Strategies of creating a dominant party – the case of UR
In July 2000, in his first ,,state of the nation" speech at the annual opening of Parliament,
president Putin turned to the legislature to express his dissatisfaction with the state of
country's party system and made clear his intention to improve this. A year later, at one of
his press conferences Putin declared: ,,If there are de facto two-, three-, and four-party
systems in developed, civilized countries, why do there have to be 350 or 5,000 parties in
Russia? This is a kind of Bacchanalia, not democracy"(Rose et al. 2011: 46). Putin's main aim
was to give structure and regularity to political competition. Yet, the established laws were
largely seen as attempts to eliminate most parties and assert full state control over the few that
survive (Fish 2001: 77)
Already in December 2000 the presidential law ,,On Political Parties" was published. The aim
of this new law was to create a system consisting of fewer parties and with all of them having
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