The Influence of the Council of Legislators on the Legislative Activity of Regional Parliaments

Abstract

The authors focus on the political implication of the emergence and functioning of the Council of Legislators under the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. Based on several characteristics of the legislative process, such as the speed of adopting bills, the traffic of initiatives and the share of those adopted, as well as the transcripts of the Plenary Sessions of the Council, the authors conduct a comprehensive analysis of the work of this institution, recording and interpreting several changes. Using the theory of Rational Choice Institutionalism (the Veto Player Theory, in particular), the authors show that the platform established in 2012, originally designed for communication between federal and regional parliaments, has over time become a barrier, predetermining the fate of some initiatives. In addition, the institutional environment created by the Council’s actions has changed the very format of regional activity, whereby the original idea of open dialogue has been replaced by expert discussion within the profile commissions, and the outcome of these activities has shifted from legislative initiatives to expert commentaries and recommendations. Another dimension of influence can be traced in the implementation of the bureaucratic logic associated with redirecting and filtering the traffic of regional initiatives through an extra-constitutional structure. Research results allow the authors to take a different view on the legislative activity of the regions at the federal level, as well as draw attention to the political nature of the work of auxiliary institutions and the «rules of the game» they form in the context of the interactions between the Federal Assembly and the regional parliaments.