The party system in Russia: multipartidism or bipartidism?

Abstract

Relying on the work of political science classics and modern students of political parties, the article attempts to answer the question as to whether it is possible and necessary to transform the Russian multiparty system into two-party system? Building upon the results of the studies of A. deTocqueville, J. Brice, A. Lowell, S. Lipset and S. Rokkan, G. Sartori, L. Jepstejn, G. James, H. Daalder, M. Duverger, A. Lejphard and personal experience regarding the functioning of parties and party system, the author has formulated the basic advantages and disadvantages of multipartidism and bipartidism. The main advantages of bipartidism are: sustainable and effective Government, the ability to mitigate the ideological conflicts, fulfill election promises for voters.The main advantages of multipartidism are: the possibility of each social group to find an ideologically similar party, providing better partisan balance to the whole political system owing to the presence of not only centrist parties, but also marginal flanks. This serves to reflect the diversity of political parties of the historical direction of national character, and the ethnic and religious diversity of society. And classics and modern students of party politics conclude that parties and party systems derive from the existence of splits and problems in society and possible means toward their solution. Two-party systems formed when there is one main cleavage, and multi-party systems when several issues divide society into parties. During the development of the society, there are new problems and divisions that form new parties, but the party system has continued to maintain its quantitative identity. Thus, the formation of party systems occurs under the influence of objective factors over a long time: decades and even centuries. The subjective efforts of several people, even in authority, cannot facilitate the reformation of Russian (or any other for of) multipartidism into bipartidism. At the same time, Russian multipartidism by transforming from the utmost pluralism to moderate (G. Sartori) gradually acquires those traits that are considered to be benefits of bipartizm. Refs 20.