Constitutional Bargaining in Russia, 1990-93: Institutions and Uncertainty by Edward Morgan-Jones

Author:Edward Morgan-Jones [Morgan-Jones, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Comparative Politics, Social Science, Political Science, Political Process, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9781135171797
Google: MKuMAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17510284
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Modelling constitutional bargaining after the fall of the Soviet Union

This chapter will now apply the theoretical framework outlined in Chapter 3, to assess if the agenda-setting approach to constitutional change can be applied to understanding the outcomes of constitutional negotiations in the post-August 1991 setting. This chapter will test two sets of hypotheses: one set derived from assuming full information and one set derived from assuming uncertainty. These hypotheses are derived from a model of decision-making plausibility based on the institutional structure of the Congress (see Chapter 3 for a full elaboration and justification of the model). This model assumes that in many circumstances, the Speaker of the Congress has gate-keeping power over policy; that is, the ability to prevent proposals from reaching the floor of the Congress. Once proposals are made, the Congress has the authority to amend any legislative proposals to the ideal point of the pivotal Deputy. The Speaker may try using his agenda-setting power to prevent the ideal point being reached, but this would not necessarily be expected to be successful where the Deputies have clear ideas about their objectives on the issue at hand. These rules establish that the Speaker is the first mover in the process of institutional choice and in conditions of full information can anticipate the consequences of discussing the Constitution for his interests. The Speaker’s choice of whether to present a proposal would therefore depend on what he expects the impact of congressional action to be on his interests. What the Speaker will decide to do will depend on the relation ship of his preferences to the Deputies’ preferences and the status quo (see Figure 2.1).

As Chapter 3 demonstrated, to develop concrete hypotheses from this agenda-setting model requires the development of assumptions about the preferences of the Deputies and the Speaker. As the introduction to this chapter suggested, in August 1991 the changed bargaining context altered the assumptions that can be made about preferences: first, the end of the Soviet Union as a viable centre of political authority removed from negotiation one dimension of institutional change; second, the creation of the presidency, the election of Yeltsin to this post and the election of Khasbulatov as Speaker of the Parliament, changing both the identity of the Speaker and his relationship with other institutions, could be expected to have an impact on the Speaker’s preferences (see pages 40–3 for full details of this spatial model).

Employing the simple power-seeking motivations used by electoral bargaining accounts of institutional choice allows us to build up a simplified picture of the new Speaker’s potential preferred location of a final constitutional settlement. As Khasbulatov was not the favoured candidate for the presidency, this fact would shape his preferences about the distribution of executive power. The model would assume that he would favour securing a parliamentary system of government. As a representative of the federal centre, he would be expected to favour proposals that secure the viability of the federal centre as a centre of political authority and preferring

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