Strategies of creating a dominant party – the case of UR
only form of organizations, which were allowed to participate in elections at the federal and
regional levels. Additionally, to be registered as an ,,electoral association", the old minimum
party membership was raised from 5,000 to 10,000, with a minimum of 100 members from at
least half of the regions. The idea of ,,national scale"embodied not only the geographical
aspect but also how representative the parties had to be: they were no longer allowed to
address sectional interests (Sakwa 2007: 196). This can be seen as a mean to prevent
separatist tendencies, as it prohibited the creation of parties on religious, national or racial
foundations.
Putin continued with his party-system reforms in 2004 during his second term in office. The
first of these clearly supported Putin's centralizing program, as it gave the president the right
to appoint Russia's regional governors. Surely, this step had great influence on political
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