Notes
1The Freedom House and Polity IV scores are available online at http://www.freedomhouse.org and http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm, respectively.
2The December 2007 elections were not included for the obvious reason that they were held in entirely different, much more restrictive, political environments than was the case previously.
3See http://www.cikrf.ru/law/federal_law/zakon_02_67fz_n.html, accessed 5 January 2011.
4For a description of these electoral formulas and a discussion of their effects, see Golosov (Citation2003b).
5All numerical data used in this study, unless otherwise stated, are taken directly or calculated by the author from the Russian Electoral Statistics Database, available online at http://db.irena.org.ru/.