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

ABSTRACT

According to many studies, ethnic republics demonstrate a higher level of electoral loyalty compared to the national average. Recently, however, in some ethnic republics a decrease in electoral support for the Russian president among the titular ethnic groups was recorded. At the same time, this trend was not found in other republics. In this article I propose a theoretical explanation for this variation. My main thesis is that the decrease in the electoral support of the incumbents occurs only when the regional electorate addresses the responsibility for unpopular reforms to two levels of power simultaneously: national and sub-national.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnopolitics
• elections
• subnational politics
• Russian regions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) [“Centralization, Ethnic Factor, and Electoral Processes in the Russian Regions,” grant number 20-011-00444]. The author thanks the two anonymous reviewers and the Editors for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. All remaining errors and typos are mine.

Notes on contributors

Stanislav Shkel

Stanislav Shkel is professor of comparative politics at HSE-University in St. Petersburg (Russia). Prior that, he taught and conducted research in Ufa and Perm. His academic interests are in the field of post-Soviet authoritarianism, ethnopolitics and elections in Russia. His publication includes articles in Problems of Post-Communism, Communist and Post-Communist Studies and Russian Politics.