DISCIPLINE AND PARTY INSTITUTIONALIZATION IN POST-SOVIET LEGISLATURES

Fearing that weak or poorly institutionalized party systems may under-mine democratic consolidation, scholars have examined party systems in a myriad of contexts. The vast majority of these studies utilize aggregate measures of party system institutionalization to assess the relative merits of individual systems. While laudable, relying on aggregate measures may obscure the effects of the variation in party institutionalization in different systems. This article examines legislative politics in post-Communist Russia and Ukraine to determine whether variation in party institutionalization, even in weakly institutionalized party systems, has significant effects. The empirical results show that variation in party institutionalization creates variation in levels of parliamentary party discipline in both contexts. This raises the possibility that systemic level analyses of party system institutionalization are ignoring the effects of within-system variation. KEY WORDS institutionalization legislature political party Russia Ukraine The literature on party system development has been growing for a number of years. Centered on the experiences of systems in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, many of these studies attempt to measure the strength or institutionalization of the party system.1 Weakly institutionalized party systems are thought to under-mine citizen participation, weaken electoral accountability, and increase uncertainty for both voters and elites (Birch, 2001; Mainwaring, 1999; Mainwaring and Scully, 1995). Thus, weak party system institutionalization creates obstacles for democratic consolidation, preventing new democracies from capitalizing on successful democratic transitions. The majority of these studies analyze party system institutionalization by using aggregate measures of party system weakness.2 Yet, such measure