Korgunyuk Yu.G. – leading researcher, INION RAS, Doctor of political sciences (Sc.D. in Politics), INDEM Foundation (Political Science Department).
The article studies the state and development trends of the today's Russian party system from the point of view of not only quantitative criteria (number and size of participants), but also of the political content of issues arising in the inter-party struggle. This struggle is examined from the standpoint of the cleavage theory. It is argued that while in Europe and North America this struggle is conducted around socio-economic issues pushed aside by issues of global integration, in post-Soviet Russia the quite archaic authoritarian-democratic cleavage is supplanted by the even more archaic systemic cleavage (around the issue in which direction should the country develop – toward Europe or in one's own way). The article also introduces and justifies new tools of measurement of electoral cleavages: a coefficient of the maximal range of a cleavage and a coefficient of the politicization of a cleavage.
Political parties, party systems, cleavage theory, electoral cleavages, political cleavages, factor analysis, regression analysis, correlation analysis, coefficient of the maximal range of a cleavage, coefficient of the politicization of a cleavage.
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