GROWING OLD WITHOUT GRACE: ELECTORAL AUTHORITARIANISM AND THE AGE COMPOSITION OF RUSSIA'S REGIONAL LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES

Abstract

This article empirically assesses and explains the dynamics of the age composition of Russia's regional legislative assemblies in 2003–11. While the set of theoretical expectations regarding the impact of electoral authoritarianism in combination with proportional representation upon generational turnover is mixed, the empirical findings show that by co-opting individually resourceful politicians in order to solve the commitment problem that is inherent in electoral authoritarianism, the dominant pro-government party, United Russia, emerged as a major impediment to generational turnover.

Notes

1 In this analysis, I follow a well-established convention (Norris 1997) by jointly referring to all non-proportional electoral systems, including but not limited to single-member plurality (first-past-the-post), multimember plurality, two-round majority, and single non-transferable vote, as to majoritarian systems.

2 All numerical evidence reported in this study is based on author's calculations performed on the data from the official Internet sites of the Central Electoral Commission of Russia, http://www.cikrf.ru and http://www.izbirkom.ru, last accessed in November 2013.

3 The 2004–06 and 2008–10 pairs of staggered elections in Sverdlovsk province are counted as single elections, and the 2003 partial election in Vologda province is excluded.

4 The values of the index and its component sub-indicators are available at http://atlas.socpol.ru/indexes/index_democr.shtml.

5 The methodological design of this study entailed a minor consequence for case selection, as I had to exclude three elections for which information on the average age of deputies in the previous elections was not available. This left me with 161 observations.

Additional information

Grigorii V. Golosov is University Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. He is the author of Political Parties in the Regions of Russia: Democracy Unclaimed (2004). In addition to many national publications, he has published articles in Comparative Political Studies, East European Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, Government and Opposition, International Political Science Review, Party Politics, Political Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs and Representation. His research interests include political parties and party systems, political science methods, electoral systems and contemporary Russian politics.