresponds to the condition of the
respective pyramid system and can therefore be understood under the
perspective of patronal politics. As I have shown, all competing-pyramid
systems in the region display not only pluralist (or oscillating pluralist-
predominant) party systems, but also pluralist multiparty assemblies and
party-based governments. Here, parties of power are unable to tightly
control the electoral, legislative and executive arenas in the long run.
Instead, they are players in a game that can be lost at any time. In these
countries, the decisive impulse for the ‘partyization’ of the executive
arose from the dynamics of elite coordination in competing–pyramid
systems. Embedded in pluralist assemblies, party cabinets emerged when
intra-elite competition reached high levels and some of the rivaling
network pyramids managed to coordinate, forming coalitions that were
based on the respective party groups in parliament.
Thus, even under the condition of a weakly institutionalized party
system, party cabinets have become the norm in the course of the last
34 Petra Stykow
decade or so. Taken together, the dynamics in the more competitive
countries of the region indicate that parties, as one of the organizational
forms of elite networks, have gained relevance and have acquired new
functions. In fact, after accessing the electoral and parliamentary arena,
parties conquered the new dimension of governing or ‘ruling’ parties. In
most cases, party governments have been coalition governments. Since
the benefits of ministerial office are valuable assets, they can be offered
by powerful networks to potential rivals in order to invite them to join the
pyramid and, subsequently, enter a coalition cabinet in case the alliance
manages to become stronger than rivaling pyramids. Thus, party
government emerges as a tool of elite coordination and co–optation under
the unstable condition of multipartism and political pluralism.
In contrast, more often than not, technocratic cabinets indicate an
overall constellation marked by a consolidated single pyramid revolving
around the president. In this context, elite competition is dampened or
shut down altogether. The opposition in the party system is marginalized,
the presidential pyramid integrates both the party of power and satellite
parties, and the relevant opposition is ‘constructive’ at most. In the
parliamentary arena, this situation is echoed by assemblies that either
display party structures but are controlled by a supermajoritarian party-
of–power faction, or the assemblies lack parliamentary party groups
altogether. In the governmental arena such consolidated single pyramids
find their expression in cabinets that are purely ‘technocratic’ by
composition and ‘presidential’ by origin and survival. Often, they are
presented as ‘expert’ governments or cabinets of ‘national consensus’
mirroring the self-identification of the national leader as standing ‘above
parties.’
True, in most of the consolidated single–pyramid regimes, parties
of power are useful tools for presidents as the centerpiece of
manufactured party systems and in the electoral arena, thus signaling to
whom the elites and the voters can express their loyalty. They help to
implement the president’s legislative agenda and ensure the coordination
of the regime’s political and administrative elites around the national
leader, thus bolstering the consolidation of presidential regimes. Yet, they
are not ‘ruling parties.’ Presidents do not need them for government
matters. They have no incentive to share executive power with prime
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 35
ministers relying on an (at least potential) autonomous power base, such
as a nominating party. Since even in presidential systems the latter have
some political weight on their own, the office is often conceived as the
springboard for presidential successors. Yet for the same reason,
presidents run the risk of grooming resolute rivals in this position. Thus,
when doubting the loyalty of their prime ministers they will duly
discharge them, placing them either as (prestigious) speakers of
parliament, ministers, senior officials in the presidential administration
and leaders of state oil companies or as (rather disgraced) ambassadors,
or simply putting them in prison79.
At present, this ‘cadre rotation’ continues in Kazakhstan, with
prime ministers being changed by president Nazarbaev every two to five
years. This indicates a rather brittle presidential pyramid, or a more
distrustful and cautious president compared with his fellows. The more
common pattern is cabinet ‘hyperstability’ indicating a high degree of
consolidation of the single-power pyramid. For example, the four
Tajikistani cabinets in the first half of the 1990s, when Rakhmon’s
presidency was highly contested, survived for about a year on average,
while the following two cabinets lasted for four and fourteen years
respectively. In Russia, cabinets survived for about 15 months under
Yeltsin’s presidency and for more than 29 months under that of its
successor. More examples can be found when looking at those more
competitive regimes that also have (or had) more or less consolidated
presidential pyramids for some time. Thus, Georgia’s technocratic,
formally nonpartisan cabinets which were controlled by Saakshvili’s
consolidated pyramid (2005-2012) had a far longer life expectancy (more
than 22 months) than the party governments since then, formed by the
less cohesive and inclusive Georgian Dream pyramid (ten months). The
impressive stability of technocratic cabinets in Moldova when Voronin’s
pyramid had predominated politics (2001-2009) shows that it is indeed
79 Kangas R. D., Uzbekistan. The Karimov Presidency - Amir Timur Revisited.
Cummings S. N. (ed.): Power and Change in Central Asia. London: Routledge,
2002, pp. 130–149; Isaacs R., Op. cit., p. 79; Nurumov D., Vashchanka V., Op.
cit.; LaPorte J., Semi-Presidentialism in Georgia, Elgie R. and Moestrup S. (eds.)
Semi-Presidentialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016, pp. 91–118.
36 Petra Stykow
the existence of a comprehensive presidential network, which is the
crucial condition even if a parliamentary constitution provides for an
assembly-elected president.
Therefore, elite unity in single-pyramid constellations, as found in
countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Saakashvili’s Georgia and
Voronin’s Moldova, is the result of coordination around the president,
not political parties. On the contrary, systems with competing elites such
as Moldova after 2009, Georgia after Saakashvili, and Kyrgyzstan are far
less president–centered. Instead, the presidency is an asset over which the
rivaling groups fight fiercely. The same is true for the office of the prime
minister, which becomes a second major regime position, in particular if
it is designed by the premier-presidential variety of semi-presidentialism,
which provides for a government that is accountable only to the assembly
and therefore independent of the presidency.
Thus, it is the lack of patronal regime consolidation, which makes
parties the appropriate tools of elite networks attempting to conquer the
cabinet and the prime ministerial office, i.e. the non-presidential part of
the dual executive in semi–presidential regimes. In contrast to parties of
power in single-pyramid systems, which promote elite coordination
around the president, parties in highly competitive regimes assume a
signaling function for (potentially) competing networks.
Conclusion
The analysis of national party systems, assemblies and
governments has revealed that parties and their patterns of interaction
display remarkable variation all across Eurasia. As I have argued, this
variation does not arise simply as a result of differences in the quality of
political regimes, as measured, for example, by Freedom House. Rather,
it reflects two different patterns of patronal regime dynamics. These
patterns set the overall framework for party (system) institutionalization,
yet still allow for distinct, country–specific varieties.
The first general pattern is that of a consolidated ‘single-pyramid
system’ integrating all relevant political, administrative and economic
elites around the national leader as the main patron. In the electoral arena,
this configuration typically features hegemonic party systems where
Armenian Journal of Political Science 2(5) 2016, 5-38 37
contestation is heavily dampened or virtually stalled. These party systems
are centered around well–organized ‘personalist dominant parties.’ As
formalized manifestations of comprehensive presidential networks, they
translate the power of the head of state into the realm of public politics in
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekis-
tan. It is striking that in none of these countries have parties accessed the
executive arena thus far. Thus, while often dubbed ‘ruling parties,’
parties of power do not govern at all. Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan
are the only countries in this group, where party system institutiona-
lization stretches beyond the electoral arena at all. Here, at least
legislatures are structured along party lines. They are tightly controlled
by the president’s party.
At present, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia
embody a second and more dynamic pattern of network interaction. Here,
single-pyramid systems have emerged and collapsed several times, being
replaced by competing–pyramid constellations that have experienced
subsequent reshuffling and also new attempts to forge single-power
networks. In general, the degree of political competition in these systems,
including its party – based forms, is more substantial than in the
consolidated ‘single-pyramid systems,’ as reflected in higher democracy
scores assigned by Freedom House. In essence, however, competition
epitomizes first and foremost elite pluralism, heightened contestation and
political openness, accompanied by political instability. It oscillates
around an overall baseline which is higher in Moldova and Ukraine, and
lowest in Armenia, where politics in many respects resemble that of
Russia, the most competitive of the single – pyramid systems.
The overall competitiveness of these regimes corresponds to party
systems that are simultaneously less and also more institutionalized than
in the first group of countries. In the traditional perspective, party system
institutionalization appears as ‘weak’ compared to the ‘hyperinstitu-
tionalized’ single–pyramid party systems, because literally all parties are
volatile and the structures in which party competition is organized are
subject to permanent reorganization. In contrast, the perspective
presented in this paper holds that institutionalization should not be
mistaken for stability. It is in fact stronger in the more pluralist group,
since parties are made up of the single most important players not only in
38 Petra Stykow
the electoral but also in the legislative and, most importantly, the
governmental arena.
However, the greater degree of competitiveness and the real
relevance of parties are indeed related to high instability in all three
arenas. ‘Parties of power’ are typical for almost all regimes in the region,
but here, they are less long-lived and more brittle than their counterparts
in countries with consolidated single-pyramid systems. In addition, they
face more or less serious competition in the electoral arena which is
reflected in party systems that often fluctuate between the pluralist and
the predominant variety. Their overall instability also penetrates the
parliaments, which are inhabited by legislative parties and party
coalitions that are frequently rebuild. Thus, the legislative arena
represents another important realm for political contestation. Only during
regime phases when a party of power dominates the national party
system, it is also able to control the assembly. Finally, over the last
decade or so, legislative parties have become the key actors in cabinet
formation and termination. They do indeed make and break governments,
and these are also plagued by instability. In sum, it is those patronal
regimes, where single – pyramid consolidation has failed, that parties
have gained major importance in Eurasia.
