The Representation of Ethnic Muslims in Russia's Regional Legislative Assemblies

Abstract

This article uses the data of the 2002 national census and a comprehensive dataset of the December 2003–March 2008 regional legislative elections in Russia to assess the levels of the representation of ethnic Muslims in the regional legislative assemblies. The study reveals that the overall pattern of the representation of ethnic Muslims in Russia's regional legislative assemblies is not monotonous. Ethnic Muslims are significantly overrepresented in those republics where they are ‘titular’ nationalities; they tend to be underrepresented in a group of regions with significant ethnic Muslim minorities; but as their share in the overall population goes down, the picture becomes more balanced, so that it would be fair to say that small Muslim minorities are quite well represented. The article explains the observed patterns with reference to the logic of non-politicization of cleavages shared by all types of regions. For the ruling elites of Muslim-majority republics, the preferred mode of operation is to keep the overrepresentation of Muslims as a characteristic of all political groups who can realistically claim access to power. For the predominantly Russian elites of regions with significant ethnic Muslim minorities, the non-politicization of cleavages is a way to make electoral appeals to wider general population. In the regions with small ethnic Muslim minorities, their entry into political arenas is conditional on individual or group alliances with locally dominant elite groups, without any articulation of ethnicity/religion cleavages whatsoever.