MOST COMMENTATORS VIEW RUSSIAN POLITICS as structured to a very large extent by the executive and not by parliament.(1) On the one hand, the Russian constitution is said to place the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, de jure in a position of weakness. The president's combined legislative powers to veto parliamentary bills 2 and to issue decrees permit the head of state to rule by decree if he or she commands the support of just one-third of either house of the Federal Assembly (Parrish, 1998, p. 79). For this reason Holmes describes the Russian constitutional regime as 'superpresidential', the corollary of which is 'fig-leaf parliamentarianism' (Holmes, 1994, p. 124). On the other hand, analysts point to the de facto limitations on parliament's capacity to act. The polarised and fragmented character of the lower chamber is said to contribute to parliament's weakness (Holmes, 1994, p. 124), and is linked by other studies to the Duma's dysfunctional organisation (Ostrow, 1998). As Ostrow argues, the Duma's unlinked dual-channel design and poor co-ordination of legislative committees and parliamentary parties '... renders the Russian legislature unable to manage internal conflict on legislative issues..., and makes legislative gridlock the norm in the Duma (Ostrow, 1998, pp. 793, 809; see also Ostrow, 2000, chapter 5). The overwhelming majority of commentators regard 'fig-leaf parliamentarism', or a situation in which the State Duma '... does not in any real sense share sovereignty with the chief executive' (Huskey, 1999, p. 180; see also Huskey, 2001), as deeply undesirable. A de jure and de facto weak assembly exposes Russia to the risk of becoming a delegative democracy in which parliamentary checks and balances are largely inoperative, and accountability and representation are flouted by an unrestrained president between elections (O'Donnell, 1998; Parrish, 1998). Yet several analysts have challenged the view that the Duma is a powerless institution. In their study of law making in Russia between 1994 and 1997 Remington, Smith & Haspel (1998, p. 320) conclude that, 'contrary to popular impressions, Russia has been governed by more than presidential decree since late 1993'. Moreover, their evidence on parliament's involvement in the policy-making process indicates 'a somewhat greater role for parliament than the 1993 constitution... would suggest' (p. 320; see also Remington, 2001, pp. 217-231). These contrasting views of parliament's role deserve closer scrutiny because they bear on our understanding of both the governmental process in Russia and the prospects for representative democracy more generally. In this article we examine the extent to which the Duma does in fact share sovereignty with the executive. To gauge its contribution systematically, we document the output of 'important'-that is, innovative and consequential-legislation, as well as assessments of the Duma's work in the press and in public opinion polls. Our research reveals a striking disparity between the impressive output of important legislation since 1994 and the Duma's consistently poor public image. We analyse the reasons put forward by Russian politicians and parliamentary commentators to account for this contrast, and explore the implications of the problems they identify for democratic governance in Russia.
