Deliberation in the Russian Duma: Legislative Speeches in a Hybrid-Regime

• In Event: Parties, Pluralism, and Electoral Politics in Post-Communist Settings

Abstract

What are the purposes of legislative speech in hybrid and authoritarian regimes? Why do legislators decide to engage in those debates, and who is likely to speak? Conventional wisdom holds that, at least in democratic contexts, debates on the parliamentary floor formalize the public platforms of government and opposition. Rather than serve as genuine deliberative or discursive mechanisms to craft policy or persuade opponents, these debates are often partisan or electoral tools. These explanations do not fit the authoritarian context where partisanship and elections matter less so than in democracies. This article argues that speeches in non-single-party authoritarian parliaments follow one of two tracts. They are either given by the regime's party and signal the government's preferences – even when these are at odds with their constituency. Or, they are provided by 'tolerated' opposition who, in turn, create legitimacy for the executive's position through the government's apparent deliberative dialogues and consensus-building attempts. The use and allowance of legislative speech at once provides legislative legitimacy to laws passed through the parliament, and deflects blame away from the government and towards the party if a given policy fails. This article uses a novel time-series dataset of legislative speeches from the Russian State Duma by legislator. It evaluates the extent to which legislative speeches use democratic and deliberative language and evaluates to what extent legislators discuss salient policies. It profiles who speaks during a given convocation and what topics they bring to the floor. The results shed light on our knowledge of authoritarian legislatures, Russian politics, and executive-parliamentary relations.

Author

• Nicholas James, Oxford University