Oates/Russian parties on line ECPR 2011

The Effect of Democratic Discourse in Non-Democratic States: Russian Political Parties On Line

Paper prepared for

The European Consortium for Political Research

Section: Political Communication

Panel: Political Parties, Nationalism and Web 2.0 in European contexts

Reykjavik, Iceland

August 2011

Version 2.0

24 August 2011

Sarah Oates

Professor of Political Communication

School of Social and Political Studies

University of Glasgow

Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Email:

Website:

The author gratefully acknowledges support for research in this paper provided by two grants: International Potential, National Limits: Investigating the Role of the Russian Internet in Constraining the Social Agenda. (BritishAcademy) and The Internet and Everyday Rights in Russia (UK Economic and Social Research Council Grant RES-000-22-4159).

This paper suggests different ways of conceptualising the effect of online communication in non-free states and further understanding the national constraints on the general democratizing potential of the online sphere. In particular, this paper addresses the possible effect of online information and discourse on the political sphere when there is a dearth of strong democratic institutions, including effective political parties, in a particular country. While the internet is often studied as a way to augment democratic institutions, what role can the internet play in democratization if there are no robust democratic institutions to effect the change suggested – or demanded – by informed, engaged or even outraged citizens? How much will the historic and societal role of political parties, which vary enormously among countries, dictate how parties capitalize on information opportunities offered by the online sphere? Or can the new and evolving communication technologies and behaviours of the online audience change how political parties function in societies? Alternatively, will the online sphere change particular aspects of party communication asymmetrically, for example by allowing nationalist parties to have a disproportionate effect on political discourse or by forcing popular political parties to become more inclusive and transparent?

This study examines these issues through an analysis of web usage by four major Russian political parties with seats in the lower house of the Russian parliament: United Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia and A Just Russia. Using content analysis of the information provision of party websites, a review of how parties link to Web 2.0 tools, a discussion of public attitudes toward political parties in Russia as well as some weblink analysis, this paper suggests new ways of understanding the democratizing potential of the online sphere in the absence of robust democratic institutions. How can we measure, analyse and explain the similarities and differences in the ways in which Russian political parties are using the internet? At issue are the following questions: 1) What is the evidence that the internet could turn ineffective political parties into actual democratizing institutions in Russia; 2) what is the evidence that online politics actually help elites to further consolidate their power at the expense of the citizens; and 3) what parallels can be drawn between the internet and the way in which Russian elites used television to undermine the democratic potential of political parties in the 1990s?

Political parties and the online sphere

The internet would appear to offer a range of ways to help political parties fulfil their optimal function of translating the wishes of the electorate into policy. The communicative tools of the online sphere allow for parties to provide much more information about their organisation, history, structure, values, ideology and policies. If parties are elected into office or form part of the government, they also can provide more policy information with far greater detail to a broader range of citizens. The interactive capabilities of the online sphere even make it possible to discuss policies in depth and use ‘crowd sourcing’ as ways to foster ideas for political engagement. Parties that are still attempting to win seats can provide voters with nuanced arguments and have the ability to form reasoned (and possibly appealing) arguments without struggling to win the attention of the mass media or paying for expensive advertising, as in the U.S. electoral system. The internet should lower barriers as well as costs, helping parties to campaign for support, recruit members or volunteers as well as avoid media bias/framing that could be detrimental to their fortunes. The advent of social-networking and other many-to-many networking tools should allow political ideas and actions to flourish, piggybacking on pre-existing online social networks.

Studies of how parties use the online sphere, however, suggest that any sort of cyber-utopian era for political parties is very far from realization (Norris, 2003). Attention has been drawn to the use of the internet in campaigns in the United States, particularly during presidential elections (Anstead and Chadwick, 2008). However, the United States is rather exceptional in this case, as elections are centred more on candidates than political parties. Thus, while lessons can be drawn in particular from the synergy between Barack Obama’s use of Web 2.0, the rise of the internet as a central source of political information as well as the particular youth appeal of his candidacy, it is not necessarily a lesson that can be translated into different political environments. As Kavanagh (1995) has pointed out, the American system of campaign communication in particular is distinctive from European campaign communication, as Americans have a greater focus on electoral campaigns over party policy, prioritise the coverage of candidates over the news of party organisations, as well as emphasise the ‘horse race’ aspects of the campaign rather than focus on discussions of ideology or policy.

The fundamental work for studying online communication by political parties in comparative perspective has its roots in Gibson and Ward (2000). Rachel Gibson and Stephen Ward established a cross-national tool for analysing central features of political party websites (also see Gibson et al., 2003; Gibson 2010). The scheme assigns points for features of websites in the categories of information provision, resource generation, internal networking, external networking, participation, campaigning and delivery (encompassing ‘glitz’ factor, access, navigability, freshness and visibility).Once the points are assigned, websites can be scored for their performance in each category and compared with other party websites. Although the scheme remains one of the best ways to quantify web performance of parties, some elements have become less relevant with the rapid development of web technologies as video has become standard, pages of large political organisations are updated constantly and the number of web links has grown astronomically (Oates 2008).Studies using the Gibson and Ward scheme have found that while parties are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their online use, this use varies by country and between parties.

Beyond the measurement of how parties may use the online sphere is concern with how the audience might choose to engage with it. A study by Lusoli and Ward found that while British parties were creating more elaborate websites with impressive amounts of resources, the audience was not particularly interested.[1] This parallels findings by others who have studied the online political sphere, with Hindman (2009) suggesting that most of the online audience is not interested in politics and Davis (2009) finding that those who discuss politics in blogs tend to stay in relatively self-contained groups. In addition there does not appear to be compelling evidence that the online sphere fundamentally changes the level of openness or transparency in party organisations.

A study of Russian political parties online in 2003 found that the parties were taking little advantage of the opportunities offered by online communication (March, 2004, 2006). This was not surprising, not only due to the relatively weak development of Russian parties (discussed below), but also because of the low penetration of the internet in Russia almost a decade ago (less than 10 percent of the population, according to March). Indeed, Russia was surprisingly slow to develop widespread internet use (Cooper, 2008). Coupled with a generally low interest in political parties, the online of political parties was fairly negligible. More recent studies have suggested that Russians are becoming much more active on line. Fossato et al. (2008) found significant political action and networking within some blogs, although bloggers found themselves stalled by political apathy or co-opted by the government. In addition, an in-depth study by the BerkmanCenter for Internet & Society at HarvardUniversity found a vibrant blogosphere in Russia. An analysis of millions of blogs posts in the Russian blogosphere in 2010 found that Russians bloggers did not fall into oppositional political camps as is found in the American political blogosphere (Etling et al., 2010). Rather, the Berkman researchers found that RuNet blogs had a core located on the LiveJournal platform and fell into four major groups: 1) politics and public affairs; 2) culture; 3) Russian-language bloggers in others states such as Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia and Israel; and 4) a relatively small number of “instrumental” bloggers who were paid to blog for money or other incentives. However, a dearth of division in the RuNet political sphere is more likely to signal a lack of political opposition to the Kremlin than a vibrant civil sphere on line.

There are two quite significant factors relating to the internet and political parties in Russia that would suggest a fundamental shift of the role of online communication for parties. First, Russia has moved from an internet laggard to an internet leader: The country how has the second largest internet audience in Europe with 59.7 million people online, recently out-distancing the United Kingdom and trailing only Germany in terms of Europeans on line.[2]Russian internet growth has been phenomenal, rising more than 1,000 percent over the past decade to reach 43 percent on line, according to World Internet Stats ( More significantly, the penetration rate is far higher among younger Russians, paralleling the rates of penetration in the West(Russian Federal Agency on the Press and Mass Communication, 2010). In addition, the same report by the Russian government projects that internet penetration will reach almost 100 percent among the population 40 years old or younger in the next five years (Russian Federal Agency on the Press and Mass Communication, 2010). Russia is showing the signs of having an unusually active and engaged online population, also driven by powerful, indigenous internet platforms such as the search engine Yandex and the blogging/social-networking platform LiveJournal.

Russian parties: Democratic by design, but not by function

A discussion of Russian political parties on line needs to be preceded by a discussion of Russian parties off line. The modern structure of the Russian political party system was created by the 1993 Russian Constitution. In fact, the election of the first parties to the Duma and the ratification of the constitution itself took place on the same day in December 1993 as these were the first national elections in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Harried by the Soviet-era legislature, Russian President Boris Yeltsin – who himself won his first presidential mandate in Soviet times – had proposed a radical constitution that swept away all the Soviet-era institutions. It created a party-based democracy, with a bicameral legislature (the Duma as the lower house and Federation Council as the upper house of the Russian Federative Assembly) and a particularly strong presidency. The president has sweeping power, including the ability to dissolve a combative parliament and call for new elections. This was no doubt in reaction to the numerous confrontations between Yeltsin (who favoured a more pro-Western, speedy transition to the market) and a more conservative parliament from 1991-1993 (White, 2011). #

In a forceful example of new democracy brinkmanship, the 1993 Russian constitution was approved by a bare majority of voters, which legalized the new structure at simultaneously with the first election to the same institutions in December 1993. Political parties were designed along liberal principles in the new constitution, although the actual practice of Russian politics has not fostered a democratic environment (White, Rose and McAllister, 1997; Colton, 2000; Hutcheson, 2003; White, Wyman and Oates, 1997; Rose and Munro, 2002; Smyth, 2006; Smyth, Lowry and Wilkening, 2007; Gel’man, 2008; Reuter and Remington, 2009; Slider, 2010; Sakwa, 2011). The constitution guarantees the right of citizens to form parties freely, for parties to raise funds and organise and – perhaps most critically – the right for free time and fair media coverage in elections.[3]For Duma elections, the electoral system was designed to balance the power of national parties with local politics: Half of the 450 seats were elected through national party list system, while half were elected via single-member constituencies. In the SMD races, it was possible to run with or without party affiliation. The same is true of Russian presidential elections, in which parties play a smaller role. Neither Yeltsin (president until 1999) nor President Vladimir Putin (1999-2008) ran with a party affiliation, although they made their support known for the central, pro-government party of the day.

Since the passage of the Russian constitution nearly two decades ago, the Russian government has amended and limited the ability of parties to form from the grass roots and win election in parliament. Most notably, the government has introduced complex rules on national party registration that involves collecting signatures of support nationwide; eliminated single-member constituency elections; and raised the distribution of party-list seats from those parties that get at least 5 percent of the national party list vote to those that receive 7 percent or more. It would be fair to say that the reality of Russian party politics and elections has little to do with the institutional design for parties in the 1993 constitution. Aside from the end of elections to the upper house, the constitutional guarantees were ignored or even amended by the Russian government to guard against their opponents gaining office. In the early Duma elections of 1993 and 1995, pro-Kremlin parties failed to win significant shares of the vote despite massive state resources and sycophantic television coverage on state-run television (Oates 2006). In particular, the nationalists and the communists thrived in the new system, respectively winning the largest number of Duma party-list seats in 1993 and 1995. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation also had a strong showing in 1999. The Kremlin responded in several ways, including by significantly increasing media propaganda against relatively successful opposition parties; co-opting the popular nationalist party as well as incorporating stronger nationalist messages into the pro-government parties; and changing the electoral rules to favour the fortunes of pro-government parties that could be better controlled through national party-list elections (Oates 2006, Gel’man 2008). United Russia now overwhelmingly dominates the media (particularly during elections) as well as holds a majority of the seats in the Duma. Russian Prime Minister and former President Putin is the leader of the United Russia party. In addition, current Russian President Dmitri Medvedev is visibly aligned with the party. It is particularly apparent that the media, especially popular and influential state-run television First Channel, have been used to undermine, rather than support, party development (Oates, 2006). Television and key journalists were used to spread negative propaganda about the opposition (some of it both dubious and personal) while flooding the airwaves with constant coverage of pro-Kremlin parties and supporters (Oates, 2006;European Institute for the Media 1994, February 1996, September 1996, March 2000, August 2000; OSCE/ODHIR 2 June 2004, 27 January 2004).

The Russian disdain for political parties

It is not fair, however, to blame government support for its own parties completely for the general failure of parties to foster democratic culture in Russia. From the collapse of the Soviet Union onwards, Russian citizens have shown little enthusiasm for political parties as effective and trusted political institutions (White, 2011; White, Rose and McAllister, 1997; Rose and Munro, 2002; Colton, 2000). In a 2010 survey of 2,000 Russians, trust in political parties ranked the lowest on a list of 13 political institutions in the country. Only 18.2 percent of the respondents reported any trust in political parties, compared with 62.8 percent in the church, 59.9 percent in the president, 51.2 percent in the armed forces and 41.4 percent in the government.[4] In fact, the respondents typically felt that fewer parties would be better, with 15.7 percent of the respondents actually favouring a one-party system. Of those who favoured a multi-party system (60.7 percent of the respondents), about half of them still felt that the system would be better with fewer parties (32.7 percent of all respondents). A more radical minority – ten percent of the respondents – favoured abolishing parties altogether. Thus, parties face an uphill battle in a society that does not generally perceive them as particularly worthwhile. Even with the greater information resource provision offered by the online sphere, it is hard to reach an electorate in which 40.7 percent of the population claimedno specific political orientation in the 2010 survey and 78.9 percent claimed they did not support any particular political party.