Institutional design and legislative conflict: The Russian Supreme Soviet-a well-oiled machine, out of control

This article develops a comparative institutional framework for evaluating the new legislatures of the former Soviet Union, and demonstrates that the conventional wisdom about the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet is wrong. It was not a totalitarian, Soviet institution whose omnipotent and malevolent Chair singlehandedly dominated policy outputs and controlled the membership. Rather, the Supreme Soviet's non-partisan, committee-centered design enabled the committees to dominate the legislative process and to virtually exclude conflict, even on such objectively contentious legislative issues as the annual budget. However, the non-partisan design denied the legislature the mechanisms for controlling the Chair on non-legislative, political issues, particularly in relations with the executive branch. On legislative issues, the Supreme Soviet was a well-oiled machine, but on political issues it was out of control, thus leading to the legislature's demise. This article demonstrates the utility of an institutional framework for comparing post-communist legislatures, and the necessity of disaggregating legislative and political issues when evaluating legislative performance.     

The motives of political party activists: A factor-analytic exploration

Students of political motives have had difficulty relating operational indicators to the conceptual framework (associated with Clark and Wilson) that has dominated the field. The present analysis suggests that since this framework is concerned with organizational incentives rather than with individual motives, some fine tuning of the three dimensions included in the original typology may be in order and two additional dimensions need to be added. While this revised framework does not lend itself to the tangible versus nontangible motives overlay conventionally associated with the original framework, a perhaps more useful overlay is suggested which may contribute to a better understanding of what distinguishes party activists from those persons who restrict themselves to more elementary forms of political expression.