Russian Parliamentary Elections Research Articles

Do dictators signal strength with electoral fraud?

What role does electoral fraud play in nondemocracies? In this paper, we offer an empirical test of a popular idea that authoritarian governments use elections to engineer overwhelming victories with electoral fraud thus deterring potential opposition from challenging the regime. Using the data from the Russian Parliamentary elections in 2011 and a regionally representative public opinion survey, we find that the geographical allocation of electoral manipulation was the opposite of what the theory would imply: more manipulation happened in the areas where the regime was more popular. We also find that higher margins of victory for a pro-regime party failed to deter subsequent mass protests. We argue that these empirical patterns could be better explained by other mechanisms, such as Bayesian persuasion, efficient allocation, and information gathering.

Modifying Electoral Authoritarianism. What the 2016 Parliamentary Elections Tell us about the Nature and Resilience of the Putin Regime

Through a focus on the 2016 Russian parliamentary election, this article seeks to assess the strength of the Putin regime and the nature of the system itself. In contrast to those who have heralded its imminent decline, it is argued that the regime continues to display great resilience, the election providing evidence of the regime’s adaptability and its ability to cope with challenges. The nature of the regime is also questioned. It has become commonplace for scholars to refer to Russia’s political system under the presidency of Vladimir Putin as “electoral authoritarian”. The article examines the function of elections in such systems, with a particular emphasis on the way in which elections provide the regime with legitimacy. The conduct and outcome of the elections not only points to the confidence and resilience of the Putin regime but might also suggest that a declining reliance on elections to sustain the regime may lead to a re-appraisal of the electoral authoritarian model as a compelling conceptualization of the Russian political system.

Liberalism in Russia: from the margins of Russian politics to an instrument of geopolitical othering

ABSTRACTDespite the lowering of the electoral threshold from 7 to 5% in 2014, the Russian parliamentary elections resulted in a record low voter turnout in Russia of only 48% and an overall loss for the liberal parties. This low turnout shows that even though there is a certain disillusionment within Russia about the current regime, liberal parties are not seen as a viable alternative and largely remain in the margins of Russian politics. The low popularity of Russian liberal parties can be explained by the fact that they are still associated with the failure of Western style democratic reforms during the nineties. This pressure on liberal parties is only intensified by the renewed focus of the ruling elite on the image of a unique Russian civilization in rhetoric. This article aims to answer the question what the effect of this “civilizational nationalism” is on Russian liberalism.

Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections

Despite United Russia’s (Edinaya Rossiya—UR) dominance in repeated Russian legislative elections, the correlates of the party’s electoral support remain noticeably understudied beyond the influence of electoral manipulation. I pinpoint the specific contours of UR’s strongholds in the two most recent parliamentary elections in Russia—2007 and 2011—focusing on raion- and regional-level correlates of the vote using an original dataset. UR has been undergirded by geographically concentrated ethnic minorities and the countryside, and these patterns of support have persisted even in the absence of fraud, suggesting that the dominant party’s electoral windfalls cannot be attributed solely to electoral malfeasance.

Stuffing the Ballot Box: Heterogeneous Effects of Election Monitoring

Do incumbents in non-democratic countries commit electoral fraud strategically or do they stuff the box whenever they see a chance? In this paper, I study the heterogeneous effects of election monitoring in order to examine whether certain characteristics of polling stations make them more susceptible to be used for fraud. In particular, I examine the effects of average income and distance on electoral fraud. To measure the amount of fraud that benefited the pro-Putin party, United Russia, I use the experimental data of random observer assignment during the Russian parliamentary elections in 2011 collected by Enikolopov et al. (2013). I supplement their data with a unique dataset of Moscow residents’ personal information to estimate the effect of average income and distance to center on electoral fraud. I find no difference between poorer and more affluent precincts, or between precincts that are closer and farther from the city center, with respect to the incumbent party vote share and turnout. However, I find that one of the opposition parties, Apple, lost as many as 30% of all votes cast for it, and that the amount of fraud was more significant in the center than in the outskirts.

Signaling and Information Acquisition in Authoritarian Institutions: Theory and Evidence from Russian Parliamentary Elections

What role do elections play in non-democracies? We propose a statistical test that can distinguish between two major theories of authoritarian elections: that elections can be used to maintain an image of invincibility of the regime (Signaling Theory), or that elections can be used to get information about the popularity of the regime (Information Acquisition Theory). While those theories might not be mutually exclusive, we show formally that they generate different prediction about the spatial allocation of electoral manipulation. Under Signaling Theory, electoral manipulation happens in the areas where the regime is not popular. Under Information Acquisition theory, electoral manipulation should happen only in the places where the regime is popular. Using the data from 2007 and 2011 Parliamentary elections in Russia, we find that electoral manipulation was more likely to happen in the regions where the level of support for the regime is lower. Decrease in one standard deviation of regime popularity is associated with the increase in the estimates of electoral manipulation by 0.2 standard deviation, thus corroborating Signaling Theory. Our estimations are robust to an array of proxies for electoral manipulation. We also confirm that the results are unlikely to be spurious using instrumental variables and placebo tests.

Appearances are deceptive: credibility of the Russian Election Commission

This text focuses on the Russian Electoral Commission (EC) and its performance during the Russian parliamentary elections in 2011. The three-step analysis consists of (1) the EC’s role and organisational structure; (2) a description of the complaints over the EC’s performance and (3) a detailed focus on the EC’s decisions on these complaints’ relevance. Quantitative content analysis is used to analyse the original data and a new forensic method is developed to look for potential biases in the EC’s decisions on raised complaints. Evidence indicate loss of professionalism, dependence, and biased behaviour. Therefore the EC lacks its credibility.

Online Social Media and Political Awareness in Authoritarian Regimes

Do online social media undermine authoritarianism? The conditions under which online social networks can increase public awareness of electoral fraud in non-democracies are examined in this article and it is argued that a given online social network will only increase political awareness if it is first politicized by elites. Survey data from the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections show that usage of Twitter and Facebook, which were politicized by opposition elites, significantly increased respondents’ perceptions of electoral fraud, while usage of Russia's domestic social networking platforms, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, which were not politicized by opposition activists, had no effect on perceptions of fraud. This study elucidates the causes of post-election protest by uncovering a mechanism through which knowledge of electoral fraud spreads.

Mapping the public agenda with topic modeling: The case of the Russian livejournal

AbstractThis article describes agendas as “packages” of topics of varying salience, set by the Russian Internet users on Russia's leading blog platform LiveJournal. The research involved modeling LiveJournal's topic structure, viewed as an important component of what is termed here self‐generated public opinion. Topic modeling was performed automatically with the LDA algorithm, and complemented with hand labeling of topics. Data were collected by software created by the authors to generate a relational database storing all posts by the top 2,000 LiveJournal users from three one‐month periods: two during the Russian parliamentary and presidential elections 2011–2012, and one control period. We find that LiveJournal top users share their attention evenly between “social/political” and “private/recreational” issues, the proportion being very stable. However, the substitution of diverse public affairs issues by the topics related to national street protests in the politicized periods compared to the control period was found both automatically and manually. The group of topics centered around social issues demonstrates the biggest volatility in terms of its composition and may serve as the foundation for monitoring self‐generated public opinion by further application of sentiment/opinion mining methods to these topics.

Field experiment estimate of electoral fraud in Russian parliamentary elections

Electoral fraud is a widespread phenomenon, especially outside the developed world. Despite abundant qualitative and anecdotal evidence on its existence from around the world, there is very limited quantitative evidence on the extent of electoral fraud. We exploit random assignment of independent observers to 156 of 3,164 polling stations in the city of Moscow to estimate the effect of electoral fraud on the outcome of the Russian parliamentary elections held on December 4, 2011. We estimate the actual share of votes for the incumbent United Russia party to be at least 11 percentage points lower than the official count (36% instead of 47%). Our results suggest that the extent of the fraud was sufficient to have had a substantial impact on the outcome of the elections; they also confirm that the presence of observers is an important factor in ensuring the integrity of the procedure.

Online Social Media and Political Awareness in Autocratic Regimes

Does online social media undermine authoritarianism? We examine the conditions under which online social networks can increase public awareness of electoral fraud in non-democracies. We argue that a given online social network will only increase political awareness if it is first politicized by elites. Using survey data from the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections, we show that usage of Twitter and Facebook, which were politicized by opposition elites, significantly increased respondents' perceptions of electoral fraud, while usage of Russia's domestic social networking platforms, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, which were not politicized by opposition activists, had no effect on perceptions of fraud. Our study elucidates the causes of post-election protest by uncovering a mechanism through which knowledge of electoral fraud can become widespread.

Corruption, Voting and Employment Status: Evidence from Russian Parliamentary Elections

This paper examines to what extent the distribution of votes and voting behavior of people with different employment status are affected by regional differences in corruption. Using data from the Russian Parliamentary (State Duma) Elections 1999 and 2003, I develop and estimate a SUR system of equations which takes into account specific features of the Russian electoral system. The paper distinguishes between hard and perceived measures of corruption and analyzes the effects of corruption on the voting shares of particular parties and on voters’ participation in elections. Additionally, a series of Monte Carlo simulations are performed to analyze the effects of corruption on the distribution of votes.

Russia's Duma Elections and the Practice of Russian Democracy

Former President Vladimir Putin and official spokespersons for the Russian political leadership have repeatedly proclaimed their commitment democratic values, but western observers and domestic critics are skeptical.1 The most recent election for the Russian parliament on 2 December 2007-the state duma-exemplified the many ambiguities about the state of democracy in Russia. While the elections were ostensibly competitive-11 parties on the ballot and four winning seats in the legislature-international observers, the extent they were present, made contradictory judgements on the democratic credentials of the vote. Not surprisingly, those from the Commonwealth of Independent States approved the election, while the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) refused send observers because the conditions offered by the Russian government were said prevent them from doing a proper j ob. The Council of Europe, on the other hand, carried out its observer mission, concluding that while the elections were to a great extent free in terms of a variety of voting options, they were definitely not fair.3Problems with the election had less do with overt fraud (although opposition forces made some allegations of that as well) but with restrictions on conditions preceding and surrounding the vote. These restrictions included selective enforcement of electoral laws in order exclude some parties from participating, general crackdowns on critics of the regime, restrictions on public gatherings by groups opposing the government, and media bias. The Council of Europe made specific mention of abuse of administrative resources, as well as unequal media access, use of force against and harassment of opposition leaders, restrictive effects of electoral legislation, and voting improprieties on election day.3 In addition, pressure on voters support United Russia was widely reported in the press, with allegations that school teachers, other state employees, and students were threatened with sanctions if they didn't vote correctly.4 In the larger context, many observers considered these actions unfavourable in democratic governance.Given the consistently high level of popularity of Vladimir Putin both preceding and following the election, and the availability of methods of informal influence over regional elites (who in turn have informal tools influence the regional vote), the extraordinary methods applied in order assure a high vote for United Russia seem puzzling. Some of these measures simply opened the door further allegations about a slide toward authoritarianism, while being unlikely affect the outcome in any significant way.This article explores possible reasons underlying the efforts of the Russian leadership assure the election outcome and suggests some criteria for assessing their compatibility with democratic practice. The underlying argument is that the colour revolutions that took place in other postcommunist countries since November 2003, notably Ukraine's orange revolution, offered a powerful impetus for Russian elites manage the 2007 Russian parliamentary election even more firmly than they had in 2003. No doubt other underlying factors reinforced this tendency, including Putin's own career background and personal inclinations, worries about terrorist attacks, cultural predispositions, the weakness of civil society, and legacies of totalitarianism. This analysis resists the temptation of falling back on these standard explanations, and assumes a rational calculation of interest on the part of the Russian leadership.BACKSLIDE FROM DEMOCRACY PRECEDING THE 2007 ELECTION?The 2007 duma elections should be viewed in the larger context of Russia's backslide from the democratization impetus that took hold in the Yeltsin years. Western scholarly literature has identified the establishment of postcommunist institutional structures involving super-presidential systems as a common feature that makes initial commitments democratic processes but then sees regression more authoritarian structures. …

Guilt, Sympathy, and Cooperation: EU—Baltic Relations in the Early 1990s

The period between March 1990 and June 1993 represents the critical window for European Union (EU)—Baltic relations. During this time Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania laid the foundation for future EU membership. For its part, the European community made a commitment to include the three republics in the process of enlargement. This paper traces the beginnings of EU—Baltic cooperation and examines factors that led to growing political and economic convergence. Nordic membership in the EU, ex-Soviet troop withdrawal, and Russian parliamentary elections were instrumental in bringing both sides together on the road to enlargement, but collective guilt provided the underlying rationale. In this paper, the author argues that it is impossible to understand fully this process of convergence without taking into account the connotations and consequences of the “black trinity”: the Munich pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Yalta agreement.

Run Boris Run: Strategic Voting in Sequential Elections

Following the 1995 Russian parliamentary election, it was suggested that Russian voters may have used their votes to send a message to the then current Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, who was scheduled to run for reelection six months later. Building on this observation, we consider the incentives for information transmission through strategic voting in systems with sequential elections. We find that when an election for a sufficiently weak institution (e.g., a parliament) precedes an election for a strong institution (e.g., a president), in any equilibrium some voters vote against their preferred party in the first election to send a message to candidates in the second election. Following a brief discussion of the intuition underlying this argument, we present a model that allows us to isolate institutional features that affect the prevalence of this type of strategic voting: the relative importance of institutions to voters, the timing of sequential elections, and the relative cost of responsiveness b...

Media Effects and Russian Elections, 1999–2000

The Russian parliamentary and presidential elections of December 1999 and March 2000 appeared to have been won in large part through the partisan use of (particularly state) television. According to the evidence of a spring 2001 national survey, television was the main source of political information for the supporters of all parties and candidates. However, state television (which had been most supportive of the Kremlin) was much more likely to be favoured by the supporters of the pro-regime Unity party; while commercial television (which had provided a more even-handed coverage of the elections) was more popular and respected among the supporters of anti-Kremlin parties and candidates and less popular among supporters of Vladimir Putin. Regression analysis that takes account of reciprocal causation between media source and vote choice indicates that these were not spurious associations. The findings suggest that the state itself may exercise a disproportionate influence upon the electoral process in newly established systems in which social structures and political allegiances remain fluid.

Defending the Institutional Status Quo: Communist Leadership of the Second Russian State Duma, 1996–99

The 1995 Russian parliamentary elections returned a State Duma dominated by an alliance of the Communist Party (CPRF) and the Agrarian (APG) and Popular Power (PP) groupings, whose combined number fell just four votes short of an overall majority. Such a powerful voting bloc might have been expected to undo the power‐sharing principles on which the First Duma (1994–95) operated. Rather than challenge the status quo, however, the CPRF defended it on several occasions. In this paper, I argue that existing arrangements held benefits for the CPRF and its leftist allies. In the absence of a stable, disciplined majority, the Duma's rules gave leftist deputies the incentives and flexibility to organize collectively.

The village votes: The December 1999 elections in Tatarstan's Pestretsy district

The Russian parliamentary elections of December 1999 were conducted with varying degrees of democratic reliability in different parts of Russia. In Tatarstan, with its own constitution and electoral regulations that differ substantially from those of the Russian Federation, the elections were conducted with less than complete adherence to the principles of democratic procedure. In particular, a range of features of the old Soviet‐style electoral process were in evidence. This was particularly the case in rural constituencies observed by the authors, including examples of sharp practices to trick the voters into supporting particular candidates or parties. The tardy publication of the results led to cynicism on the part of observers, and, although the complexity of the process ‐ with several elections taking place simultaneously ‐ partly explains the delay, the effective control over proceedings on the ground by regional and local politicians thwarted the intent of the admirable federal election legislation.

The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma. By Laura Belin and Robert W. Orttung. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 203p. $62.95. - Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Polarized Politics. By Michael McFaul. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1997. 169p. $17.95.

The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma. By Laura Belin and Robert W. Orttung. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 203p. $62.95. - Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Polarized Politics. By Michael McFaul. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1997. 169p. $17.95.

The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma. By Laura Belin and Robert W. Orttung, with Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xv, 203 pp. Notes. Index. Figures. Tables. $62.95, hard bound.

The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma. By Laura Belin and Robert W. Orttung, with Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xv, 203 pp. Notes. Index. Figures. Tables. $62.95, hard bound. - Volume 57 Issue 2