Who is to blame? Centralisation and titular ethnic groups’ electoral behaviour in the Russian republics (original) (raw)

Power-sharing or Ethnic Domination? Ethnic Representation in the Republics of Russia in the Late 2000s -Early 2010s

The paper explores political representation of the major ethnic groups in the republics of Russia, in order to elucidate the role of ethnicity in regional politics under an authoritarian turn in the late 2000s-early 2010s. To assess quantitative data, the study develops a model to analyse patterns of ethnic representation. The data analysis demonstrates that, at least in some republics, ethnicity was among the major principles in power distribution and regional regimes seem to have relied in managing diversity largely on either ethnic domination or on regional power-sharing. Based on a structural approach, the structural factors that contributed to these outcomes are analysed, taking into account a range of variables that characterize the ethnic situations of the republics and their political regimes. The findings of this study point at the persistence of ethnic representation as a practice in the formation of the republics' officialdoms under the authoritarian regime.

Bastions of Tradition: The Ethnic Factor and Political Machines in Russian Regions

2019

The regional machines created by the Russian governors in the mid-1990s turned out to be most effective in the ethnic republics. This phenomenon is supported by several facts, with the primary as follows: the density of the patronage networks among the rural ethnic minorities, and the economic heritage of the Soviet period and ethnical institutionalization. These factors allowed regional elites to integrate ethnic minorities into the clientelism structure to distribute symbolic and material benefits in exchange for their electoral support. However, at present, the federal authorities have considerably reduced the autonomy of the ethnic republics and deprived them of many ethnic preferences. Basing on the analysis of the electoral statistics from the Russian Presidential Election of 2018, this article researches the political consequences caused by the changed relationship between the center and the regions, as well as the changes in functioning of regional political machines in the circumstances where the governors' institutional and resource autonomy has been reduced. The data analysis allowed for the discovery of the diversified electoral behavior of ethnic minorities in different republics. The reasons for the above diversification have been explained based on a comparative analysis of five case studies (the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Komi Republic, the Chuvash Republic, and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)).

Chained by One Chain: Mechanisms of Electoral Mobilization at the Local Level in the Ethnic Republics of Russia

Problems of Post-Communism, 2022

Researchers of Russian elections have long noticed that in a number of ethnic republics, the level of electoral mobilization and voters' political conformism is higher than the average in Russia. Which factors influence a high level of electoral mobilization? How does it work? The article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing qualitative data collected through focus groups in five regions: Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Komi, Chuvashia, and Yakutia. The results of the study allow us to conclude that a high level of electoral mobilization is the result of a combination of three factors, each of which affects different categories of voters.l

Ethnic voting and representation: minority Russians in post-Soviet states

What factors motivate members of minority groups to vote based on an ethnic attachment? What motivates candidates and political parties to make appeals to specific ethnic groups? I argue that ethnic voting is more likely to emerge when individual socialization experiences and dissatisfaction increase the salience of ethnic identity, contextual factors serve to politicize this salient identity, and the mobilization potential of the ethnic group is high, making it more likely that an ethnic-based appeal will be successful. I test this theory with a combination of regional-level large-N statistical comparisons, case studies, and individual-level survey data. I primarily examine party voting in the Baltic Republics and Ukraine. In these systems, I contend, ethnic voting may manifest support for traditional ethnic parties but also support for more mainstream but ethnically inclusive parties. These inclusive parties, generally overlooked in the ethnic politics literature, are an important...

Regional Voting in Russia's Federal Elections and Changing Regional Deference to the Kremlin

As problems with the competitiveness of Russian elections have grown more widely agreed upon and more extensive, election data have ceased to be a useful tool for illuminating the values and voting behavior of Russian citizens. Even when the published results from a particular precinct, city or region are not entirely fraudulent, they are shaped--to extents that vary by place and are difficult to ascertain with precision but that have been well documented--by various pressures on voters, a controlled information environment and assorted dirty tricks. Scholars cannot reliably determine from voting results what voters in Irkutsk would do differently from voters in Moscow. Electoral data may, however, remain valuable for illuminating other aspects of Russian politics. We explore the regional outcomes of Russian federal elections for clues about elite control over politics within their regions. We focus on each region's a) voting support for the incumbent or incumbent-supported presidential candidate, b) voting support for the so-called "party of power" in legislative races and c) level of voter turnout in presidential and legislative races. Each of these outcomes has been politicized in Russian politics such that they are relevant to understanding regional elite dynamics even when regional elections are undemocratically conducted or the results fraudulent. We first present and discuss the regional distributions of these three electoral results for all ten federal elections from 1991 to 2008. We then present and discuss a measure developed from those election results that indicate regional elites' abilities to control electoral outcomes during each of four different electoral "cycles" (a legislative and presidential race in close time proximity): 1995/-. Increasing numbers of those regional leaderships possessing such control use it to support the federal executive authority, which we refer to as deference to the Kremlin. We end with an analysis of the regions' different "trajectories"--that is, how their scores on our measure change from the first electoral cycle to the last.

The dynamic nationalisation of voting for United Russia: the stability / instability of regional deviations from national results

East European Politics

By the middle of the 2000s an electoral authoritarian regime had been established under Putin, and the Kremlin's "party of power", United Russia (UR) had emerged as the dominant party. Based on the results of Duma and Presidential elections over the period 2003-2016, this article examines cross-regional variation in static and dynamic nationalization of voting for UR. The main finding is that in the overwhelming majority of Russian regions, a high level of static nationalisation is accompanied by a high level of dynamic nationalization. In most of the regions, voting for UR rises or falls in a consistent manner across the elections. Some of the regions consistently vote in favour of UR whilst another group of regions consistently provides UR with poorer results than the national average. Finally, there are some regions which consistently vote very close to the national results, reflecting the national trends in voting for UR to the greatest degree. Cross-regional variations in both static and dynamic nationalization of UR's support are mostly explained by the degree of authoritarianism in Russian regions.

Elena Sirotkina, Svetlana Karandashova, "How Multilevel Elite Loyalty Strengthens Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Gubernatorial Elections in Russia", Series: Political Science, WP BRP 36/PS/2016

Maintain autocratic regimes is widely acknowledged to require elite loyalty. However, does this imply that various elite groups equally contribute to the daily performance of an autocratic regime and to winning elections? Based on empirical evidence of recent gubernatorial elections in Russia we explore the effect of multilevel elite disloyalty on gubernatorial electoral results and voter turnout. Having examined the impact of major regional elites, we find that only conflicts between governors and the mayors of regional capitals hav¬¬e significant and robust negative effect on both electoral turnout and the voting for governor. Encouraging the loyalty of these mayors secures smoother political machinery in the most electorally significant areas of the region and thus can determine the outcome of an electoral campaign. This finding provides another confirmation of the paramount role of covert rather than open inter-elite competition for electoral autocracies maintenance.

Russiaas Electoral Space: Change and Continuity in Post-Soviet Perspective

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper tests the methods of electoral analysis elaborated by the author previously and based on the concept of nationalization that is used to measure the spatial homogeneity of voting patterns. The study of nationalization scores leads to the conclusion about rather high degree of nationalization of the post-Soviet party system from its very beginning while short and smallscale upsurges of regionalization were coming along with anti-government protests of 1995-1995 and 2011. To deepen the analysis of the electoral space the author has analyzed the phenomenon of deviant and typical regions where ethnic cleavage has appeared to produce the main deviations. Finally, the analysis of dynamic nationalization brings about the better understanding of nationalization revealing the changing territorial patterns of voting for the same actors masked by the same overall national scores. JEL Classification: D72.

Secessionism from the Bottom Up: Democratization, Nationalism, and Local Accountability in the Russian Transition

World Politics, 2006

Do ethnic federations undergoing democratization promote or discourage regional secessionism? This article argues, based on evidence from the Russian Federation, that when democratization produces a transfer of political accountability from center to region, the incentives of regional leaders shift, forcing them to react to local constituencies in order to retain office. If these constituencies desire autonomy, regional leaders must respond, making separatism not merely an opportunistic strategy but a necessary one for their own political survival. Democratization, then, can transform administrative regions into electoral arenas.However, the case of Russia also demonstrates that regional demands for autonomy are not inevitable and may dissipate after they have begun. Popular support for nationalism and separatism varied significantly among Russia's sixteen ethnic republics in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. This variation is explained by showing that mass nationali...

Minority Political Participation under Majority Domination: a Case Study of Russia’s Republic of Mari El

Minority political participation under majority domination: a case study of Russia's Republic of Mari El The paper will study ethnic politics in the Republic of Mari El throughout the post-Soviet period in order to explore the phenomenon of ethnic political participation in the republics of Russia. The paper will start with examining the patterns of ethnic political participation in regions in their connection to methods of diversity management. Next, the paper will present a case study on ethnic aspects of politics in the Republic of Mari El with a focus on party politics and personalized politics. Finally, the paper will analyse the developments that contributed to the establishment of the system of ethnic domination and backed some ethnic political participation in this republic.