The Last Bastion of Unitarism? Local Institutions, Party Politics, and Ramifications of EU Accession in Lithuania
A Japanese political scientist specializing in the former Soviet republics examines the system of regions taking shape within Lithuania. Driven in part by EU accession requirements, the current system is compared with the Soviet past and with that of Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The paper, based substantially on field work in 2001, argues that emergence of the country's most recognizable and operational regions, second-tier municipalities, has bolstered the competitive character of Lithuanian politics. A detailed analysis of elections of deputies to municipal councils, and subsequent election of mayors to head those councils, demonstrates patterns of coalition building designed to maintain a power balance among local party organizations. Three case studies demonstrate divergent contexts within which a national trend—the rise and fall of Lithuania's bipolar party system—is played out. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H11, H77, O18. 1 figure, 5 tables, 42 references.
The Changing Fortunes of Japan's Progressive Governors
Japan has a dominant party system under which one party always controls the government.1 The dominant party in Japan is the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In democratic theory, the major defect of a dominant party system is that the electorate cannot "kick the rascals out." Even if the LDP were to lose its majority, the probable outcome would be an LDP-dominated coalition. The threat of losing power is the strongest guarantee of elite responsiveness to the electorate. When this threat is weak or nonexistent, other mechanisms can ensure some degree of responsiveness but they are necessarily weak substitutes. In Japan factionalism in the LDP helps to guarantee the responsiveness of the governors to the governed. The prime minister need not worry about losing power to other parties, but he must worry about keeping his own party behind him. Other faction leaders will use any policy failure or electoral embarassment to unseat an incumbent. Although the electorate cannot readily kick out the LDP, a decline in LDP votes can kick out the prime minister; personnel turnover partially substitutes for party turnover. Moreover, the LDP does lose elections. Losing does not mean a loss of power, but it does mean a diminution of power. The LDP has gone from a stable majority, one in which it controls all Diet committees, to an unstable majority, in which the party has found it expedient to enter into a
From Adygeya to Yaroslavl: Factors of Party Development in the Regions of Russia, 1995-1998
It is generally recognised that political parties have failed to emerge as important actors in the vast majority of Russia's regions.' Party underdevelopment on the regional level has been testified by recent studies focused on candidate nomination strategies and electoral performance in the 1995 national legislative elections2 and in the 1995-97 gubernatorial elections.3 On the one hand, this situation can be explained with reference to a particularly unfavourable constellation of institutional and political factors in Russia as a whole.4 On the other hand, the modest role of parties in gubernatorial elections arguably stems from these elections' inherently majoritarian features.5 In this analysis I will attempt to identify factors facilitating party development on the regional level by focusing my attention on a presumably favourable institutional milieu of sub-national legislative elections. So far, this subject has not attracted much scholarly attention. In addition to a number of descriptive studies,6 the 1993-94 regional legislative elections generated two articles discussing primarily the occupational structures of the assemblies.7 In particular, it has been demonstrated that the electoral strength of administrative and economic managers impedes party development. Some of the studies of more recent elections confirm this inference.8 Taking different but still elite-centred perspectives, other analyses related regional party development in Russia to the 'split and reconfiguration of ex-Communist party factions'9 and to intra-elite conflicts on the regional level.'1 Both explanations have been based on fairly limited numbers of observations. In this analysis I will examine the results of regional legislative elections held in 86 regions of Russia in 1995-98. By regions I understand constitutionally defined sub-national units of the Russian Federation-republics, kraya, oblasti, federal cities, the autonomous oblast' and autonomous okruga (AO)." First, I will identify the empirical indicators of party development on the regional level, thus constructing a set of dependent variables. At the same time, some basic factual information about the regional assembly elections and those political parties that are active on the regional level will be provided. Second, I will formulate and substantiate several hypotheses about the causes of party development. The operationalisation of these hypotheses will provide a set of independent variables. Third, I will statistically examine the strength of the hypothetical causal relationships. On this basis, a number of factors facilitating party development in Russia's regions will be identified.