The Use and Misuse of Administrative Resources in Russia
In this section
Monitoring the Campaign for the December 2003 State Duma Elections
State and public resources are reportedly employed by incumbents in Russia to electoral advantage. The Justice Initiative and Transparency International-Russia together launched a project to monitor the misuse of these “administrative resources” during the election campaign for the 2003 Russian Federal State Duma (parliament).
Background
Corruption in campaign finance is generally assumed to involve campaign contributions by private persons or companies in return for illicit benefits. Less attention has been paid to a related phenomenon, whereby political parties or officials use the resources attached to public office for electoral campaign purposes. Such misuse is a form of corruption, and it appears to be a major, if not the dominant, form of election campaigning in many countries.
The misuse of administrative resources for electoral campaign purposes can be defined as "the use of state and public sector powers and resources (including coercive capacities, personnel, financial, material, and other resources) by incumbent politicians or political parties to further their own prospects of election, in violation of legal and/or other norms and responsibilities governing the exercise of public office.”
A spotlight on “administrative resource” abuse emerged in Russia after the 1996 presidential elections, and the phenomenon has also been discussed extensively in Ukraine. Since the mid-1990s, the use of the state apparatus for electoral purposes has also been noted in countries spanning different continents and levels of economic development, from Zimbabwe to the United States.
Objectives
In addition to the overarching aim to minimize political corruption, the project pursued the following intermediate objectives:
- Raising public awareness of the dangers of the administrative resource misuse in electoral campaigns for the core values of the democratic system in Russia
- Providing a clear description of specific electoral forms of administrative resource abuses
- Developing specific recommendations for electoral bodies and civil society institutions that will assist in the identification of cases of administrative resource misuse and the minimization of its
- Supplying civil society with efficient monitoring tools
Activities
Development of an analytical and monitoring framework.
The project elaborated a general classification of administrative resources and a detailed typology of possible misuses based on Russia’s legal framework and past electoral campaigns. Three categories were chosen for monitoring:
- Institutional resources: the personnel, property and infrastructural resources of the state and public sector
- Financial resources: public funds from state and other public budgets, and organizations financed from those budgets
- Media resources: the resources of media controlled directly or indirectly by the state
Monitoring was carried out in the following ways:
Interviews: The project team carried out a small number of targeted interviews with selected officials, party members, politicians and present/former campaign managers in three electoral regions of Russia—Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Republic of Altai (Central Southern Siberia). The purpose of the interviews was to gain a more in-depth understanding of the conduct of election campaigns at both national and local levels, so as to place project findings within the context of the campaign as a whole, and to gain more first-hand detailed information on how administrative resources are misused in practice.
Media monitoring: Media monitoring provided the foundation for the monitoring project, by providing both evidence of misuse and leads for closer investigation. The media play a dominant role in Russian elections. Daily media monitoring was conducted from October 1, 2003, until the end of campaigning on December 6, 2003. Through media monitoring, the project documented cases of misuse of both media resources and other types of administrative resources.
Case studies: In-depth analysis was conducted on five individual instances of administrative resource misuse to provide vivid illustrations of the problem. Case studies involved detailed documentation, assessment of relevant laws and regulations and their enforcement, and where possible, estimations of finances saved or gained in each case. The cases were selected on the basis of media monitoring findings and from ad hoc cases provided to the project team by other monitoring organizations.
Partner networks: Civil society groups, including the largest domestic election monitoring organization, provided the monitoring team with regular examples of administrative resource misuse, which were further explored and analyzed.
Analysis of results, recommendations and reporting.
In addition to a detailed final report, a working paper on the misuse of administrative resources was developed, specifying legal and other recommendations on tackling the problem. The project also generated several recommendations for minimizing the opportunities for misuse of key types of administrative resources. As a pioneering effort, it likewise yielded useful lessons for future projects in this field.
Click here for Final Report in English and Russian
Contacts:
Open Society Justice Initiative
Marijana Trivunovic: trivunovic@osieurope.org
Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiative Transparency International-R
Website Transparency International-Russia: http://www.transparency.org.ru
Elena Panfilova: info@transparency.org.ru