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¹¹ It is also important to emphasize the dangers of applying a different electoral system to the results of an old election since such an approach assumes that behaviour would not change. Yet, as Katz notes, there is a large body of theoretical literature and empirical evidence to suggest that both voters and parties behave differently under different institutional settings. So, even though these behavioural changes are advanced as reasons justifying a new electoral system, ‘unless they can be taken into account, they leave projections based on past elections of very dubious value’. See Richard Katz, ‘Problems in Electoral Reform: Why the Decision to Change Electoral Systems is Not Simple’, in Henry Milner (ed.), Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count: Electoral System Reform in Canada and its Provinces, Peterborough, Ontario, Broadview Press, p. 93.Google Scholar

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¹⁴ In 1995, 43 parties competed for seats in the proportional representation half of the Duma election with 49.5 per cent of the vote going to parties that failed to pass the 5 per cent threshold. Given this result, Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) was charged with preventing a recurrence of such disproportionality in the 1999 election. Accordingly, the CEC refined Russia's election law in several ways. In 1999, the CEC was required to verify 20 per cent of 200,000 signatures needed to be on the ballot and to disqualify parties with 15 per cent or more invalid signatures. Likewise, the CEC disqualified candidates who failed to submit accurate income and property statements, had a criminal record, or were foreign citizens. The disqualification of any of the top three candidates on a party list or 25 per cent of a party list would disqualify the entire party from competition. The 1999 election law also included several other innovations, see Yitzhak Brudny, ‘Continuity or Change in Russian Electoral Patterns: The December 1999–March 2000 Electoral Cycle’, in Archie Brown (ed.), Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 154–78.Google Scholar

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⁵² The only party winning an amount close to this total is the KPRF in 1995 with 58 SMD seats.Google Scholar

⁵³ The results are not substantively different when this control variable is excluded (unreported, but available from the author).Google Scholar

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