Political opposition in contemporary Russia: socio-political cleavages and party system in comparative perspective

Thus as the conclusion we can state, that for Mexico the 2,5 party system is the most convenient, although the well-located dominant party managed to reduce the ENP to 1,5 while the contradictions were less sharp.

The indicators of freedom, linkage and development.

In the last paragraph of our case study we'll just glance through the group of the common parameters, linked with hypotheses of the classical regime studies. In the first part of the paragraph we'll examine the general indicators of economic and political development, in the second part we'll test the linkage / leverage hypothesis by Levitsky and Way.

a)The general indicators of the development.

According to the Freedom of the World report, Ukraine of 2000-s belongs to the free / partly free polities (being a flawed democracy according to the Economist Democracy index), Mexico of the 1990-s belongs to the partly-free polities, and Russia of 2010-s belongs to the not free polities (being a soft authoritarian regime according to the Economist Democracy index). That means, we must assume, that the incumbent-opposition relations are the closest to the electoral pluralism, and in Russia- the least close, which assumption we can generally confirm.

According to the Economy Freedom index by Heritage the three countries both posses the medium level of the economy freedom, however Mexico of 1990-s had better protection of property, Russia of 2010-s had better rate of business freedom, and Ukraine of 2000-s- the better rate of trade freedom. The Corruption Perception Index is one of the highest for all the sample, and thus we need to consider that either the methodology of the particular indexes doesn't represent the certain parameters exactly, or the certain parameters are not significant for our study

By the economy structure, the three countries differ much by the share of the oil and gas rate in the state budget. The highest degree of the oil dependence posses Russia, staying on the same level as Mexico in 1980-s, equal to the 8-9%. In Mexico of 1990-s, however, the oil rent achieve only the 3% share, and in Ukraine- less than 1%. If the statistics is correct, we should assume, that the certain parameter matters much for the degree of political pluralism.

Taking the picture broader, Russia posses the highest level of GDP per capita, four times higher than those of the 1990-s Mexico and 2000-s Ukraine, that are practically equal to each other. What is more, Russia posses the highest human capital parameters, however both Mexico and Ukraine are also rather developed societies.

Ukraine, in contrast to Mexico and Russia, is a country with the high level of income equality.

Mexico, in its term, posses the highest level of the post-material, but also of the traditional values, according to the World Value Survey.

The following results mean that in our sample the general pattern of the income / human development - freedom correlation, formed by the Lipset hypothesis, doesn't work, or even represents negatively. Meanwhile, it can also mean that the additional parameters, like equality and value orientation, both with the historical dynamics of GDP growth, can be the variables, that really explain the difference.

Thus, by the GDP dynamics, in 2010-s Russia have been suffering from the stagnation, however, the polity of 2010-s was formed not just in those times, but via the boom of 2000-s, when the economy was growing about a 7% per year after the transition-time decline of 1990-s. In Ukraine the same pattern was seen, but with the position, that the growth stage had launched earlier, than the attempt to build the dominant party was taken. In Mexico, however, the pattern was much different: in 1980-s country suffered the dramatic decline, but under the rule of the dominant party, while in 1990-s the economic recovery coincided the liberalization of the political sphere.

Taking into account the resource-export element of the Russian growth of 2000-s, we'll make a conclusion, that between the mentioned factors in accordance to the certain group of the middle-developed countries, the share of the oil and gas rate in the state budget, the historical context (the political surface) of the GDP dynamics, and, maybe, the parameters of the development, like dominant values and the economic equality, do show stronger correlation with the formation of more or less transparent, competitive incumbent-opposition relations, than the more common indicators of GDP per capita or human development.

The second conclusion would be, that the small sample of the case-study format do also matter for the results, we get by the general indicators' measurement.

b)The linkage / leverage hypothesis.

The foreign linkage and leverage are the additional parameters, that posses the especial meaning. Estimated by the dimension of foreign linkage and leverage:

· Mexico has a strong linkage with the USA via the common border, the high share of the common trade and the USA leadership in the region. However, the foreign leverage is restricted by the scope of the country and the scale of its social problems, including poverty and criminal engagement.

· Russia has medium linkage with Europe, however, its quality varies to the region: while it can be fixed in the big cities, it is absent in the rest of the country. What is more, as a big world power Russia faces no foreign leverage, and from the mid 2000-s it was making efforts to reduce the foreign linkage as well.

· Ukraine has strong linkage with Europe and a common border with EU, however, that linkage lacks required quality. The partial compensation of the last can be found in the medium level of foreign leverage. Meanwhile, not only EU promotes its linkage and leverage to Ukraine, but also Russia, and that division correlates strongly with the polarization of the electoral pattern.

The significance of the leverage/ linkage indicators are clearly seen by the comparison of Russia and Ukraine via their influence on the dominant party project success, in case of Russia, and failure, in case of Ukraine. However, the difference between Russia and Mexico, the two dominant party regimes, is rather unclear due to the real significance of the linkage / leverage influence. As we will assume, considering the anti-democratic tendencies in Russia of 2010-s, the clear difference emerges when the country passes to the articulate policy of democratic linkage restriction- in this case the perfect inaccessibility for the foreign leverage do really matter, as it is in case of Russia or China and Iran.

Conclusion

The general goal of our research was to understand, what factors had determined the difference between the paths of Russia, Mexico and Ukraine in the sphere of the incumbent-opposition relations. The superior goal of our research was to explain the contemporary pattern of the incumbent-opposition relations in Russia by the application of external, institutional logic. The additional goal of our research was to verify the validity of the conclusion by the extension of the particular logic of explanation on the entire sample.

Leaning on the particular results, we can name the list of the factors, that are seen to be important for the particular explanation. Firstly, we should mention a group of the institutional factors: a) the constitution, formed both by the formal and informal norms and practices, and b) the formula of checks and balances, its strength and efficiency. Secondly, we should mention the group of the structural factor, including a) the cleavage structure by its application to the political spectrum in parliament and the geographical division of the country b) the level of budget dependence from the resource export, additionally backed by the dynamics of GDP, GDP per capita and GINI index, observed on the background of the regime transformation c) the level of foreign linkage and leverage, including the direction of their influence on the decision making process in ratio to institution building and political stability.

Concerning concrete variables, we can state confidently that in our sample the stronger parliaments were generally correlating with the more democratic regimes (taking into account that the strength of the parliament can be examined in the different ways, that the informal practices also matter, and that the positions, strongly tied with the formula of checks and balances, should be considered as the most important, which was absent in PPI index). The opposite correlation was found for the bigger lag between the smaller ENP and the larger number of cleavages. According to the three cases, the geographical polarization of cleavages can be counted as generally favorable for the political competition and generally obstructive for the dominant party building. The larger share of oil and gas export, in contrast, can be seen as favorable for the dominant party building and generally harmful for the political competition. Additionally, for the consistent vision of the cases, we must assume that the subjective perception of the social welfare, determined by the correlation of GDP and regime dynamics, do also matter.

To see the influence of the particular factors it is useful to summarize the examination of the incumbent-opposition relations within the three countries.

Thus, in Russia the regime had evolved from the political pluralism of 1990-s and the semi-competitive dominant party regime of 2000-s to the generally non-competitive electoral authoritarianism of 2010-s. In Ukraine the regime had been fluctuating permanently from wide pluralism to the dominant party building, however, all the attempts to concentrate power had been interrupted by the new elections or mass protests. In Mexico the regime trajectory was different: although in mid-XX-th century the regime had been totally non-competitive, the modernization process led to the extension of competition, and after 1980-s it happened a substantial liberalization both in political life and economy that made Mexico to evolve towards democracy till early 2000-s.

To understand the certain picture we must look on the factors.

Thus, among the three countries we have the strongest parliament in Ukraine, however Ukraine doesn't possess a strong formula of checks and balances, as the political system suffers from the repeating revision of constitution, disintegration of parties and coalitions. In Mexico, in contrast, the weak position of the parliament, according to some additional characteristics, like the ban for the reelection of the deputies, was compensated strongly by the firm and sophisticated formula of checks and balances, aimed to prevent the presidential dictatorship. In Russia , the main object of our study, the most essential feature, which seems to determine the particular dynamics of the incumbent-opposition relations, had been a weak or almost absent formula of checks and balances in relation to the authority of the president, on which all the informal practices were based on. Thus, as the State Duma was not as strong constitutionally as the Ukrainian one, such configuration induced the tragic consequences for the evolution of the political pluralism in Russia.

Concerning cleavages, in Russia the cleavages appeared to be not strong enough because of two reasons: firstly, they have been rather numerous for the statist, oil-rich society to be reconciled by the incumbent, and secondly, they have not been tied with the regional borders. To illustrate this thesis, we can, compare the 2010-s Russia with itself of 1990-s, which political configuration was influenced strongly by the sharp conflict between the communists, with a core support in the agrarian "Red Belt" regions, and the democrats, with a core support on the urbanized north. Additionally we'll state that one of the reasons why is the right opposition ignored by the incumbent is its strong geographical connection with the big cities, which can't be seen relatively to the parliamentary parties. In contrast to Russia, the Mexican politics had been determined strongly by a single, but rather strong, geographically tied conflict between the right and the left politicians: thus, when the dominant party had lost an opportunity to act both on the two sides of the conflict, relying on the Keynesian model of growth and broad redistribution, it failed. In Ukraine the number of cleavages was higher, and most of them were geographically tied, so even with the attempts to polarize the country by the smaller number of dimensions, the dominant parties had failed to establish themselves in this country.

According to the theoretical expectations, concerning the concept of "oil curse", the share of oil and gas rent in state budget is correlating strongly with a degree of the political freedom in our sample: thus if the formation of Russian authoritarianism had happened in a time of high oil prices, the failure of the Mexican one was pushed by their sharp decline. Additionally, both dominant party regimes- in Russia and Mexico,- had been formed in the countries with a large share of oil export. In Ukraine- the most competitive state, in contrast, the export of the natural resources haven't played an important role in the economy. Finally, among the two non-competitive regimes of our sample- Russia and Mexico,- it was a one with the lowest share of natural, which incumbent had started to lose its hegemony strongly after the sharp fluctuation of prices.

The linkage / leverage hypothesis had also been confirmed according to our study. If Russia- the most authoritarian country- was found to be the farther from the borders of the "democratic West" and the most self-sufficient within the world order, Ukraine- the most competitive one,- possessed the opposite characteristics. Meanwhile, in cases of Ukraine and Mexico there could be used an alternative explanation: not just the influence of the democratic state, but the effect of the competition- of pro-western and pro-Russian policy in Ukraine, of the American-right and the American-left outlooks in Mexico. However, the crucial fact is that the two countries in sample, which were affected by the significant impact of the linkage / leverage factor had not opposed democratization tendencies strongly, unlike Russia.

What was surprising is that according to our findings the conventional variables like the Human Capital index, GDP per capita, the spread of the post-material values or GINI index were not found to influence the level of the political freedom in our sample, or the connection is rather ambiguous. Meanwhile, the clear correlation can be seen between the GDP dynamics and the support for the non-competitive regime, and thus for the strength of the incumbent in relation to the oppositional actors. So, both Russia and Ukraine suffered the dramatic decrease of GDP in 1990-s, however when the economy started recovering rapidly, Ukraine still had the same hybrid regime with the wide range of pluralism, while Russia had shifted towards the dominant party rule practically at the turning point. What about Mexico, its one-party regime was rather strong while the economy was growing rapidly, but the crisis of 1982 made the regime weaker and pushed the incumbent towards political liberalization. However, just after the pluralism increased, the economy started to grow, and thus the democratization had faced no serious obstacles.

So, to conclude, we can state, that in Russia the contemporary configuration of the incumbent-opposition relations, characterized by the dominance of the incumbent and the unfair rules of the game on the background of the formal maintenance of the democratic mechanisms, have been determined by the group of factors, including:

1. The fusion of the formally substantial parliament with the weak formula of checks and balances and the kind of informal constitution, that overpowers the presidential authority.

2. The numerous, but not sharp and not geographically tied cleavages, which let the dominant party to exist safely, while the redistribution and conviction mechanisms work, and ignore opposition.

3. The high share of oil & gas rent in the state budget and the GDP dynamics, characterized by the deep crisis in the period of political pluralism and the boom in the time of the dominant party formation.

4. The low level of foreign linkage and leverage, promoted by the democratic countries, determined both by the geographical and geopolitical features of the country.

In contrast, in Mexico and Ukraine the situation was different, and thus was the state of opposition and the dynamic of the political regimes.

The conclusion

The work we had done had considered the four research question and the set of the particular problems.

The general goal of our research was to find:

· What types of opposition do exist in Russia?

· What was the dynamics, that had formed such a pattern?

· What combination of factors had formed such the pattern and the dynamics?

· How does this correspond to the formation of incumbent-opposition relations in other regimes of the competitive authoritarian / hybrid type?

While implementing of our research we also tried to answer the questions like:

· Is it possible to use the explanations and categories, elaborated in the different political environment, to represent the Russian politics correctly?

· How do the role and position of the Russian opposition correspond to the competitive authoritarian / hybrid regime frames?

· Is it possible to forecast the changes in the behavior of the political opposition in Russia after the possible changes of the institutional / socio-economic frames of Russian politics, basing on the certain comparison and classification?

As for the first question, in Ch.3 we had found the presence of the three main groups of opposition, basing on the the Lipset-Rokkan cleavage theory:

· A group of the conditionally right forces, united by the right-wing economic agenda and democratic orientation, by the stronger support for the federalism, free trade and freedom of culture, by the promotion of the peaceful policy course, the negation of the imperial ideology and the support of the liberal rhetoric.

· A group of the conditionally left forces, who support the left social and economic agenda and the protectionist measures, whose ideological frames are based on the symbols of the USSR and the socialist idea.

· A group of the conditionally "third way" forces, supporting the Russian ethnocentrism, the left social agenda, the protectionist measures and the imperial rhetoric- the forces, which perceive the so-called transnational cleavage as the most crucial one.

What is more, basing on the Dahl's typology of opposition, we have revealed the certain connections:

· Most of the conditionally right parties belong to the classical opposition, also concerning the features, that refer to the principle and personnel.

· The conditionally left parties, on contrary, follows no single pattern, being in average less radical than the conditionally right ones: the most representative case in this group is CPRF, which orientation fluctuates from the classical to semi-opposition dependent on the issue and situation.

· In contrast, the conditionally "third way" parties were found to follow the most moderate, personal or the semi-opposition orientations.

What we have also found, is that the political position of the oppositional candidate depends much on such factors, like the scale of the party or the agenda:

· Thus, an only consistently principal opposition candidate of our sample- Alexei Navalny,- was found to posses such the attributes, as the political connection with the third sector and mass-media, the orientation on the recent (2010-s) cleavage agenda, an active participation in protest and street politics. Simultaneously, all those attributes were found to correlate with the higher oppositional radicalism, the incumbent's suspicion and the conditionally right parties in general.

· In contrast, the parliamentary status, the support of the large party and orientation on the old (1990-s) cleavage agenda were found to correlate with the firm inclusion in the political system, the conditionally left or third wave agenda and less degree of the oppositional radicalism.

Finally, what we have also found, that the appearance and the strategic behavior of the political opposition on the elections and beyond corresponds much to their characteristics according to the particular factors:

· Thus, among the politicians of the 2018 election's sample, Alexei Navalny was found to act strongly to delegitimize the rule of the incumbent before and after the elections, being also not admitted to the elections by the authorities.

· CPRF and LDPR- the parties, which posses all the attributes of the second group- were found to be strategically flexible in their relations with the incumbent, basing on the strong party structures. Their strategic goal on the elections are seen rather clear- to emphasize their strength and to maintain the core of their electorate .

· All other parties and candidates, participating in the 2018 elections, except for YABLOKO, which had belonged to the second group in 1990-s, and is staying near the first group nowadays, were found to demonstrate weak activity before and after the elections, to posses the limited resources and to pursue rather vague goals in their electoral campaigns. In other words, to have no significance in Russian politics.

As for the second question, in Ch.1 and 4 we have traced the transformation of the Russian regime and party system and thus had found, that the main dynamics from the 1990-s till 2010-s was the limitation of the political pluralism and competition, followed by the formation of the facade (imitative) party system and the ideocratic elite consolidation, through which the strong position in parliament was kept only by those two opposition parties, who had kept it and who also agreed to welcome the statist-illiberal social contract of Putin's administration. On the regime level it was a transformation towards from the electoral democracy of 1990-s towards the hybrid regime of 2000-s- the one, where the elections are unfair, but still can be won by the opposition,- and the competitive autocracy of 2010-s- the regime, where the space for the limited competition exists, but the structure of power is entirely submitted to the authoritarian framework. On the level of the opposition party behavior such a framework sets the clear border between the parties, who agree to follow the rules, set by the incumbent, who see it as a way to fix their monopoly even by the price of the oppositional radicalism decrease, and those, who don't or just can't and thus are doomed for the decline or sharp confrontation with the autocrat and his dominant party.

As for the third question, to understand, how had the contemporary configuration of the incumbent-opposition relations been formed an what factors had influence its formation in the particular way. To complete such a goal we made the comparison of the 2010-s Russia with the 2000-s Ukraine and the 1990-s Mexico and had found, that Russian path towards the competitive authoritarianism had been determined by:

· The fusion of the formally substantial parliament with the weak formula of checks and balances and the kind of informal constitution, that overpowers the presidential authority.

· The numerous, but not sharp and not geographically tied cleavages, which let the dominant party to exist safely, while the redistribution and conviction mechanisms work, and ignore opposition.

· The high share of oil & gas rent in the state budget and the GDP dynamics, characterized by the deep crisis in the period of political pluralism and the boom in the time of the dominant party formation.

· The low level of foreign linkage and leverage, promoted by the democratic countries, determined both by the geographical and geopolitical features of the country.

In contrast, the impact of those factors in Ukraine and Mexico were found to lead the first country towards the maintenance of the more democratic regime, and the second- to the formation of one-party rule, which, however, was found to be fragile while meeting with the society transformation and the financial crisis, which pushed it to liberalization. So, answering the fourth question, we might say, that Russian case is much explained by the application of the hybrid regime / electoral authoritarianism theory, meanwhile, the current state of the incumbent-opposition relations in Russia can't be deducted by the belonging to the particular kind of regime as such.

Responding the additional research questions, we would state, that there are enough instruments to forecast the approximate behavior of the political opposition in Russia, including the application of classifications of the political opposition and the comparative analysis. Thus, basing on our research, we would state approximately, that no serious change is likely to occur in incumbent-opposition relations without the serious shifts within the constitutional formula, connected with the political reforms, the transition of power or the erosion of the ruling coalition, or without the transformation of the cleavage map of the country, that will make impossible to keep the 1990-s cleavage agenda or to avoid the geographical ties of cleavages, or without the serious decrease in the solidity of the oil & gas based rent system, the change of the attention towards the foreign linkage or the increase of the vulnerability from the leverage of foreign democracies. What we can also assume is that the behavior of the key opposition actors within the next electoral circle, by any scenario, would be largely determined by their position in the current configuration, in which they are essentially polarized not just by the cleavage position and the degree of the radicalism, but by the facts of the partisan (non)representation in parliamentary or of the (non)recognition by the incumbent.

So, to conclude, we should say, that the goal, set for this study, have been successfully. As for the aims, set for the each chapter, all of them had been successfully completed either.

To conclude entirely, we just want to fix some research paradoxes and opportunities met through our research:

· The first opportunity concerns the expansion of our opposition studies on the parliamentary and regional elections;

· The second one, which seems to be more interesting, considers the expansion of the hybrid regime study on the broader sample of the countries, as well as on sample, including more cases of the electoral authoritarianisms, added by the still forming hybrids to examine the real space of opportunities for the incumbent-opposition relations diversity;

· Finally, there is a paradox concerning the debatable field of the cleavage measurement, which scientific base is now going through the revision because of the 2010-s electoral shifts in Europe and the Americas. In our opinion, to follow the actual trajectory of the world political studies it would be reasonable to update our knowledge about the cleavages in Russia addressing to the debates.