The Politics of Dominant Party Formation: United Russia and Russia's Governors

This article analyses the emergence of United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) as a dominant party by examining the behaviour of Russia's governors. Using original data on when governors joined United Russia, the article demonstrates that those governors with access to autonomous political resources were more reluctant to join the dominant party. By showing that Russian elite members made their affiliation decisions on the basis of calculations about their own political resources rather than simply being coerced by the Kremlin, this article provides evidence for a theory of dominant party formation that casts the problem as a two-sided commitment problem between leaders and elites.