The Presidentialization of Political Parties in Post-soviet States: Theoretical Challenges

Abstract

The chapter brings together various new insights contained in the individual chapters, to draw from them a number of important conclusions regarding to the role of the Russian, Belarusian, and Kazakh Presidents in party politics and its presidentialization. The analysis of the political systems of these three countries shows that, in each of these states, party politics gradually became a prisoner of presidential personalist regimes albeit in varying degrees. A key indicator is the role of the “party of power”, the party of the head of state, in the political system. This role varied dramatically in the post-Soviet states. In Russia and Kazakhstan, where the dominant-party systems have been established, the United Russia and Nur Otan parties have become essential instruments of controlling the ruling elite over political and public life. But the presidentialization of the “party of power” cannot be considered as an autonomous political phenomenon or as a general political trend. It is only a distorted reflection of the political practice of a personalistic authoritarian regime. In Belarus, however, due to the specifics of Lukashenko’s regime of personal power, attempts to create a “party of power” were unsuccessful, and the President chose to rule without reliance on such a party, which led to the marginalization of party politics and inter-party struggles. The presence of other parties of the so-called systemic (loyal) opposition and regular elections helps authoritarian leaders in post-Soviet countries to simulate compliance to democratic norms, gives the illusion of party competition, and lends legitimacy to ruling regimes. It changes the nature of parties as participants in the political process and turns them into pseudo-parties that do not aim at winning elections, gaining power, protecting the interests of some social strata, and implementing clearly formulated ideological objectives or program guidelines. Party systems become dependent and secondary to informal power structures and to personalist regimes. Thus, in post-Soviet states, the presidentialization of party politics can be adequately understood only taking into account the political environment in which it exists.