Property, power, and the presidency: ownership policy reform and Russian executive-legislative relations, 1990-1999

This article asks how new rules of political conduct are established in a c ountry attempting political transformation and sweeping economic change. Ba sed on a close analysis of the conflict over property policy and its effect on Russian executive-legislative relations in the 1990s, the study argues that regardless of formal distributions of power, the real allocation of po licy-making authority is shaped in struggles over substantive policy issues . Those arenas, especially during the first years after the fall of an auth oritarian regime, can function as "political classrooms" in which leaders e ither adopt or reject such practices as compromise and negotiation. (C) 200 1 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Scienc e Ltd. All rights reserved.