Falling in Line: Legislative Behavior in the Russian State Duma under Putin

• In Event: Stability and Change in Autocracy

Abstract

How does regime consolidation affect legislative behavior in nondemocracies? Legislatures serve an important role in both democratic and nondemocratic regimes by allowing the regularized expression of divergent viewpoints. However, the dynamics of such expression differ across political systems. In less democratic contexts, legislators necessarily respect regime-set limits on the expression of critical viewpoints. This circumscribes their impact on democratic functions like accountability, political discourse, and policy output. Nevertheless, nondemocratic legislatures remain crucial institutions for information transmission, cooptation, and dispute resolution. However, we know relatively little about when legislatures transition between these competing functions and how individual legislators navigate such transitions.

This article takes the case of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and explores whether and how the expression of dissenting opinions within the State Duma changed as he consolidated power. Putin was a relative outsider when he first came to office in 2000. Since then, he has centralized control, neutralized political opponents, and steered Russia in a clearly authoritarian direction. Drawing on data from over 20,000 bills and 50,000 roll-call votes that span two decades of legislative activity, the paper examines how individual legislators navigated changing political realities and the implications of this for our understanding of how legislatures function in nondemocratic regimes.

Author

• Sarah Hummel, Harvard University