An Underdeveloped Party System. Russia's poorly developed party system can also be attributedin part to the country's difficult transition. Parties often assume center stage in transitions at the pointof first or founding elections.8 Had Yeltsin held elections soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union,Russia's nascent political parties might have been able to step in to provide voters withprogrammatic choices. Yeltsin, however, decided not to do so, leaving the new political parties towallow aimlessly for the next two years with no clear political role. By the time of the next election in1993, most of the parties created during the heyday of democratic mobilization in 1990-91 haddisappeared.

The failed August 1991 coup created propitious conditions for another attempt at democratictransition. Led by Boris Yeltsin, Russia's democratic forces had a unique window of opportunity toerect new democratic institutions by negotiating a new set of political rules with their communistopponents. The holding of new elections and the adoption of a new constitution might have helpedto legitimate a new democratic order.4 Yeltsin, however, decided not to take this course. In fact,Yeltsin devoted very little time at all to designing new political institutions within Russia,

Superpresidentialism. Concentrated power in the hands of the president is not primarily the resultof some sort of Russian cultural or historical proclivity for authoritarianism or strong individualleaders. The office of the presidency and its "super powers" emerged directly from the transitionprocess. After defeating his enemies by force in October 1993, Yeltsin did not need to negotiate orcompromise over the new constitutional draft creating a superpresidential system.