Russia Rules

Duverger’s law states that the electoral rules (espically whether it is a single-member district plurality [SMDP] or Proportional Representation [PR]) determine the effective number of parties. If the country has a SMDP system then the effective number of parties going to be 2 or less and if it is a PR then the number of parties should be more than 2. Using this we now determine what the effective number of parties in Russia are and why that is.

The Russian system of government is made up of bicameral system. The upper chamber is called Gossoudartyennaya Duma or the State Duma in English. Wikipedia Election World (2012) states only 4 parties have seats in the State Duma. United Russia has 238 seats, the Communist party has 92, A Just Russia holds 64, and Liberal Democratic Party has 56 for a told of 450 seats. Using the formula N_eff = 1/∑(p²), we that the effective number of parties is 2.799. This means that Russia is indeed a multi-party system. Duverger’s law is correct in that Russia uses a PR system.

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (2012), in Russia they use a non-hybrid PR system that has one district of the whole country. There 450 seats in this country. To determine the proportionality they use the Hare method. There is also a threshold of 7% of the vote need to get representation. Although, there have been parties that have receive 5% to 7% that have been granted seats, they were unable to join any of the parliamentary factions. This is changing to 5% in January 2013. Wikipedia (2012) also states that it is a closed list for the elections.