THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES IN RUSSIA

Cross-national studies suggest that electoral law, the arrangement of political institutions, political cleavages in the electorate, and pol itical stability influence the number of parliamentary parties and the ir policy-making role. These factors do not yield unambiguous expectat ions for the parties in Russia's new parliament. Nevertheless, the Dum a, the lower and more powerful chamber of the new Russian Federal Asse mbly, has developed a strongly party-oriented decision-making process. In this paper, we detail the role of parties in the Duma and conclude that the particular sequence of events in late 1993 and early 1944 cr ucially influenced the emergence of such a strongly party-oriented pro cess.