Comparing the Electoral and Party Systems of China and Russia Essay Example for Free

Comparing the Electoral and Party Systems of mainland China and Russia EssayThe flop of the international collectivised network changed the world at the turn of the century. The failure of the many left regimes ended the confrontation amid East and West and provided an probability to restructure the international order. The individual states of East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, China and the former Soviet Union took differing paths and chose differing restructuring strategies, which themselves led to different courses of transformation.The former hard-line socialist regimes of Russia and China had to face the challenges brought by the new world order specifically on altering its semipolitical structures. This paper would compargon the government and politics of China and Russia foc use on the electoral laws and their impacts on the party constitution. Moreover, this would try to recommend any(prenominal) possible measures to ensure the development of democracy for bo th countries and to address just about of their problems. Russia is a vast awkward with an imperial and authoritarian past.By bea, Russia is the largest country in the world, almost twice the size of the United States. The population includes numerous minorities, with 36 national groups containing more than 100,000 people, Russias rulers have in the past been autocratic empire builders, basing their imperial expansion on control of the serf society and a rural community. Russias experience in communism represented a culmination of a authoritarianism. The Union Soviet Socialist Republics encompassing 15 European and Asian Republics, formed the former Russian Empire.The politics of Russia take place in a framework of a federal presidential republic. According to the temper of Russia, the President of Russia is head of state, and of a multi-party system with executive billet exercised by the government, headed by the Prime Minister, who is appointed by the President by the fantans approbation. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, while the President and the government issue numerous goodly binding by-laws.Although Russia has traditionally been command by absolute monarchs and dictators, it currently has a democratic system of government. Since gaining its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Russia has faced serious challenges in its efforts to forge a political system to follow nearly seventy-five years of Soviet rule. With a new constitution and a new parliament representing diverse parties and factions, Russias political structure subsequently showed signs of stabilization.As the transition period extended into the mid-1990s, the power of the national government continued to wane as Russias regions gained political and economic concessions from Moscow. Although the struggle between executive and legislative branches was partially resolved by the new constitut ion, the two branches continued to represent fundamentally opposing visions of Russias future. unrivalled of the worlds oldest civilization consisting states and cultures dating back thousands of years ago is China. It is a cultural region, ancient civilization, and nation in East Asia.The deadlock of the sustain Chinese Civil War has resulted in two political entities using the name China the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), administering mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau and the Republic of China (ROC), administering Taiwan and its adjoin islands. It has the worlds longest continuously used written language system, and the source of some of the worlds great inventions including paper, compass, gunpowder, and printing. The Peoples Republic of China is working within the framework of a single-party socialist republic.The will of Chinese citizens is expressed by means of the legislative bodies of the Peoples Congress system. Peoples Congress members at the county level are se lect by voters. These county level Peoples Congresses have the indebtedness of oversight of local government, and elect members to the Provincial Peoples Congress. The provincial Peoples Congress in turn elects members to the National Peoples Congress that meets apiece year in March in Beijing. Current political concerns in China include lessening the growing gap between rich and poor, and fighting corruption within the government leadership.The corroboration that the Communist Party of China has among the Chinese population in general is unclear because national elections are mostly CPC dominated, as there are no opposition political parties and independent candidates elected into office are too scattered and disorganized to challenge CPC rule. According to Hague and Harrop, Party systems are the interaction between the significant political parties. In a democracy, parties respond to each others initiatives in a competitive interplay.The party system also reflects legal regulat ion applying to all parties. In China, a dominant party system is in place wherein unrivaled party is a constant component of the executive, giving medication either alone or in coalition. The dominant party system was more common in the twentieth century than it is today and China is one rare example. The dominant party of the PRC is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The leadership of the CCP is enshrined in the PRC Constitution. State power within the PRC is exercised through the CCP, the Central Peoples Government and their provincial and local counterparts.Under the dual leadership system, each local bureau or office is under the theoretically co-equal delegacy of the local leader and the leader of the corresponding office, bureau or ministry at the next higher level. The ruling Communist Party committee at each level plays a large role in the selection of appropriate candidates for election to the local congress and to the next higher level. China is a country that accepts involvement from multiple political parties. Apart from the CPC, the ruling party, there are eight political parties.They are China Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, China participatory League, China Democratic National Construction Association, China Association for the Promotion of Democracy, Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, China Zhi Gong Dang, Jiusan Society, and the Taiwan Democratic Self-government League. close to of them were founded during the anti-Japanese war and the national liberation war. They support the political leadership of the CPC, which has become their historical choice during the long years of cooperation with the CPC and through common struggles.Although there are other political parties present in China, these parties are non opposition parties, but parties participating in the discussion and administration of State affairs. Moreover, these parties serve to concede CCPs policies. Meanwhile, Russia is working on a multi-party system wherein the legislature comprises several minority parties, resulting in coalitions or minority government by the leading party. The multi-party system in Russia resulted to the rise of not just one political party unlike the case of China.Although, United Russia occupies the majority seats of the Duma, the seats obtained by the Russian Communist Party, as well as other parties, are significant in producing checks and balances to the Russian Assembly. Electoral systems were made to answer the question of how to convert votes into seats. In elections to the legislature, the main questions is whether an electoral system ensures that the seats obtained by a party are directly proportional to the votes received (Hague and Harrop 146).In China, the people do not directly elect delegates for the National Peoples Congress (NPC). China practices democratic centralism wherein direct democracy is just now practiced at the local levels and the elected delegates in the local peoples congresse s in turn elect their representative at the NPC. Delegates for the local peoples congresses are elected using the first-past-the-post system (FPTP). FPTP is a type of non-proportional system wherein parties are not rewarded in proportion to the share of the votes obtained.Specifically, FPTP takes the plurality form of non-proportional representation where a candidate only needs a plurality of votes to win a seat and a majority of votes is not required. In Russia, seats in the Duma were formerly elected half by proportional representation (with at least 5% of the vote to qualify for seats) and half by single member districts. However, President Putin passed a order that all seats are to be elected by proportional representation (with at least 7% of the vote to qualify for seats) to take lay out in the December 2007 elections.Particularly, Russia is adapting the list system to confer delegates for the Duma. The list system is the most common method of proportional representation in which parties submit a list of their candidates and then the votes they obtain determines the percent of seats they get. In proportional representation, the goal is to represent parties rather than territories. For China, the adoption of the list system is recommended to develop a genuine opposition party. For many decades now, the rule of the CCP did not face any significant challenger in China.There have also been secessionist movements due to some ethnic and cultural cleavages such as the Tibetans who are lobbying from independence from China. The adoption of the list system would allow the voice of the minority to be heard in the NPC thus ensuring the democratic rights of the people. It will also make China less prone to violence, just like what happened in the Tiananmen Massacre were students on protest were dissipate fired by Chinese military, since grievances can be acknowledge in government institutions such as the NPC.It is necessary to abolish democratic centralism since government processes are easily manipulated by local bureaucrats to advance their own selfish gains. Political reform in China is a matter of imparting the nominally open elections to other political parties. For Russia, the current electoral system is well on its way to democratize the Russian political system. However, the recent decree of Putin would make it problematical for small parties to obtain a seat in the Duma.Seven percent is such a high threshold and may cause the marginalization of the smaller parties and the domination of the more established ones. A lower threshold is hereby recommended and that Putins decree for the December 2007 elections should be repealed because it is a hindrance for the continuous democratisation of Russia. These formerly hard-line socialist regimes have adopted measures to cope up with the new international order. However, not both were able to give way to democratization due to the electoral and party systems that they adapted.