Vagonchiki (Russia)
| Vagonchiki 🇷🇺 | ||
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| Location: Russia | ||
| Definition: An amendment to a bill during legislative passage that does not relate to the concept of the original bill | ||
| Keywords: Russia – FSU – Parliament – Political party – Legislation – Public service | ||
| Author: Ben Noble | ||
| Affiliation: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London | ||
By Ben Noble, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London
| A vagonchik (Russian: a ‘little wagon, trailer, carriage, or Gypsy caravan’, plural vagonchiki) is an amendment proposed to alter a piece of draft legislation (a bill) during legislative passage that does not relate to the concept of the original bill. Such changes that are not germane to the main bill as submitted are made simply to pass a particular legal change, rather than to enhance the main bill; the latter is, therefore, treated purely instrumentally – as a convenient vehicle to which the vagonchik can be attached. Metaphorically, therefore, a vagonchik is an amendment ‘wagon’ that ‘hitches a ride’ with the main bill into law (Krutz 2001).
The term is used in relation to the law-making process in the Russian State Duma – the lower chamber of the two-chamber national parliament, the Federal Assembly. As a term relating to a small detail of the law-making process, the term vagonchik is not used widely. However, the practice is synonymous with the use of ‘riders’ in the US – ‘additions to a bill that are not germane to its original content’ (Gilbert 2006: 836). |
Understanding the use of vagonchiki requires a basic overview of the Russian law-making process. All draft federal-level legislation in Russia must pass through the State Duma before it can become law. During Duma passage, there are opportunities for legislators (known as ‘deputies’) and other actors to scrutinise and amend pieces of draft legislation (bills – zakonoproekty). Most bills must be approved in three readings before they can progress to the Federation Council – the upper chamber of the Federal Assembly – and then on to the president’s desk for signature and promulgation into law (Noble 2019: 60-1).
According to the Duma’s standing orders (Reglament 1998), the basic concept of a bill is discussed during first reading. If approved, the second reading is the key opportunity for changes to be proposed to a bill. The third reading is used to neaten up the legal language of bills approved in second reading. A relevant Duma committee is assigned – on the basis of the draft legislation’s subject – to coordinate a bill’s passage through the lower chamber, including collecting, drafting, debating, and voting on amendments proposed to the bill in preparation for its second reading in a Duma plenary meeting.
Amendment proposals that, if incorporated, would change the overall concept of a draft law being considered by the State Duma are not formally allowed. In a 2001 ruling (postanovlenie), the Russian Constitutional Court determined that, in light of rules included in the Duma’s standing orders, as well as in the Constitution, ‘the concept of an act cannot be changed at the stage of making amendments to the act’ (Constitutional Court 2001). Moreover, the Court argued that, if these law-making rules were to be violated, this would be grounds for finding the resulting act unconstitutional. Such germaneness rules are common in legislatures. For example, a rule of the US House of Representatives states that ‘[n]o motion or proposition on a subject different from that under consideration shall be admitted under color of amendment’ (Wickham 2019: 731).
In spite of the Russian Constitutional Court’s 2001 ruling, bills are often transformed significantly during second reading in the State Duma. A Russian legal analyst (Pleshanova 2015) has noted cases when
the draft law prepared for second reading differs radically from the one adopted in first reading, when the concept is discussed. A substitution of the bill takes place, meanwhile the concept of the new draft is not submitted for public discussion, and an explanatory note is not attached to it. Instead of step-by-step work on draft laws, new rules are thrown in at the intermediate (and often at the final) stages of the passage of bills [through the legislature], presenting the most unexpected surprises.
An analysis of all bills submitted by the Russian government and the president that became laws between 2008 and 2013 shows that the text of bills often changes by a significant degree during Duma passage (Noble 2020). One case involves a bill that mushroomed during legislative review, growing from two to 65 pages. On introduction, the bill related to duties owed when registering an aircraft; after amendments were made during second reading, the bill touched on tax and customs legislation, as well as the Central Bank ('Zakonoproekt' 2013).
Business associations in Russia have complained about the uncertainty introduced by the practice of using vagonchiki. An official of the Russian business association ‘Opora Rossii’ has argued that ‘the most harmful amendments for business, as a rule, escape all expertise and are introduced at the very last moment before second reading’ (Kornia 2015). Last-minute amendments – particularly those that do not relate conceptually to the bill adopted in first reading – reduce opportunities for business interests to scrutinise proposed changes and lobby for their own amendments. The use of vagonchiki might, therefore, be expedient for those wishing to modify the law quickly and with less public discussion, but this has a clearly negative effect on the transparency and inclusivity of the law-making process.
At first sight, such significant changes might be surprising for a legislative body often dismissed as a ‘rubber stamp’ (Noble 2017). These amendments would certainly be surprising if Duma deputies were significantly altering initiatives introduced by the executive. However, research shows that amendments made to executive-sponsored bills during parliamentary review are often the result of action by executive actors themselves, with changes reflecting shifting socio-economic conditions or conflicts between ministries, among other dynamics (Noble 2020). This also helps explain why vagonchiki are not challenged more frequently: to do so would be to challenge the executive itself. Although the Duma’s leadership has done this occasionally when certain ministries have tried to use vagonchiki to pass policy changes (Tkachenko 2019), the leadership is much less likely to do so when the Presidential Administration wants to pass a legal change using this practice. Such flexibility in whether or not to challenge the insertion of vagonchiki relates both to the ambiguity of what constitutes germane amendments and to the fact that it is at the discretion of the lead Duma committee to rule amendments as germane or not.
Entries in the online encyclopaedia linking to vagonchiki
References
Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. 2001. ‘Postanovlenie No. 11’, Sobranie zakonodatel’stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 2001 g., N 29, st. 3059
Gilbert, M. 2006. ‘Single subject rules and the legislative process’, University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 67: 803-870
Kornia, A. 2015. ‘“Zakon o zakonakh” pomozhet umerit’ skorost’ dumskogo “printera”’, Vedomosti, 27 January, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2015/01/27/dolgozhdannyj-no-neudachnyj
Krutz, G. 2001. Hitching a ride: Omnibus legislating in the U.S. Congress. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press
Noble, B. 2017. ‘Amending budget bills in the Russian State Duma’, Post-Communist Economies, 29(4): 505-52
Noble, B. 2019. ‘Parliamentary politics in Russia’, in R. Sakwa, H. Hale, and S. White (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 9. London: Red Globe Press: 54-66
Noble, B. 2020. ‘Authoritarian amendments: Legislative institutions as intraexecutive constraints in post-Soviet Russia’, Comparative Political Studies, 53(9): 1417-54
Pleshanova, O. 2015. ‘Popravlennomu verit’: Kak priniatie popravok v zakony stalo tendentsiei’, Kommersant’’, 29 June, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2753305
Reglament Gosudarstvennoi Dumy. 1998, http://duma.gov.ru/duma/about/regulations/
Tkachenko, K. 2019. ‘Volodin raskritikoval Minfin za narusheniia pri popravkakh o tsenakh na benzin’, RBK, 10 July, https://www.rbc.ru/economics/10/07/2019/5d25b74d9a79476e5281047d
Wickham, T. (ed.) 2019. Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives of the United States One Hundred Sixteenth Congress. Washington, DC: US Government Publishing Office, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/HMAN-116/pdf/HMAN-116.pdff
Zakonoproekt No. 293332-6. 2013, https://sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/293332-6