Finally, one of the ideas why do the hybrid regimes emerge can be connected not with some strategic game of the past or the present, but with the intercrossing impact of the macro regional factors, including the value shifts and the cleavage dynamics. The main question thus would be not what the factor had influenced the current situation, but how does the fusion of those factors influence the perspectives of opposition, making it losing the crucial elections, being enable to block their unfair outcome or at least to undermine their legitimacy. The particular problem leads us to the key issue of our paper- the role of the political opposition in the strategic game of hybrid / competitive authoritarian regimes.

2.2 The study of the political opposition in hybrid regimes

The research field of the hybrid regime studies is rather a new and a debatable one, thus there is a large space between the general theoretical funding and the approaches to how to apply them, the notions of how the already known patterns can be deducted or reinterpreted on the ground level.

As we have found, the hybrid or competitive authoritarian regime can be characterized by the presence of the elections, that are unfair by rather small or significant degree, and the presence of the violation of rights, which can be rather selective or massive. What we also know, is that such the regimes can have different indexes of the internal cohesion, dependence from the people or the elites, and the repression capacity. The last thing, we should remember, talking about the opposition in hybrid regimes, that, in most of the cases, the actors in hybrid regimes can foresee their end in some decades, leading either to the more democratic or the more authoritarian public contract, and that, in contrast with the similar situation in pure authoritarianisms, they can influence on the aftermath by some degree, as there is some pluralism and the objective factors, standing behind it.

Thus, we can assume, that the strategic behavior of opposition in such the regimes would be determined mainly by the two questions: weather it is possible to win the elections and weather it is sensible to oppose the incumbent.

According to J.Gandhi and A.Przeworski, the logic of opposition within the competitive autocracies reflects the frames of "dictator's dilemma"- a double-edged choice of the incumbent between the:

· Repressions, which gain obedience and exclusion on the cost of institution erosion and rising dependence from the military.

· And the redistribution policy, which gains support and loyalty, but makes people too demanding and resourceful, while losing its efficiency in a long term.

The opposition, according to Gandhi and Przeworki, within non-democratic regimes lives on the space between the incumbent's will to cooperate and the incumbent's fear to face the mass rebellion. The certain configuration induces first division- between those parties, with which the incumbent wants to cooperate, and those, which incumbent wants to exclude from the public life. Being in average a less balanced system than democracy, an average autocracy wants to decrease the numbers of the incentives for using the violence to capture the ruling position, thus trying to build configuration, in which the resourceful oppositional groups would hold back each other by the logic of cleavages or ideological commitment, and the more dangerous factions would be pushed back on the electoral periphery. According to B.Magaloni, a dominant party is an instrument of such the configuration building: often holding the central place in the national political spectrum, the dominant party increases cohesion of the elites, provides the material incentives to give up the support of the opposition, and for the oppositional leaders- to keep their core, not trying to expand further.

The description of how does the dominant party system influence the opposition was broadly given in works by such authors as B. de Mesquita, L.Blaydes, K.Greene and D.Treisman.

According to de Mesquita, the key question for the opposition in dominant party regime is was the dominant party able to capture the entire selectorate- the persons, offices and corporations, who are able to deprive the autocrat of the protection, resources and the legitimacy, or not. If not, than oppositional parties do have opportunity to act as the selectorate's representative and so to have a real voice in politics of the autocracy, as well as to act as spare instrument of the political pressure.

L.Blaydes connects the probability of the pro-competitive outcome with the assessment of the loyalty and disloyalty prices, set by the cost of each parliamentary seat according to the chances to get the same amount of power without the cooperation with the incumbent. The perfectly closed top-down system, which reflects the perfect resource concentration in the hands of the incumbent, makes the prices too low and thus erode the opposition party even if it has the chances to act as the selectorate representative. In contrast, the system with the significant cleavage and regional borders, in which the different strategies of power gaining and investment in politics coexist, contributes to the extensive opposition party building, even against the will of their leaders, oriented on the maintenance of the narrow platforms or a humble deal with the incumbent.

According to K.Greene, besides the selectorate's readiness to support the opposition party and its own will to become stronger and solid, there is also one feature that matter- the position of the residual electorate, the mass voter with no expressed preferences and motivation. What can be seen at the case of Mexico- the country with the low degree of centralization, but the strong dominant party, is that the low support of the incumbent and the negative experience of its rule won't make ordinary people to vote against it until the three things are actual: firstly, until they believe, that the oppositional parties won't keep their promises while coming to power, as they don't represent the essential social groups, aspire for conflicts and stay out of the already balanced decision-making process; secondly, until they believe, that voting against the incumbent will induce material and symbolic sanctions, so till the power would change completely, the protest voting would bring only losses, but not the benefits for their district or region; thirdly, until they believe, that either the opposition faction is expected to be too small to prevent the vicious bills, or it is expected to be seductive for its deputies to betray.

According to D.Treisman, the last thing we must not forget about the dominant party regimes, at least in the case of the relatively developed countries, is the interconnection of their consolidation with the economic achievements. As he had noticed for Russia, in the same conditions only the third attempt of the dominant party building succeed- the one which was made on the crest of the rapid recovery, that happened after the rough crisis, consonantally associated with the previous administration and the regime of broader pluralism.

To conclude, all the four authors are talking about the collusions, that consistently pushed the oppositional party to become one of the two: the solid parliamentary party of classical or personnel opposition, standing on the base of the rent-seeking contract, but simultaneously- on the base of the structurally set public representation, or the party of limited force of the principal opposition, caught in the vicious circle of voting / campaigns, oriented on the long-term plans and ideological commitment. Meanwhile, we should also take into account, that the stable dominant-party system induce the emergence of the numerous semi-opposition factions- as the attempts to keep the breakaway closer to the incumbent and as the false imitation of the real positions of the political spectrum, whose electoral positions the incumbent wants to weaken.

The dominant party system is one of the common forms of hybrid regime, which limits the competition, however, not just the only one. Further we'll examine the main features of the two other, that we'll highlight in our paper according to the approach to power sharing and governance - the presidential-based and the decentralized,- from the perspectives of the opposition development.

The presidential-based hybrid regime is the one, in which the office of the president is much more significant for the control on the politics, than the dominance in the parliament. The roots of the non-democratic tendencies in such the regimes thus comes not from the involvement of the dominant party in the unfair electoral competition, but from the exclusive powers of the president, who is too strong to lose. The opposition in such kind of hybrid regime tends to polarize for those, that stands strongly against the president, and those, that compromises with his own course to avoid the active resistance to get the stronger position against the course of the incumbent's party in parliament. In other positions, the president-based hybrid regime could simultaneously belong to the dominant-party or decentralized kinds with the particular outcomes.

In the dominant part case, according to M.Shugart and J.Carey, the major initiative would mainly belong to the president, thus the cost of losing in the parliamentary elections would be lower. However, the symbolic interconnection between the presidential and the parliamentary results both with the double control of the politics by the dominant party and the expanding will of the president would make the environment even more open for imitation and tough for the consistent opposition of classical and principal kinds. In the decentralized case, in contrast, the cleavage lines would matter if the system would be highly polarized, dominated by the rival, and so easily manipulated opposition parties, or rather balanced, despite the sharp presidential elections.

In the decentralized hybrid regime- the regime without the dominant party rule and the extra presidential powers,- the main feature of the opposition is not that its activity is restricted by one of those forces, but that the parties are lead by the interest groups- by the alliances of the regional businesses, the ethno-religious unions and the political clans, whose informal treaties dominate over the formal partisan organizations, and who freely influence the electoral competition to get the desirable results, being however balanced by the similar rivals. What it means for the opposition in general is that the role of the common ideological and political cleavages between the parties in such kind of hybrid regimes would be lower, than in the same electoral democracies, and the role of the regional cleavages and the political populism- larger.

The post-soviet region, and Russian especially, provides the examples of all the particular three approaches in building the hybrid regimes, showing how are the different logics combined, and how do the different kinds of hybrid regimes transform to each other. However, what is important about the Russian case, is that the partisan field of 2010-s- of the dominant-party presidential-based competitive authoritarianism, inherits the features of the 1990-s one- of the decentralized presidential-based hybrid regime. Thus, pushing from such an example, we can assume that not only the features of current regimes influence the configuration of the political opposition, but also the heritage of the past transformation and thus the decisions, that had been made by their management at the turning points.

Concerning the extra issues it might be reasonable to get back to the division between the conventional hybrids and the electoral authoritarianisms, that shows how do the two logics- of the authoritarian disproportions within the general frames of the democratic competition, and of the democratic procedures within the general frames of the authoritarian rule do intersect or repel each other. In other words, examination of the political opposition in behavior in hybrid regime must address the study of the particular cases as well as the already revealed and the newly deducted regularities and patterns.

Chapter 3. Configuration of the political opposition in Russia due to the 2018 presidential elections' content analysis

3.1 A general design of the research

In chapter three we would like to present the first part of the original research, based on the content-analysis of programs and speeches of the presidential candidates during the 2018 elections in comparison with the standard definitions for the opposition types given by R.Dahl, J.Linz and other political scientist, as well as with their extra-election behavior, connected especially with the 2018 pension reform.

While implementation of the content-analysis it was based on:

· The officially published political programs of the candidates, took from the official presidential campaign webpage.

· The video recordings of the two public debates, translated on "Russia-1" central channel, devoted to the representative issues of the economy and the financial policy of Russia (01/03/2018) and of the international policy, global threats and the sanctions (14.03/2018).

The particular sample was formed to cover both the formal, collective and the informal, individual aspects of the candidate's self-presentations, being simultaneously representative enough for the entre candidate's campaign. To fit the particular purposes, our sample considered officially registered candidates beyond Vladimir Putin- Pavel Grudinin of CPRF, Vladimir Zhirinovsky of LDPR, GrigoryYavlinsky of YABLOKO, Ksenia Sobczak of "The Civil Initiative", Sergey Baburin of "The Russian National Union", Maxim Suraykin of "The Communists of Russia", Boris Titov of "The Growth Party",- and Aleksey Navalny, a leading actor of unrecognized democratic opposition, who was also conducting campaign through the electoral period, although he was not admitted to pass the registration.

The key assumption of our research was that using the content-analysis methodology, focused on the frequency of issues and attitudes, articulated by the particular candidates, as well as on their key expressions and rhetoric, we would get opportunity, firstly, to tie them to the particular position within the scheme of cleavages, based on the pattern by Lipset and Rokkan, and secondly- to range them according mentioned classifications from the imitative to fundamental and from the loyal to disloyal types of opposition.

Another assumption of our research was that through the analysis we would mostly deal with the uncompetitive or semi-competitive type of elections, and thus would have chance to see the embodiment of different activities between the incumbent and the oppositional candidates, not common for the competitive democracies, like the checkout of the sticks & carrot mechanism, distribution of barriers and privileges, mutual blackmail and the direct management of the debates from the incumbent's offices.

The third assumption of our research was that the analysis of the specific position of actors regarding election, mixed with the analysis of their political experience and their position for the resonant issue of the post-electoral time, can help us to reflect the particular political configuration, that, in other case, would be kept hidden beyond the layer of unofficial negotiations and deals, impossible to study from outside.

The particular goal of our research was to find out the contemporary configuration of the oppositional actors through the division of the particular candidates on the several clusters due to their type and inter-cleavage position, using the diverse, but distinctly measured, sources of estimation.

The results in general had confirmed the initial expectations, formed by the overall expert view and the acknowledged scientific studies of issue, based on another methodology. The detailed observation of the results as well as the methodology of our research would be given further.

The opposition actors on the 2018 president elections: the preliminary step of analysis.

The preliminary step of the analysis was the division of actors into the three clusters: the first one of the most powerful, rather experienced politicians, supported by the large parliamentary parties, who originated from the politics of 1990-s, managed to survive after the authoritarian regime emergence and got satisfactory results at the 2018 elections, being backed by the core of their supporters; the second group of rather weak, small party politicians of different origin, experience and orientations, who achieved rather low support but were recognized by the incumbent as the competitors; the third group, formed by the unrecognized anti-regime oppositional politicians, oriented on the street movements and new kind of cleavages, who were not admitted to the elections. To the first group we prescribed Vladimir Zhirinovsky and CPRF as a strong political label (but not Pavel Grudinin himself), to the group- Grigory Yavlinsky, who had fallen out the first group in the mid 2000-s, Sergey Baburin, Maxim Suraykin, Boris Titov and Ksenia Sobczak, whose image during elections was rather doubtful and uncertain, and to the third group- Aleksey Navalny.

The redistribution of the particular actors by the list of control questions could be seen bellow:

· Age in politics- Baburin, Zhirinovsky,Yavlinsky and CPRF (Grudinin) as the old actors, Suraykin, Navalny,Titov and Grudinin (personally) as the relatively new actors and Sobczak as a debutant.

· Status in politics- Zhirinovsky and CPRF (Grudinin) as the parliamentary actors, Baburin and Yavlinsky as the once been the parliamentary actors, and other as actors out of parliament.

· Inter-cleavage position- Zhirinovsky, Grudinin and Yavlinsky as entirely oriented on cleavage lines of 1990-s, Baburin, Suraykin as partly oriented on cleavage lines of 1990-s, Navalny as an actor with the new kind of cleavage orientation, Titov and Sobczak as the actors with the position mixed of the second and third categories.

· Party support- Zhirinovsky, Grudinin and Yavlinsky as the candidates, backed by a large party, Navalny as a candidate with no party support, others- as backed by the small parties.

· Political connections- Zhirinovsky, Suraykin, Baburin and Yavlinsky as actors, originated from the institutionalized politics, Grudinin and Titov as actors, originated from the business sphere, Sobczak and Navalny as actors, originated from the sphere of NGO's, mass media and street movements.

· Opposition background- Navalny, Sobczak and Yavlinskyas the 2011-2012 street protest participants, CPRF (Grudinin) as the participant of the less significant 2010-s protests, Grudinin (personally) and other candidates- as not generally involved in 2010-s political protest.

· The 2018 elections outcome- Zhirinovsky and Grudinin got more than the 5% result, Yavlinsky and Sobczakas got more than the 1% result, Navalny was not admitted to the elections, and other got less than the 1% result.

The opposition on the 2018 president elections: the main body of analysis.

The main body of the research consisted of the candidate's programs' and the candidate's speeches' analysis according to three fundamental problems: the political orientation of the particular candidates within the frames of the Lipset-Rokkan cleavage theory, the ratio of the particular candidates' orientations within the categories of Dahl's classification of the political opposition, and the verified relations between the first and the second issues.

The basic scheme, that we used for measuring of the cleavage and ideological orientations of the candidates, was based on A.Lijphart's questionnaire, modified by the Russia-oriented list of problems and the original column of cleavage alternatives, aimed to fix the belonging of the candidate to the particular cleavage pole:

Table 4