302

Post-Soviet Affairs, 2007, 23, 4, pp. 302328.

Copyright 2007 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Influence of Sectoral and
Regional Economic Interests on
Russian Legislative Behavior:
The Case of State Duma Voting
on Production Sharing Agreements
Legislation
Paul Chaisty
1
Abstract: A political scientist examines legislation on production sharing agreements.
Through the analysis of contested roll call voting on this issue during Russias first
three Dumas (19952001), the period when legislation was first enacted and lobbying
was allegedly at its height, the degree to which a distinct and coherent set of economic
interests influenced voting is estimated. The question of whether there were systematic
linkages between economic interestssectoral (private business and state) and region-
aland the voting behavior of Duma deputies is considered. Research results are used
to discuss the Russian parliaments capacity to articulate and integrate interests in
ways that further the public good.
ver since Mikhail Gorbachevs legislative reforms of the late 1980s,
legislative assemblies have provided an important institutional base
for economic interests in Russian politics (Ostrow, 2000; Chaisty, 2006). The
greater power of deputies to influence legislation, especially laws that have
significant financial and economic consequences, has meant that the incen-
tive to lobby parliaments has grown in the post-Soviet period. This aspect
of Russian politics has not helped to consolidate the popular support that
1
University Lecturer, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of
Oxford, OX1 3UQ, UK (email: paul.chaisty@politics.ox.ac.uk). The author is grateful to Dave
Armstrong, Sara Binzer Hobolt, and Stephen Whitefield for their many helpful suggestions.
E
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 303
representative institutions enjoyed during perestroyka. The lobbying of
legislators by powerful state and private economic concerns has
been closely associated with corruption since the early years of transition
(Lobbizm, 1993), and the Russian press has featured articles listing the price
(in US dollars) paid by lobbyists for votes, parliamentary bills, amend-
ments, and questions to ministers (Moskovskiy komsomolets, October 28,
1997; Rossiyskaya gazeta, April 8, 2000; Vedomosti, March 11, 2002). At the
same time, Russias lawmakers have done little to improve their reputa-
tions. Despite numerous proposals for legislation to regulate lobbying
since 1992, legislators have appeared unwilling to approve rules that
would make the legislative system more transparent. On the one occasion
that a bill to regulate lobbying reached the floor of the Duma, in October
1995, mass absenteeism by deputies deprived the initiative of critical
support (Stenogramma zasedaniy, 1995).
In the comparative political science literature, such economic interests
are described as particularistic because they articulate, via personal
contacts with politicians, the exclusive concerns of narrow constituencies
or groupsbusiness, bureaucratic, and regionalrather than the wants
and desires of society as a whole (Cain, Fiorina, and Ferejohn, 1987; Cox
and McCubbins, 2001). In the Russian case, a key factor frequently cited to
account for their influence is the absence of effective organizations
particularly political partiesthat can structure policymaking in ways that
further the public good (Kitschelt, 2000; McFaul, 2001; Rose, Munro, and
White, 2001; Protsyk and Wilson, 2003). When explaining this phenome-
non, one school of thought attributes the weakness of programmatic parties
to Russias mixed electoral system, and, more specifically, its plurality
component, which returns large numbers of legislators representing paro-
chial interests (Moser, 2001; Golosov, 2002); others contend that parties are
internally fragmented by patronage-led coalitions, which are a legacy of
the patrimonial communist system (Kitschelt et al., 1999; Ishiyama, 1997).
However, the evidence for such claims is mixed in research on Russian
parliamentary parties. In studies of parliamentary voting behavior, schol-
ars have questioned the contention that electoral rules have significant
effects on Duma voting (Haspel, Remington, and Smith, 1998), and while
others have presented some evidence for this claim (Thames, 2001), there
is a general consensus on the view that parliamentary parties enjoy
relatively high levels of influence over the voting decisions of deputies
(Remington and Smith, 2001; Thames, 2004; Chaisty, 2005), a finding that
is not consistent with the argument that parties are internally fragmented
by patronage-led coalitions.
Notwithstanding the important implications of this research for party
development in Russia, our knowledge of the effects of particularism on
voting is still limited, especially with respect to specific policy issues. With
the exception of research on budget voting in the First Duma (Thames,
2000), there is a lack of evidence from other policy areas and later parlia-
ments, and very little analysis of the effects of regional economic and
private business interests on Duma voting. This is a major shortcoming that
304 PAUL CHAISTY
leaves unsupported many assumptions about legislative behavior in the
early years of Russias post-communist transition. These include, inter alia,
the supposition that parliamentary parties are little more than patronage-
led coalitions of particularistic interests; the argument that the electoral
significance of parochial concerns has been the primary cause of divergent
voting patterns between list and single mandate deputies; and the view
that the relatively low rates of incumbency in the Russian parliament
combined with the high costs of election campaigns enables well-resourced
business interests to exert excessive influence over parliamentary votes,
especially on issues that affect economic activity.
This article and forthcoming publications contribute to this research
agenda by focusing on areas of policy that have been closely associated
with intense interest lobbying since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this
article, legislation on production sharing agreements (PSAs) is considered.
This legislation, which is aimed at increasing investment, particularly
foreign investment, into Russias lucrative subsoil economy, has attracted
the attention of powerful oil companies (both domestic and international),
domestic manufacturing industry, government ministries, and subsoil-rich
regions since the early 1990s. Through the analysis of contested roll call
voting on this issue during the first three Dumas (19952001), when legis-
lation was first enacted and lobbying was allegedly at its height, this article
estimates the degree to which a distinct and coherent set of economic
interests influenced voting. More specifically, it considers whether system-
atic linkages existed between economic interestssectoral (private busi-
ness and state) and regionaland the voting behavior of Duma deputies.
In the concluding sections, the findings of this research will form the basis
for a speculative discussion of the Russian parliaments capacity to articu-
late and integrate interests in ways that further the public good.
FACTORS AFFECTING DUMA VOTING
ON PRODUCTION SHARING
Production sharing agreements are legal contracts between the state
and private investors. The state leases to the investor the right to prospect
and mine mineral resources within a specific territory for a fixed period of
time, and the investor, in return for developing mineral deposits, gains a
share of the profits achieved from production. In countries with reputations
for capricious fiscal and legal regimes, PSAs provide investors with pro-
tection from arbitrary state action and rent seeking: courts outside the host
country have the power to enforce PSA contracts on both parties; and
investors are protected from changes to tax legislation. The emphasis on
establishing a clear set of rules has proved to be particularly popular in
countries eager to establish the stable investment climate that can attract
much-needed foreign capital and technological know-how.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, PSAs seemed ideally
designed to tackle the problems that faced Russias subsoil economy. In the
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 305
oil industry, falling production and reduced demand from domestic indus-
try raised interest in capital investment and know-how from international
oil companies. Russias oil industry was not averse to attracting foreign
capital during hard times, as Soviet history had shown, but, importantly,
PSAs had political advantages, too. By insulating investors from the dan-
gers of Russias legal system, while at the same time ensuring the states
continued control over the countrys mineral resources, PSAs appealed to
both liberal reformers and conservatives. Consequently, the issue of invest-
ment in Russias subsoil sector was on the political agenda from the early
years of transition. Legislation was passed by the Supreme SovietOn
Foreign Investment (Zakon, 1991) and On Subsoil Resources (Zakon,
1992)and individual PSAs were proposed for oil fields in Russias min-
eral-rich north: Sakhalin I, Sakhalin II, and Kharyaga.
Yet the legal framework regulating production sharing was still at a
rudimentary stage and lacked sufficient credible statutory guarantees for
investors. Hence, in the aftermath of the October 1993 crisis, Russias new
parliament set about constituting a legal basis for production sharing.
Three types of legislation structured the PSA debate: (1) legislation estab-
lishing the basic regulatory framework for PSAs, passed in December 1995;
(2) laws amending and enabling the implementation of the 1995 Act, which
were debated and signed into law during the Second and Third Dumas;
and (3) legislation concerning individual PSAs for specific deposits. This
legislation attracted the attention of various economic, regional, and
departmental lobbies, which sought to influence the voting behavior of
deputies.
Comparative studies of voting in legislative assemblies in different
parts of the world identify several key determinants of roll call behavior:
party membership (Cox and McCubbins, 1993), ideology (Krehbiel, 1993),
presidential strategies (Amorim Neto and Santos, 2001), mode of election
(Hix, 2004), and constituency-related (Bianco, 1994) or particularistic inter-
ests (Fellowes and Wolf, 2004). Based primarily on the study of consoli-
dated democracies, this research explains the significance of these
predictors in terms of their ability to affect the re-election or career oppor-
tunities of legislators. In other words, the voting behavior of deputies is
assumed to be conditioned by instrumental considerations, and these can
change from political system to political system depending on a range of
institutional factorslike regime type (presidential or parliamentary) and
electoral system (plurality or proportional)or the composition and pref-
erences of the electorate that the legislator represents. For example, the
institutional carrots and sticks that parliamentary systems pose legislators,
such as the prospect of government posts or the threat of dissolution, have
been linked to higher levels of party voting than in presidential systems
where these incentives and penalties are weak or non-existent (Diermeier
and Feddersen, 1998).
In studies of Duma roll calls, most emphasis has been placed on party
membership (Remington, 2001a; Thames, 2004), mode of election (Thames,
2001), and ideology/policy preferences (Remington and Smith, 2001;
306 PAUL CHAISTY
Thames, 2004) as the key predictors of voting behavior. Yet the effect of
parochial and particularistic factors on Duma voting has been subjected to
little rigorous analysis. Parochial influences are implied in studies on the
effects of the mixed electoral system on Duma voting. One scholar who
identifies statistically significant differences in the voting patterns of leg-
islators elected from party lists and single mandate districts contends:
Beholden to local constituencies for re-election, SMD [single mandate
district] deputies have a greater incentive to vote against the party majority
than PR [party list] deputies do, since for the latter re-election is dependent
upon being placed on the list by the party leadership (Thames, 2001, p.
879).
2
But to date, there has been a paucity of detailed studies on the specific
policy effects of particular economic interests on Duma voting. For exam-
ple, analysis of Duma budget-making from this perspective (Thames, 2000)
has focused just on the First Duma.
Voting on production sharing provides a rich set of data with which
to estimate the influence of particularistic concerns. First, the passage of
PSA legislation, like the Budget, has generated keen interest from powerful
lobbies. In books on parliamentary lobbying in Russia, production sharing
legislation is usually cited as one of the best examples of business, bureau-
cratic, and regional lobbying in the early Dumas (Lapina, 1998, p. 51;
Lyubimov, 1998, pp. 162163). Second, the fact that voting on PSA legisla-
tion took place in the first three DumasFirst Duma (19941995), Second
Duma (19961999), Third Duma (20002003)when regional and business
lobbying was at its height (Chaisty, 2006, pp. 124128), enables the analysis
of particularistic interests over a longer period than just the First Duma,
when parties were weakest in terms of cohesion. Also, the inclusion of the
Third Duma, and hence Vladimir Putins first term as president, allows for
the impact of presidential leadership to be assessed. Third, careful selection
of key and contested votes during the decision-making process permits an
analysis of the effects that specific policy innovations and exogenous
developments had on Duma voting. For example, it is possible to analyze
how legislative changes known to be significant for specific ecomonic
interestssuch as legislative amendments that strengthened protection for
domestic manufacturingaffected the influence of particularistic
demands on roll call voting.
Legislation on production sharing attracted the interest of a variety of
private, departmental, and regional economic concerns. International and
domestic oil corporations and Russian manufacturing industry actively
participated in the decision-making process. A consortium of the main
multinational oil companies, the Petroleum Advisory Forum, was formed
in 1993 to lobby on behalf of foreign investors. It fronted the first major
lobbying campaign by foreign companies in the Russian parliament and
contributed towards polarizing opinion in the assembly during the early
PSA debates. In the Second Duma, for example, one key legislator and
2
Authors words in brackets.
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 307
supporter of production-sharing legislation, Valeriy Yazev, was even
publicly moved to caution Western oil companies that overly aggressive
lobbying risked undermining the passage of the law (Nezavisimaya gazeta:
Politekonomiya, December 1, 1998). Domestic subsoil interests, notably
Russian oil companies, were no less eager to influence the decision-making
process. The Union of the Oil and Gas Industrialists of Russia, which
included many Russian oil companies within its number, took a positive
stance on PSAs. Yet the support of individual companies was also shaped
by the prevailing economic circumstances, especially the price of oil and
the availability of funds to develop new deposits. Depending on these
factors, domestic oil companies could be powerful lobbyists for or against
PSAs.
3
Similarly, manufacturing industry linked to the subsoil economy
changed its position on production sharing over time. Manufacturers of
equipment for the oil industry were the main lobbyists of amendments to
the 1995 PSA law, which guaranteed that domestic enterprises would
provide no less than 70 percent of all the machinery and materials neces-
sary for geological surveys, mining, and the processing of mineral
resources. Thereafter, leading industrial lobbyists in the Duma, such as
Yuriy Maslyukov and Nikolay Ryzhkov, spearheaded arguments for the
benefits that PSAs offered Russian manufacturing.
The rents that were expected to flow from PSAs also proved attractive
to regional authorities and government ministries. Under the 1995 law,
regional and federal executive agencies were empowered to determine the
terms and conditions of each PSA. As a result, ministerial and regional
lobbies sought to influence the course of legislative deliberations. The
Duma groupings representing regional and energy interestsNew
Regional Policy (First Duma) and Russias Regions (Second and Third
Dumas)were leading supporters of PSAs. In fact, one of the leaders of
Russias Regions, Vladimir Medvedev, also headed the pro-PSA Union of
Oil and Gas Industrialists of Russia. Not surprisingly, the most assertive
lobbyists for PSAs were those regional authorities that had large mineral
deposits: Sakhalin, Khanty-Mansi, Tatarstan (oil); Sakha (gold); Belgorod
(iron ore) (Dopolnitelnyye materialy, 1997). Indeed, a number of the leading
advocates of PSAs within the Dumas leftist parties were from these
regions: Nikolay Ryzhkov (Belgorod), Zoya Kornilova (Sakha). Likewise,
those federal government agencies that stood to benefit or lose the power
to grant subsoil licenses, notably the Energy and Natural Resources min-
istries, backed competing initiatives on the floor of the assembly. During
the First Duma, Energy ministers were keen supporters of the most liberal
PSA project sponsored by the Yabloko party, which empowered the Energy
Ministry to dispense licenses. It is revealing that the Energy minister during
3
For example, the Yukos oil company was initially a keen supporter of production sharing
initiatives. Together with the US oil giant Amoco, Yukos lobbied for the Priobskoye oil field
in Western Siberia to be granted a PSA license (Vasilenko, 1996, pp. 105106). However, the
corporations enthusiasm for PSA partnerships with foreign oil majors declined as its finan-
cial position improved.
308 PAUL CHAISTY
this period, Yuriy Shafranik, later succeeded Medvedev as head of the
Union of Oil and Gas Industrialists of Russia.
These particularistic concerns appeared to have an effect on the voting
behavior of Duma deputies. Table 1 summarizes the percentage of deputies
voting yea and not yea on key and contested PSA votes at each Duma.
4
More specifically, it lists the results for deputies who had close ties to
sectoral interests affected by PSA legislationformer managers, advisers,
and union representatives from subsoil enterprises and associated manu-
facturing industry; one-time officials of ministries and departments with a
stake in the natural resource sector; known lobbyists for the interests of
domestic and international energy and metals corporationsand deputies
who represented regions that had a significant concentration of mineral
resources.
5
The results for these deputies are contrasted with those of
4
Deputies who voted in favor of the legislation are recorded as yea; those who voted nay,
did not vote (but were present on the day), or abstained are recorded as not yea; and those
deputies who were absent on the day of the vote are excluded. Only votes where at least 10
percent of legislators voted against the majority position were selected for analysis, and of
these votes just key readings of the legislation were included.
5
These regional economic data are taken from Goskomstat statistics on the proportion of
industrial production concentrated in the fuel and metals industries in each region. When the
average proportion of natural resource extraction for both sectors combined had a standard
deviation of one above the population mean, then natural resource extraction in that region
was considered to be significant (Regiony Rossii, 19972000).
Table 1. Effect of Particularistic Interests on PSA Votes
a,b
First Duma Second Duma Third Duma
Sectoral interests Sectoral interests Sectoral interests
Yes No Yes No Yes No
Yea (percent) 71 58 70 60 81 62
Not yea (percent) 29 42 30 40 19 38
Number of deputies
(mean)
17 393 22 407 48 381
Regional interests Regional interests Regional interests
Yes No Yes No Yes No
Yea (percent) 67 58 67 60 68 63
Not yea (percent) 33 42 33 40 32 37
Number of deputies
(mean)
38 371 35 394 38 393
a
Source: See footnote 6.
b
Votes 6191, 6192 (June 14, 1995), 8059 (December 6, 1995), 9343 (June 26, 1998), 9655,
9656 (July 15, 1998), 4285 (May 23, 2001).
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 309
legislators who had no apparent sectoral or regional connections. Across
all three Dumas, an average of 74 percent of deputies with close ties to
sectoral interests voted for this legislation, compared to 60 percent of
deputies who did not appear to have close ties; a slightly lower percentage
of deputies (67 percent) who represented regions with significant mineral
resources voted for PSA bills, but this was still greater than the average
support of legislators who did not represent mineral-rich regions.
As already discussed, previous roll call analysis has found other
factors to be consequential in explaining Duma voting behavior: the party
membership, mode of election, and ideology/policy preferences of depu-
ties. These predictors seem to have been important in voting on production
sharing legislation, too: parties enjoyed relatively high voting cohesion
scores on this issue (Chaisty, 2006, p. 178), although divisions within some
(especially leftist) parties appear to indicate the significance of ideological
factors as well (Chaisty, 2006, pp. 185186). Taking these variables into
consideration, the following sections assess the relative impact of particu-
laristic interests on PSA votes. Using simple logistic regression analysis,
two null hypotheses are tested: first, that the personal ties of deputies to
sectoral interests had no statistically significant impact on their voting
behavior on production sharing legislation; second, that the electoral con-
nections deputies had to regions with high concentrations of mineral
resources had no statistically significant impact on their voting behavior
on production sharing legislation. In the section that follows, the data used
to operationalize the variables included in this analysis are discussed in
greater detail.
DATA AND METHOD
During the period covered by this study there were many subtle
differences of opinion amongst the sectoral and regional interests affected
by PSA legislation, and the positions of companies and regional authorities
changed over time depending on legislative developments and external
events. To mitigate the impact that such contextual factors had on the
positions taken by lobbies, the roll call data selected for this analysis were
taken from periods when either the content of the bill under discussion or
the political and economic environment appeared most conducive to the
needs of the largest number of domestic sectoral and regional interests.
6
The votes analyzed include: the First Dumas final vote on the 1995 law
(Vote 8059), which substantially increased benefits to manufacturing
industry; the third reading of amendments to the 1995 law in the Second
Duma (Vote 9656), which further increased the benefits available to man-
ufacturing industry and took place as falling oil prices made domestic oil
corporations and energy-rich regional authorities more receptive to the
6
The roll call data used in this research were obtained from the Moscow-based Centre of
Applied Political Research (INDEM Foundation).
310 PAUL CHAISTY
security PSAs provided; and the second reading of amendments to PSA
legislation in the Third Duma (Vote 4285), which coincided with renewed
executive interest in PSAs and occurred when domestic oil companies, in
the wake of the 1998 crisis, were still sufficiently sensitive to their vulner-
ability to low oil prices to welcome the protection offered by PSAs, espe-
cially for those fields that were exclusively the preserve of Russian
companies.
7
The voting responses of deputies were grouped into two categories:
yea and not yea.
8
This produced a dichotomous and nonlinear depen-
dent variable for each of the votes analyzed, and consequently the effects
of the independent variables were estimated using logistic regression
analysis. The sectoral and regional particularistic factors outlined in the
previous discussion were operationalized as independent variables using
both dummy and interval-level data. To test the first null hypothesisthat
the personal ties of deputies to sectoral interests had no statistically signif-
icant impact on their voting behaviorthe variable Sectoral Interest was
created. This dummy variable was composed of deputies who had either
worked within industries or ministries directly affected by PSA legislation
or had established reputations as lobbyists for these economic sectors (see
Table 2). These data included deputies who owned oil and gas companies,
headed departments within the ministries affected by the legislation, led
organizations responsible for lobbying on behalf of energy corporations,
and so on. To test the second null hypothesisthat the electoral ties of
deputies to regions with high concentrations of subsoil resources had no
statistically significant impact on their voting behaviorthe variables
Fuel and Metals were included in the statistical models. These vari-
ables consisted of Goskomstat data on the size of the energy and metals
sectors in each region as a proportion of total industrial production (see
Table 3). This predictor only applied to deputies elected in single mandate
districts; for example, deputies elected to serve single mandate districts in
Tyumen Oblast represented a region where the production of fuel (mainly
oil and gas) was 83.88 percent of total industrial production, while deputies
elected from districts in Krasnoyarskiy Kray served a region where 60.32
percent of production was concentrated in the metals industry.
One potential limitation of these predictors of particularism is that they
do not distinguish between the winners and losers of production sharing.
As PSA legislation passed through successive Dumas, it became clear that
not all resource-rich regions would gain PSA licenses, and it also became
apparent that not all machine-building and scientific firms would profit
from investment into the mineral sector. Consequently, PSAs received
some of their most bitter criticism from resource-rich regions and enter-
7
These votes took place on December 6, 1995, July 15, 1998, and May 23, 2001.
8
Deputies who voted in favor of the legislation are simply coded as yea (1); those who voted
nay, did not vote, or abstained are coded as not yea (coded as 0); and those deputies who
were absent on the day of the vote are coded as missing data.
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 311
prises that theoretically stood to gain from the legislation. Kakha Ben-
dukidze, formerly one of Russias leading heavy-industry tycoons with
major interests in machine-building, was a vocal critic of production shar-
ing; he argued on several occasions that PSAs unfairly penalized enter-
prises that were excluded from agreements.
9
He was joined in these
criticisms by a number of deputies who represented manufacturing inter-
ests within the assembly. In the Second Duma, for instance, a core of
influential legislators who attempted to form a deputy group representing
industrial interests, Russian Industrial Union (Segodnya, February 26,
1997), led the opposition to production sharing.
10
In order to limit the impact of this mitigating factor, two extra nuanced
variables were incorporated. First, in place of the Sectoral Interest vari-
able, a predictor called OilGas was added that just involved deputies
who held or had held directorships and deputy directorships within the
oil and gas industry. This variable was only included in the analysis of
voting at the Third Duma.
11
Second, in place of the Fuel and Metals
variables, a predictor called Winners was added. This variable com-
prised deputies who represented regions that had applications for PSA
licenses approved or accepted for consideration during the period under
9
For example, see Andreyev (Novaya gazeta, January 27, 2003).
10
These deputies included Vyacheslav Zvolinskiy, Ivan Anichkin, and Leonid Kanayev.
11
In earlier Dumas the OilGas variable contained too few cases to be included in the model.
Table 2. Personal Ties of Deputies to Economic Sectors Affected by PSA
Legislation
a
Vote 8059
First Duma
(number of
deputies)
Vote 9656
Second Duma
(number of
deputies)
Vote 4285
Third Duma
(number of
deputies)
Pre-election career:
Company director/
deputy director
4 9 38
Company manager/
consultant/specialist
6 2 0
Trade union official 0 2 1
Government minister/
official
4 1 2
Known lobbyist 2 7 7
Total 16 21 48
a
Source: Spisok (1993); Seleznev (1996); Duma (2002); Nezavisimaya gazeta (19972003);
Tolstykh (2006).
312 PAUL CHAISTY
analysis. These regions included Sakhalin, Khanty Mansiysk, Sakha, Bel-
gorod, Tatarstan, Arkhangelsk, Yamalo Nenetsk, Tomsk, Komi,
Udmurtiya, Tyumen, Evenki, Krasnoyarsk, and Astrakhan.
These particularistic factors are considered in conjunction with three
additional predictors that are typically identified as important determi-
nants of voting decisions: party membership, mode of election, and the
ideology or policy preferences of deputies. Party membership is self-
evidentthe name of the faction or deputy group that the legislator
belonged to for the period under consideration
12
; mode of election distin-
guishes between deputies elected from party list and single mandate
constituenciesas already discussed, some authors contend that this insti-
tutional factor has had an independent impact on legislative behavior in
the lower house, with single mandate deputies found to be less disciplined
12
Before 2007, factions were electoral associations that received five percent or more of the
vote in a general election, while deputy groups (in the first three Dumas) were formed for the
lifetime of each parliament from a minimum of 35 deputies. Both partisan organizations had
equal rights in the Dumas rules.
Table 3. Electoral Ties of Deputies to Regions with Subsoil Resources
a,b
Vote 8059
First Duma
number of deputies
(percentage)
Vote 9656
Second Duma
number of deputies
(percentage)
Vote 4285
Third Duma
number of deputies
(percentage)
Percentage of
total industrial
production in
subsoil sectors
Fuel Metals Fuel Metals Fuel Metals
Less than 1 percent 73
(35.4)
57
(27.7)
81
(38.6)
53
(25.2)
80
(37.6)
55
(25.8)
110 percent 63
(30.6)
80
(38.8)
58
(27.6)
86
(41.0)
62
(29.1)
86
(40.4)
1020 percent 30
(14.6)
26
(12.6)
36
(17.1)
27
(12.9)
32
(15.0)
26
(12.2)
2040 percent 30
(14.6)
18
(8.7)
28
(13.3)
18
(8.6)
30
(14.1)
18
(8.5)
More than 40 percent 10
(4.9)
25
(12.1)
7
(3.3)
26
(12.4)
9
(4.2)
28
(13.1)
Total 206
(100.0)
206
(100.0)
210
(100.0)
210
(100.0)
213
(100.0)
213
(100.0)
a
Source: See footnote 6.
b
These regional data on industrial production in the fuel and metals sectors are averages
from Goskomstat data for the period 19952000 (Regiony Rossii, 19972001).
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 313
than their party list colleagues. To operationalize ideology or the policy
preferences of legislators, and more specifically their ideology or prefer-
ences on economic policy questions, a rating variable was used that
simply ranked deputies on a reformanti-reform scale. This scale was
derived from the voting records of legislators on important non-PSA
economic legislation during each parliament (see Appendix 1). The pur-
pose of adding this variable to the model was to assess whether the position
of legislators on other important non-PSA economic policy questions
such as privatization, banking, land and tax reformwas as effective a
predictor of deputy behavior as the particularistic factors that were specific
to production sharing legislation.
13
RESULTS
The results of the regression analysis are shown in Table 4. This table
summarizes chi-square statistics that estimate the contribution that each
individual variable made to the fit of each model.
14
The results of this test
provide little compelling evidence to support the view that particularistic
interests determined the voting behavior of Duma deputies on PSA legis-
lation. In spite of the careful selection of votes and the use of various
predictors of particularistic behavior, the different models found only
slight evidence of coherent and predictable voting patterns that could be
explained by particularistic factors. Conversely, other variables normally
used to account for the voting decisions of Duma deputies, notably party
membership, proved to be far more significant.
First, the variable Sectoral Interest made no statistically significant
contribution. Across all models, this factor was among the weakest in
explaining differences in voting preferences. This was not simply a conse-
quence of the relatively small number of cases or the way the variable was
constructed. The addition of a greater number of cases at the Third Duma
did not produce different results,
15
and the inclusion of the variable OilGas
to analyze voting at the Third Duma provided no indication that the
weakness of the Sectoral Interest predictor might be attributed to the wide
spectrum of economic concerns that it incorporated: all enterprises and
ministries likely to be directly affected by production sharing legislation.
The OilGas variable, which just consisted of the heads of oil and gas
13
To ensure that the rating variable did not duplicate the party variables, tests of multicol-
linearity were conducted in multiple regression. It was established that there was no signifi-
cant multicollinearity between the variables, and hence it was assumed that when these
variables are shown to have an impact on the dependent variable, they do so independently
of each other. Therefore, if the vote rating of deputies is found to affect Duma voting on PSAs,
it does so independently of, rather than as a consequence of, their party membership.
14
The null hypothesis is that all parameters of that effect are 0.
15
Although the likelihood of generating statistically significant findings is lower with a small
number of cases, the fact that the inclusion of a greater number of cases at the Third Duma
made no difference to the statistical significance of the results suggests that no relationship
existed.
314 PAUL CHAISTY
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RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 315
companies, made no difference to the overall fit of the model. Thus, on the
basis of these data, the first null hypothesisthat the personal connections
which deputies had to sectoral interests had no statistically significant
impact on their voting behaviorcould not be rejected.
Second, the variables used to capture the influence of regional interests
made only a minor contribution to these models. Results for the Second
Duma show that regions with a strong metals sector were a significant
factor in explaining voting behavior, and the Fuel variable came close to
statistical significance at the First Duma, with a p-value of .059. Nonethe-
less, regional economic factors had no effect at the Third Duma, and their
relative contribution to these models in earlier parliaments was still small
in comparison to the influence of political parties. Interestingly, there was
also no evidence to suggest that deputies representing resource-rich
regions that had PSA licenses approved or accepted for consideration
(Winners) during the period analyzed were more likely to take a similar
position on this legislation. The inclusion of this variable either had no
impact on these models or even reduced their fit. Thus, on the basis of these
data, the second null hypothesisthat the electoral ties of deputies to
regions with high concentrations of subsoil resources had no statistically
significant impact on their voting behaviorcould not be rejected either.
To verify these results, two further tests were conducted (see Table 5).
The first test examined the impact of the combined effects of all the
particularistic variables. Using likelihood ratio tests, it calculated a statistic
for the difference in fit for each model when the various corporate and
regional economic variables were included and excluded. The second test
explored the effects of particularism separately from those political factors
normally used to explain voting behavior: party membership, ideology,
mode of election. By analyzing the behavior of deputies who did not vote
the way these political variables predicted, it explored, for instance,
whether deputies who defected from their party positions would be more
likely to be influenced by particularistic concerns. As can be seen from the
results summarized in Table 5, both tests did not prove to be any more
successful in uncovering evidence of a significant relationship between
particularism and voting behavior. The exclusion of particularistic predic-
tors, in Test 1, did not reduce the fit of any of the models in a statistically
significant way, irrespective of the number of variables (degrees of free-
dom) excluded. Nor did legislators who defected from their party posi-
tions, in Test 2, appear to be more likely to be influenced by particularistic
factors. Therefore, even tests that maximized the number of particularistic
variables and excluded the mitigating effects of political factors, notably
party membership, did not produce a better estimate for the influence of
particularistic factors on the voting behavior of legislators.
Of all the factors examined in this analysis, political parties made by
far the most significant contribution toward estimating the positions that
deputies took on this legislation. Across all models, the party membership
of deputies had large and statistically significant effects. With the exception
316 PAUL CHAISTY
of the Second Duma (see Table 4, Model 1), the impact of party membership
was also consistent across these models, regardless of whether the model
included all deputies or just legislators elected from single mandate dis-
tricts.
16
Combined with the weak impact of regional-level factors, this
finding suggests that the different electoral incentives generated by the
mixed electoral system made little difference to the voting behavior of
16
Models testing regional-level variables (Models 2 and 3 for the First and Second Dumas;
Models 3, 4, 5, and 6 for the Third Duma) only included deputies elected from single mandate
districts.
Table 5. Logistic Regression of the Effects of Particularistic Interests on
PSA Voting
a,b
First Duma Second Duma Third Duma
Test 1 Test 2 Test 1 Test 2 Test 1 Test 2
chi-sq(df)
[p-value]
chi-sq(df)
[p-value]
chi-sq(df)
[p-value]
chi-sq(df)
[p-value]
chi-sq(df)
[p-value]
chi-sq(df)
[p-value]
Model 1
c
0.280(1) 1.357(1) 0.363(1) 0.008(1) 0.166(1) 0.482(1)
[0.596] [0.244] [0.546] [0.928] [0.683] [0.488]
Model 2
d
3.622(3) 6.040(3) 7.045(3) 0.676(3) 0.215(1) 1.104(1)
[0.305] [0.110] [0.070] [0.879] [0.642] [0.293]
Model 3
e
0.524(2) 5.765(2) 0.388(2) 0.665(2) 2.424(3) 2.097(3)
[0.769] [0.056] [0.823] [0.717] [0.489] [0.553]
Model 4
f
2.391(3) 2.094(3)
[0.495] [0.553]
Model 5
g
0.499(2) 0.541(2)
[0.778] [0.763]
Model 6
h
0.446(2) 0.383(2)
[0.800] [0.826]
a
Source: See footnote 6.
b
Particularistic variables excluded from Test 1 and included in Test 2
c
Model 1: Sectoral Interest (First, Second, Third Duma)
d
Model 2: Sectoral Interest, Fuel, Metals (First and Second Duma); OilGas (Third Duma)
e
Model 3: Sectoral Interest, Winners (First and Second Duma); Sectoral Interest, Fuel,
Metals (Third Duma)
f
Model 4: OilGas, Fuel, Metals (Third Duma)
g
Model 5: Sectoral Interest, Winners (Third Duma)
h
Model 6: OilGas, Winners (Third Duma)
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 317
deputies, and this is supported by the results of models that tested for the
effects of the plurality and proportional electoral systems (Mode of Elec-
tion). This finding supports the research of those who have questioned
the significance of such institutional factors in accounting for Duma behav-
ior (Haspel, Remington, and Smith, 1998). Yet the rating variable, which
used the voting records of deputies on important non-PSA economic issues
to scale their economic policy preferences on a reformanti-reform dimen-
sion, did have an effect independently of political parties at the First Duma
(see Table 4). This may reflect the divisions that occurred over this legisla-
tion within several political parties, especially parties on the left in the early
Dumas. Nonetheless, while statistically significant, the chi-square statistics
show that the relative contribution of this variable was still substantially
smaller than that of party membership.
Therefore, there is ample evidence to support the null hypotheses that
sectoral and regional economic interests did not systematically shape the
voting behavior of deputies on contested production-sharing legislation.
Compared to other predictors of Duma voting behavior, particularistic
economic factors are weak in accounting for the decisions of legislators.
This finding holds for votes when particularistic influences ought to have
been significant, and is consistent across different Duma compositions and
periods of presidential leadership. Thus, despite much talk at the time, and
retrospectively, about deputies being intensively lobbied over PSA legisla-
tion, the findings are similar to those found in other studies of Duma
voting: the overwhelming importance of party membership.
DISCUSSION
These results are suggestive, but not definitive, on the question of
whether legislators were influenced by sectoral and regional economic
interests on this issue. While the article finds scant evidence of systematic
linkages between sectoral and regional economic interests and voting
behavior, it does not attempt to infer from these results that the lobbying
power of regional and sectoral interests was nonexistent or did not affect
other areas of legislative work. The anecdotal evidence of sectoral and
regional lobbying of PSA legislation is too rich to be ignored as trivial.
However, on the basis of one, albeit important, measure of legislative
behaviorroll call votesthis study does not uncover compelling evi-
dence to suggest that particularism was the primary force driving the
behavior of deputies. Given that business and regional interests were
frequently stressed as key factors in the reporting on PSA deliberations, as
well as in other research on lobbying in the State Duma, this finding is
important. Even with the use of carefully selected data to limit the influence
of mitigating contextual factors, the fact that evidence could only be found
for certain regional factors in specific Dumas is revealing.
These findings have important implications for the capacity of the
Russian parliament to represent and articulate interests and to integrate
and structure private concerns in ways that further the public good. In
318 PAUL CHAISTY
terms of the parliaments ability to represent the demands of distinct
economic interests, the weak patterns of regional and sectoral voting shed
some light on the reasons for the limited effectiveness of interest group
lobbying in Russia. The collective action problems faced by interest groups
are well illustrated by the PSA case. The passage of PSA legislation and the
approval of agreements for subsoil deposits created both winners and
losers, which severely undermined efforts to organize regional and busi-
ness lobbying. Oil and manufacturing businesses that felt threatened by
foreign investmentor were simply overlooked when the benefits of early
so-called grandfather PSAs were distributed
17
were less enthusiastic
than those companies that stood to gain. This produced outspoken critics
of PSAs, such as one lobbyist for the interests of Russian industry, Stepan
Sulakshin, whose election from the resource-rich region of Tomsk did little
to temper his claim that just four Russian companies had gained contracts
from the grandfather PSA, Sakhalin II (Vek, no. 11, 1999).
18
Domestic oil
corporations expressed different preferences on production sharing, too.
Private companies such as Surgutneftegas, TNK, and Yukos, showed dif-
fering levels of interest in PSAs, and their enthusiasm varied over time
according to their financial constraints and the organization and composi-
tion of their management structures. In the event, the trade associations
that lobbied for PSAs, such as the Union of Oil and Gas Industrialists of
Russia, struggled to represent the interests of all of their members on this
issue, and their lobby power was compromised.
Arguably, the collective action problems faced by interest groups were
caused by too many particularistic interests, rather than by too few. How-
ever, the salient point is that these interests did not affect voting in ways
that were statistically significant. Of course there is the possibility that the
variables used to predict voting behavior were not subtle enough to mea-
sure the complex range of positions that regional authorities and subsoil
industry took on this issue. But even measures that were sensitive to
divisions over legislative details, as well as to changes in the political and
economic environment, did not prove any more successful in estimating
the voting behavior of deputies. This finding is also supported by the
absence of a notable difference between the voting preferences of deputies
elected in single mandate and party list contests. If particularism had been
the key factor in Duma voting on this issue, it would have had an impact
on the predictive power of party membership, especially for those legisla-
tors who were elected from regions that took a definite position on the pros
and cons of PSAs. However, this analysis finds parties to be by far the most
important predictor and produces models that are on the whole well fitting,
which suggests that the results of voting could not have been better
17
Three production sharing agreements were approved before the passage of legislation in
1995: Sakhalin I, Sakhalin II, and Kharyaga.
18
A lobbyist for Russian industry, Sulakshin headed the Center of Legislative Support for
Industry.
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 319
explained by unknown particularistic forces, which are not measured by
this study.
By structuring and disciplining Duma voting, parties were able to
facilitate bargaining over this legislation, which eventually enabled the
enactment of rules on PSAs. In the context of post-communist legislative
developments, this was an important achievement. As a result, parties
became the primary focus of PSA lobbying campaigns and constituted
platforms for interest articulation. According to one Communist deputy:
[W]hen we discussed the Law On Production Sharing, present
in the faction meeting were representatives from those territories
affected by the law; representatives from the oil and gas complex
(both the state and private sector); experts from the Ministry of
Finance attended the meeting of the faction; experts and represen-
tatives from the Ministry of Geology; representatives from other
factions; and representatives from the working group headed by
Nikolay Ryzhkov also spoke. In fact, its difficult to think who
wasnt there representing the range of contrasting positions from
which the faction established its position (Peshkov, 1999).
This was not an isolated example. The Yabloko faction worked with
the main body representing the interests of multinational oil corporations,
the Petroleum Advisory Forum; the deputy group Russias Regions was
linked to the Union of Oil and Gas Industrialists of Russia, and to the
leadership of powerful resource-rich regions, such as Tatarstan; the pro-
government faction, Our Home Is Russia, was closely associated with the
powerful gas monopoly Gazprom, and so on. Such relationships appear
entirely consistent with the view that Russian parties are patronage-led
coalitions of interests that originate from the communist era (Kitschelt et
al., 1999; Ishiyama, 1997). In this analysis, the capacity of parties to structure
and integrate interests in ways that further the public good is limited; post-
communist parties, it is argued, are not programmatictheir policy
choices are motivated by the concerns of patron-client networks rather than
the preferences of the median voter, as illustrated by the rather vague
nature of their electoral manifestos (Rose, 2001; Golosov, 2002; Kitschelt
and Smyth, 2002).
However, in the case of production sharing, the evidence for this
viewpoint is not clear cut. The Yabloko party was certainly programmatic
on PSAs: the legislation was central to the partys economic policy plat-
form, and it was emphasized in its electoral campaigns.
19
Another sup-
porter of PSAs, Our Home Is Russia (Nash Dom Rossiya), also made direct
reference to production sharing in its campaign literature.
20
Yet, at the same
time, no reference could be found to PSAs in the electoral programs of other
19
For example, see Prezentatsiya predvybornoy platformy Yabloko, 6.12.1995 (Presentation
of the pre-election platform of Yabloko, 6.12.1995), (Partinform, December 14, 1995).
320 PAUL CHAISTY
parties during this period, and there were striking examples of inconsis-
tency in some of their policy pronouncements. The most notorious party
in this respect was LDPR and its leader Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, whose
speeches on the advantages and disadvantages of PSAs for the Russian
economy differed markedly from one Duma to the next (Chaisty, 2006, p.
188). Even the Communist Party was guilty, on at least one occasion, of
suddenly shifting its support for PSA licenses for specific fields. In the
space of two weeks in November 1999, for example, the CPRF moved from
opposing any increase in the number of deposits eligible for PSAs to
pledging its support for a number of agreements concerning oil and gold
deposits (Kommersant daily, November 16, 1999, November 27, 1999).
Nonetheless, there is a danger in drawing strong inferences from party
manifestos and the comments of leaders. Although only Yabloko was
consistently explicit in its support for PSAs during election campaigns, this
might simply be due to the fact that the party provided far more detailed
programs than its competitors. Moreover, while the rhetoric of party lead-
ers did at times appear contradictory, and parties were known to change
tack on the specific details of legislation on occasions, there was a fairly
high degree of consistency in the positions taken by political parties on this
issue, which in turn reflected the general economic principles espoused in
their programs. This consistency is shown in Table 6, which summarizes
the orientation of all party members on contested PSA votes over the first
two Dumas into four categories.
21
As can be seen, only the general position
of Agrarian deputies changed significantly from one Duma to the next.
Furthermore, the positioning of parties on this issue appears reasonably
consistent with what is known about their overall ideological orientation
(see Appendix). Indeed, the differences of opinion within parties, which
are also shown in Table 6, were caused in some cases by genuine ideological
conflicts over this legislation. The divisions within the leftist grouping
20
Predvybornaya platforma Vserossiyskogo obshchestvenno-politicheskogo dvizheniya Nash Dom-
Rossiya NDR: 10 shagov v XXI vek, (Pre-election platform of the All-Russian social-political
movement Our Home Is Russia NDR: 10 steps into the 21st century, (1999), online at
www.ndr.ru/main.html.
21
These four categories are: (1)PSA purists, deputies who only supported PSA initiatives
that conformed to international norms; (2) PSA enthusiasts, deputies who consistently
supported PSA bills but were prepared to dilute the legislation for the sake of compromise;
(3) PSA conservatives, deputies who opposed PSA legislation until concessions were
introduced that strengthened the position of domestic enterprises; and (4) PSA opponents,
deputies who consistently opposed PSA proposals regardless of their content. In order to
distill the position of each individual legislator into one of the four general categories, only
contested votes were analyzed at each Duma: 10 votes at the First Duma and 11 at the Second
Duma. There were too few contested votes at the Third Duma to permit the inclusion of data
from that parliament in this analysis. In order to minimize the problem of non-voting,
deputies who were absent from the assembly on the day of the vote were coded as missing
data; deputies who did not vote or were absent on 70 percent or more of the votes analyzed
or were not members of the Duma for the entire period under considerationwere excluded
from the data set; and for the remaining deputies, no value was attributed to their decision
not to vote.
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 321
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322 PAUL CHAISTY
Popular Power, for example, were provoked by the opposition of certain
leftist members towards the pro-PSA line taken by its leader, Nikolay
Ryzhkov (Pravda-5, May 27, 1997). One source of this dissent was Commu-
nist Party deputies who had been co-opted by Popular Power to increase
its membership (Chaisty, 2006, p. 185). These deputies tended to be far more
left-leaning on questions of economic policy than their colleagues within
Popular Power.
Therefore, the PSA case provides mixed evidence to support the
conventional wisdom on the representative and integrative shortcomings
of the Russian parliament. The weak independent organization of cross-
partisan particularistic interests inhibited the ability of interest groups to
lobby for production sharing. Consequently, those bodies that pressed for
PSAs proved to be no more successful than other organizations formed to
champion the legislative concerns of economic and regional interests.
However, parties did provide one outlet for interest articulation. Their
ability to organize voting in the Duma proved attractive to lobbies and
patronage relationships were clearly influential. Yet it would be inaccurate
to say that parties were simply led by particularistic interests on this issue.
For certain parties, support for PSAs was a programmatic issue; for others,
voting was consistent with the general ideological and policy principles
stated in their programs. The main problem that faced the supporters of
PSAs was how to reach a consensus on this issue in the absence of a stable
cross-party majority. It was not until the Russian economy collapsed in the
summer of 1998 that this majority emerged, but it was by no means stable.
Thereafter, the momentum for PSAs was contingent on immediate
economic considerations and presidential leadership. Under President
Putin, the lessening of Russias post-communist economic crisis curbed the
political will to take the realization of the PSA regime one stage further.
CONCLUSION
Understanding the form and influence of particularistic interests in
legislative decision making is crucial for the study of Russian politics.
Much of the analysis of the political process in Russia hinges on assump-
tions about the significance of personal and parochial ties. In many areas
of researchfrom studies of specific interests and policies to macro-level
analysis of Russian state autonomy and capacityexplanations for indi-
vidual, institutional, and state behavior and action stem from a belief that
private interests drive the political process. This perception of Russian
politics has certainly shaped the analysis of legislative decision making.
However, there has been little detailed research on the effects of particu-
larism in specific policy areas. The findings of this study suggest that this
important aspect of political life requires further investigation. In an area
of policy widely associated with particularistic lobbyingproduction-
sharing legislationlittle evidence was found to support the view,
expressed at the time and subsequently, that industrial and regional eco-
nomic interests wielded powerful influence over the voting preferences of
RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 323
deputies. While regional and industrial concerns were certainly prominent
in forming the debate on PSAs, they do not appear to have caused any
notable deviation from the patterns of voting behavior typically associated
with Duma deputies: high levels of party voting.
These findings also raise questions about the ability of the Russian
parliament to articulate and integrate private interests. This research pro-
vides evidence to support the widely held view that the capacity of partic-
ularistic interests to organize collectively in Russia is limited. Hence, the
study establishes an empirical foundation for explaining the weakness of
interest group activity in a key area of policy. At the same time, it also shows
that parties were the main force in structuring voting on this issue, and
they appear to have provided an important channel for the representation
of private interests. In articulating private interests, this case presents some
evidence to support the contention that parties are simply an outgrowth of
communist patrimonialism. But it is problematic to overstate this argu-
ment. The consistency of voting on this issue, which reflected the general
ideological positions of most parties, as well as the use of the PSA issue in
electoral campaigning, suggests that even on this highly lobbied piece of
legislation there was arguably some evidence of programmatic decision
making. This speculative conclusion requires further research.
There is of course a danger in making too many generalizations on the
basis of just one case. Production sharing was a divisive issue, and it is
conceivable that particularism was more pronounced in other areas of
economic policy, notably budget and fiscal policy. Moreover, the usefulness
of roll call data as a measure of legislative behavior continues to be disputed
by comparative political scientists (Benoit and Laver, 2006; Poole and
Rosenthal, 1997). In forthcoming work, this study will be extended to other
areas of policy that have been associated with high levels of lobbying since
the collapse of communism. It will also consider alternative measures of
legislative behavior in an attempt to explore further the effects of particu-
larism on Russian parliamentary life.
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RUSSIAN LEGISLATIVE BEHAVIOR 327
APPENDIX: VOTE RATINGS METHOD
Scholars of Russian parliamentary politics do not have the benefit of
lobby organizations such as Americans for Democratic Action (ADA),
which rates the orientation of United States Congressmen on policy ques-
tions. These ratings are normally constructed for each Congress from votes
that sharply divide legislators along a liberal-conservative dimension.
Typically, between 20 and 40 votes are selected; the positions that Congress-
men take on each vote receive points (either positive or negative) depend-
ing on their support or opposition to the lobby groups preferences, and
the points are summed up for all votes to produce a rating (e.g., 0 to 100).
Although the methods used by political scientists to measure legislator
positions have become more sophisticated in recent years, especially when
many policy dimensions are taken into consideration (Poole and Rosenthal,
1997), the simple method that lobby groups use to rate deputies still has
strengths when dealing with votes that are jurisdiction-specific (Herron,
2000, p. 347).
This method is used to compile ratings for Duma deputies on economic
policy questions. For each Duma, 50 of the most contested and important
non-PSA economic policy votes were selected.
22
Budgetary legislation,
which incorporates many areas of policy, was excluded from this set of
votes. The votes selected were also held before or at the same time as the
voting on production sharing legislation. Individual votes were scored on
a reformanti-reform dimension. Information on each vote was first ana-
lyzed to determine whether it was reformist or not, and the position of
legislators was coded as reformist (1) or anti-reformist (0) depending on
the orientation of the motion. For example, the vote of a deputy who voted
against a measure that was anti-reformist was coded as 1. Those deputies
who abstained or were present on the day and did not vote were inter-
preted as not yea, and their votes were coded as either reformist or anti-
reformist depending on the motion in hand. Deputies who were absent
from the assembly on the day of the vote were coded as missing data, and
their final score was also coded as missing data if they were absent for more
than half of the votes analyzed. Finally, the valid scores (i.e., excluding
missing data) for each legislator were summed up and the mean of this
figure was calculated to produce the final rating: 1 represented the most
reformist position, 0 indicated the most anti-reformist.
This method of converting votes into ratings is consistent with what
is known about the economic preferences of parties. The mean ratings for
parties generally reflect reformanti-reform scales created for the Duma by
22
This included legislation considered to be both innovative and consequential by commen-
tators and experts at the time and retrospectively. Votes were selected when more than 10
percent of legislators voted against the majority, and from those voting data 50 votes that
registered the largest opposition vote and lowest number of deputies who did not vote were
chosen.
328 PAUL CHAISTY
other authors (see Table 7).
23
Statistical tests for reliability also find the scale
to be internally consistent. The 50 votes for each of the First, Second, and
Third Dumas register Cronbachs alpha coefficients of .93, .94, and .97,
respectively. This indicates that the values of each item in the scale are
reliably predicted by the values of all the other items. Thus, these ratings
are reliable and internally consistent measures of their respective underly-
ing constructs: votes on economic policy.
23
See Remington (2001b, p. 188, p. 197) and Thames (2004, p. 484).
Table 7. Mean Party Voting Ratings on Economic Policy Legislation,
FirstThird Duma
a,b
First Duma Second Duma
Third Duma
(Up to 2001)
Party
Mean
(SD)
c
Party
Mean
(SD) Party
Mean
(SD)
Russias Choice 0.86
(0.062)
Yabloko .76
(.06)
SPS .86
(.04)
Yabloko 0.80
(0.07)
NDR .74
(.09)
Unity .82
(.05)
12th December 0.78
(0.06)
None .67
(.11)
LDPR .78
(.06)
PRES 0.66
(0.12)
Regions .58
(.10)
Yabloko .67
(.04)
Stability 0.58
(0.18)
LDPR .41
(.05)
PD .50
(.10)
Russia 0.53
(0.17)
PP .35
(.12)
Regions .42
(.10)
DPR 0.53
(0.10)
Agrarian .29
(.11)
None .41
(.18)
Regions 0.45
(0.11)
CPRF .22
(.07)
OVR .39
(.10)
None 0.39
(0.18)
Agrarian .09
(.04)
WR 0.36
(0.05)
CPRF .05
(.04)
Agrarian 0.27
(0.06)
LDPR 0.25
(0.05)
CPRF 0.25
(0.05)
a
Source: See footnote 6.
b
SPS: Union of Rightist Forces; PD: Peoples Deputy; OVR: FatherlandAll Russia
c
SD = Standard deviation.