Regional Parliaments Now Sending Far Fewer Proposals to Duma for New Legislation, Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – At the start of Putin’s time in office, parliaments in Russia’s federal subjects accounted for more than a third of all legislation that the State Duma took up; but now, they account for a miniscule number, the result both of an increasing number of proposals by Duma members and the government and reduced activity in this respect by regional legislatures.

            If the explosion in the number of proposals by Duma deputies and the Russian government have been widely documented and commented upon, with many referring to Russian legislative activity as “the printer,” the waning in the activity of regional legislative assemblies as a source of new laws has not.

            But now that has changed. Pavel Sklyanchuk, a specialist on the Duma who produces a telegram channel about the sources of legislative initiatives, has investigated the declining role of regional and republic legislatures in federal law making and given an interview about his findings (t.me/expertgd/9235 and club-rf.ru/news/63734).

            According to the analyst, in 2022, the legislatures of the federal subjects submitted 293 draft federal laws to the Council of Legislators for preliminary examination. In 2023, this number fell to 190; and during the first eight months of 2024, to only 134. Over the past two years, an average of only 50 bills cleared that hurtle and reached the Duma.

            This trend, Sklyanchuk says, began in the middle of the first decade of this century. During the fourth convocation of the State Duma in 2003 to 2005, “more than 40 percent of all initiatives” came from regional legislatures. But except during the fifth convocation (2011-2016) when an explosion of legislative activity occurred, this figure has declined.

            The constitutional amendments adopted in 2020 accelerated this pattern, he continues,  but other factors are at work as well. Legislatures increasingly consist of representatives of regional business elites who are focused on their own issues rather than all-Russian ones; and governors, who increasingly have experience in Moscow, are lobbying in other ways.

            Sometimes, they simply go to the ministries responsible; and if they have broader proposals, they seek to advance them through the State Council rather than the Duma, yet another reason that is depressing the figures from the federal subjects, the legislative affairs expert says.

            He does note that legislatures in the republics remain more active than do those in the predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays, a pattern that may reflect the fact that these are poorer and so business dominates the legislatures less fully and that governors have less experience in Moscow.

            Commenting on Sklyanchuk’s findings, political consultant Aleksandr Semyonov says that he agrees with all these points but thinks the number of legislative initiatives from the regional parliaments may go back up if these assemblies are filled with veterans of the war in Ukraine as Putin has proposed (club-rf.ru/detail/7407).

            Such people will have a different and often broader view of their roles than do the local businessmen now dominating these assemblies. If Semyonov is right, then the regions may play an expanded role in legislative activity, a development that could have unpredictable consequences for politics not only in the regions but in Moscow as well.