Defending the Institutional Status Quo: Communist Leadership of the Second Russian State Duma, 1996–99

The 1995 Russian parliamentary elections returned a State Duma dominated by an alliance of the Communist Party (CPRF) and the Agrarian (APG) and Popular Power (PP) groupings, whose combined number fell just four votes short of an overall majority. Such a powerful voting bloc might have been expected to undo the power‐sharing principles on which the First Duma (1994–95) operated. Rather than challenge the status quo, however, the CPRF defended it on several occasions. In this paper, I argue that existing arrangements held benefits for the CPRF and its leftist allies. In the absence of a stable, disciplined majority, the Duma's rules gave leftist deputies the incentives and flexibility to organize collectively.