The authorities will most likely not be able to maintain a one-party parliament in the capital

Following the results of the elections on September 8 and on the eve of new regional elections on October 25, the State Duma adopted in the third reading a bill allowing the regions to reduce the share of deputies elected by party lists to 25%, and Moscow and St. Petersburg to completely abolish the lists. Thus, a radical reversal of state electoral policy has been made: earlier in 2002, the law on “Basic Guarantees of Citizens’ Electoral Rights” introduced a rule according to which at least 50% of deputies in regional parliaments should be elected from party lists. At the same time, only parties created at the federal level and, until 2005, blocs with their participation were given the right to participate in elections under the proportional system. Subsequently, forced partisanization of elections was carried out, which by 2009-2010 reached in some places the village councils. Now it's the other way around.

Why do they change?

Both in 2002 and now the authorities are trying to solve their problems. In the early 2000s, a combination of controlled partisanship (the number of permitted parties was gradually reduced to seven) and limited competition in elections, together with the abolition of elections for governors and majoritarian districts in State Duma elections, was supposed to help “sovereign democracy” weaken the influence of regional elites. But as a result, not only were the regional authorities weakened, but also the feedback lines between the authorities and the population were largely lost, bright public politicians began to be washed out of politics, and were replaced by gray clerks and party functionaries. This process undoubtedly contributed to the decline in the results of United Russia, which relied primarily on regional officials, in the 2011 elections.

After this, the authorities began to simultaneously fight against the depersonalization of politics, “pushing” governors into dialogue with the population due to the similarity of elections, and with the “vote for any other party” strategy (a consequence of reducing the number of parties), simplifying the registration of parties to disperse protest votes among a large number of parties. number of players. But even here there was a side effect in the form of the return to politics of secretly banned figures like Bykov and Roizman, and most importantly, the destruction of the entire scheme of forced driving of regional and local elites into the few permitted parties. The 2013 election campaign showed that the old party system has “crept”, all the leading “old” parties are losing both iconic figures in the localities and votes; even the party in power can ensure the “correct” percentage of votes only by reducing its quality, which is reflected in low turnout with the decisive role of votes obtained through clearly manipulative means (from maximizing voting at home and through absentee ballots to outright falsification).

However, the process that had begun could no longer be stopped: even under conditions of severe pressure, new players performed very successfully in a number of cases, and 27% for Alexei Navalny in Moscow became a real cold shower for all apologists of the old system.

The authorities made simple conclusions: if we can’t stop it, we’ll abolish it.

An emergency destruction of sites where new projects can succeed has begun. In fact, representatives of the new parties have been asked to go to the constituencies in their personal capacity: thus, the authorities apparently hope that the factor of influence of opposition leaders as “electoral” locomotives (meaning both Navalny himself and the new “Navalnys”) will decrease, and the process of self-organization of the new forces will slow down and become more complex.

Where it leads

Let's start with the short-term consequences. Firstly, the process of registering candidates in majoritarian districts is much more complicated than when registering lists; it is easier for them to be rejected, and it is more difficult for the candidates themselves to protect their rights and reach the media and courts. Eloquent figures: in the elections of regional parliaments in September 2013, 10.5% of the nominated party lists did not reach voting day, and among candidates in majoritarian districts the dropout rate was 17%, while among independent candidates it was 58%.

Secondly, during elections in the most difficult regions, which obviously include Moscow and St. Petersburg, the authorities can distance themselves from the scandalous image of United Russia by nominating formally independent candidates.

Negative long-term consequences include the strengthening of regional autocracies - under the new system they will have more opportunities for self-government, and an even greater weakening of the “old” system parties, which are losing the opportunity to attract sponsors in places on the party list. On the positive side: the emergence of a greater number of platforms for the personal promotion of new politicians (albeit disunited), the growing independence of deputies within parties.

In fact, the authorities will thereby “kill” United Russia even more.

The formal provision of the majority of seats for the party in power will be accompanied by a weakening of the connection between the party and the deputies, which, in conditions of its ideological looseness and inarticulateness, will be almost identical to half-life.

It is important to understand that the majoritarian system in its classic version of the relative majority system (where the winner takes all) is one of the worst and most unfair systems. In the worst case scenario, a political force that has a minimal advantage in the districts with an overall insignificant relative percentage of support can win all the electoral districts. The authorities are openly taking a risk: with such a system, the winner will be the one who conducts a better campaign in the districts. The 2013 campaign on the part of the official candidate for mayor of Moscow was clearly weak and faceless: in the Moscow City Duma elections you won’t achieve much with such quality. A striking example of the possible consequences is Krasnoyarsk: in the 2008 city council elections, United Russia won 17 out of 18 districts, relying on the popular former mayor Pyotr Pimashkov; but already on October 8, 2013, she managed to win only 4 districts out of 18, and even the leader of the party faction in the city council lost the district, while the Patriots of Russia, whose campaign face was Anatoly Bykov, took 8 districts out of 18. Even the frankly weak candidates of the Patriots Russia" in Krasnoyarsk performed very well precisely due to the strong support from Bykov, who personally led an active campaign, although he was not even on the ballot.

Why Moscow

Why the most stringent option is provided specifically for Moscow and St. Petersburg is obvious: it is with support in large cities that the authorities have the greatest problems and there is almost no chance of getting more than half of the seats on the party lists. Moreover, there is even a risk of not taking first place. The authorities forgot how to work with the opposition in the Moscow City Duma a long time ago, having become accustomed in the 1990-2000s to an absolutely manual and controlled, extremely small city parliament, where now out of 35 deputies, 32 represent United Russia (in 2009 the party “won” everything before one majority constituency, and according to the party lists, only the Communist Party of the Russian Federation received seats besides it). The Moscow City Duma elections in the 1990-2000s were a constant process of behind-the-scenes division of districts between groups of the city elite, who, for their piece of the pie, were ready to keep quiet and not notice outright violations in other districts. Public competition in most districts in such conditions was symbolic in nature, and ultimately, having gotten used to the opponents playing giveaway, the authorities in 2009-2011 decided to actually throw them all away. However, it is unlikely that these scenarios will be repeated again without major scandals.

In modern conditions, the abolition of the proportional component specifically in the elections in Moscow and St. Petersburg, from the point of view of the quality of arguments, looks simply absurd.

Yes, of course, the party system in the country is weak, but if anywhere there are actually existing party networks and significant party assets, it is in large cities. It can be added that elections based on party lists in Moscow are also justified by the specific structure of the city: there is a powerful constant internal circulation of the population - the majority of residents live in one district, work in another, studied in a third, etc. Thus, a significant part of voters, especially in residential areas, is weakly tied specifically to the problems of a specific part of the city and is poorly integrated into social networks at the place of residence. Problem-ideological representation in such conditions is completely justified. However, as a result, precisely where there are parties, they tend to annihilate their role in elections, and where there are almost no parties (on the periphery and in the national republics), their role is formally maximum. It is obvious that the authors of the reform are not at all interested in the fate of the party system and the adequacy of the election results to public sentiment, but in maintaining control over the authorities and minimizing the chances of opponents.

How will the Moscow City Duma elections take place?

It is not yet completely clear from the adopted federal law how the Moscow City Duma elections will take place in September 2014. Firstly, rumors are being actively discussed that they could be ahead of schedule and take place as early as next spring (however, then the election campaign will overlap with the Olympics in Sochi, which will carry additional image risks for the federal government). Secondly, the city’s electoral legislation will still have to be changed if the Moscow authorities want to exercise the right to cancel the proportional part of the elections. So far, the law contains the figure of 45 deputies of the Moscow City Duma: from 1993 to this day, there have been 35 deputies in the Moscow City Duma. This is one of the smallest regional parliaments in the country, although Moscow is the largest region in terms of population. For comparison: in the Moscow region and St. Petersburg there are 50 deputies in regional parliaments, in the Rostov region - 60, in Dagestan - 90. Such a disproportion was initially caused by the desire of city authorities to have the most controllable representative body of power. Given the gigantic size of the districts (when there were 35, there were approximately 200,000 voters in the districts; in 2009, with 17 districts, there were approximately 410,000 voters per district), only candidates who rely on administrative resources or have powerful financial resources have a real chance of being elected. resources or visibility at the federal level.

At the same time, in political science there is a stable idea of the so-called cube root law, according to which the optimal size of a representative body of government is the cube root of the number of voters. For Moscow this would be at least 190 deputies.

Even half of this figure is 95 people, but not 45.

Theoretically, the authorities can still increase the number of deputies of the Moscow City Duma: in political technology communities, the idea is already being expressed that it may be beneficial for the authorities to increase the number of deputies of the Moscow City Duma to 55-60 deputies, since in this case the share of oppositionists will decrease (supposedly the opposition has no more than 10 candidates capable of winning single-member elections districts, so their share in the future MHD can be diluted by increasing the number of deputies). This is a controversial argument, since reducing the size of districts will make it easier for opposition candidates to conduct campaigns, since they have fewer financial resources and lack administrative resources. How reducing the size of districts can help the authorities is that with a decrease in the number of voters, fewer falsified votes will be required in absolute terms. Probably, the administration's political strategists are now weighing which option is more advantageous.

If elections are held in only 45 majoritarian districts, then with 7,251,000 voters (that’s how many were in the mayoral elections on September 8), there will be an average of about 161,000 voters per majoritarian district.

Thus, the size of the future MHD may still change. However, there is no longer any doubt that the authorities will be interested, firstly, in targeted sweeps in specific districts, which means that the opposition must create a headquarters for serious legal support for candidates. Secondly, the government’s technologists’ clear focus on maximizing spoilers is absolutely obvious: by any means, the government will strive to ensure that different alternative parties march through the districts in different columns. It is already clear that there will be no single candidates for the districts from the entire opposition spectrum. Civic Platform, which previously supported Sobyanin in the mayoral elections, has already promised to nominate candidates in all districts. Obviously, she can't have that many electable candidates, which means most of them will be spoilers. With a high degree of probability, a number of other parties will do the same (and in fact, in the interests of the authorities). Thirdly, there will most likely be gerrymandering: the desire to annex protest areas to more loyal ones, so that within specific districts the protest areas will be in the minority.

In such conditions, everything will be decided by the quality of the candidates’ campaigns and the ability to mobilize their electorate: Bykov, already mentioned above, conducted a campaign in Krasnoyarsk alone, and this did not hinder his success. The most promising areas for the opposition are the city center, the university southwest and the Leningrad direction: it is significant that in the past it was the Central, University and Leningrad districts that the authorities lost in elections to the State Duma. With 45 deputies of the Moscow City Duma, these territories may have 8-9 electoral districts. A number of other territories are also not hopeless for the opposition, provided that high-quality campaigns are carried out in them: these are the west, north-west, and many areas in the east. The greatest potential for pro-government candidates is in the “dormitory” areas beyond the Moscow Ring Road and near the Moscow Ring Road (it is in the residential areas that internal communications between residents are weaker and traditionally higher falsification), as well as in a number of areas that in the past had a “working” character with all the ensuing social and educational characteristics of the population.

In any case, the outcome of the elections has not yet been predetermined and there is no electoral system capable of iron-cladly guaranteeing the authorities the desired election results, no matter how much they want to find it and deceive fate. It will most likely not be possible to maintain the previous character of the Moscow City Duma as a de facto one-party government body. We can already predict that even the column of government supporters, not as strongly bound by the party hierarchy as before, will be much less monolithic. The upcoming Moscow City Duma elections will actually be the first in its history to be held in conditions of real competition and without key players playing giveaways.

The end of the system: what will the new Moscow City Duma be like?