Post-Soviet Electoral Practices in Comparative Perspective

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Notes

I am grateful to Stephen White for help in sourcing some of the data employed in this analysis. I also thank the participants in the conference on The Ghosts of the Past: Everyday Life 20 Years after the Fall of Communism, University of East London, 11–12 June 2009 for comments on a paper that represented an earlier version of parts of the sections titled ‘Soviet electoral theatre’ and ‘From drama to spectacle: post-Soviet electoral carnivals’. Finally, I am indebted to the insightful comments of Europe-Asia Studies' two reviewers. The usual disclaimer applies.

¹In other work I have demonstrated that factors such as clientelism and corruption facilitate the manipulation of elections, whereas a robust civil society—and in particular a free media—are among the most important determinants of electoral integrity (Birch 2011).

²For a review of this literature, see Birch (2009).

³See www.essex.ac.uk/government/electoralmalpractice, accessed 11 February 2011.

⁴Mikhail Bakhtin has analysed the subversive aspect of carnival in similar terms (Bakhtin 1984, pp. 10–11).

⁵See also Swearer (1961, p. 149) and Gilison (1968, p. 818).

⁶See, for example, Gel'man (2008, p. 22), Herron (2003), Myagkov et al. (2009, p. 118), OSCE (1998, 2002, 2005b, 2007a, 2007b, 2008c) and Wilson (2005b, pp. 119–20).

⁷Another Soviet-era practice that has survived in the post-Soviet era is proxy voting, whereby one family member votes on behalf of others (Friedgut 1979, p. 115). One commentator estimates that two in five eligible Uzbek voters vote by proxy in that country (Ilkhamov 2002, p. 8). This practice also appears to be widespread in many post-Soviet states, including Kazakhstan (Herron 2003) and Ukraine (Myagkov et al. 2009, p. 205).

⁸ Financial Times, 5 November 2003.

⁹Media bias of some kind is also documented in virtually all the OSCE election observation reports. See the OSCE report archive, available at: http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections, accessed 11 February 2011.

¹⁰See, for example, Myagkov et al. (2009, p. 117), OSCE (1996, 1998, 2000a, 2001, 2002, 2004b, 2004d, 2005a), Ross (this collection) and Wilson (2005a, p. 82).

¹¹On the Russian and Ukrainian cases, see Gel'man (2008, pp. 23–26), Ross (this collection) and Wilson (2005a, pp. 82–84).

¹²See Gel'man (2008, pp. 22–26) and Wilson (2005b, pp. 119–20). Virtually all the OSCE election observation reports record some abuse of this sort. See the OSCE report archive, available at: http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections, accessed 11 February 2011.

¹³In a recent study Herron (2009, pp. 13–14) counts 43 referendums during the 1992–2008 period, or an average of 2.9 per former Soviet state. The biggest users of this instrument have been Kyrgyzstan (six referendums during the 1992–2008 period) and Lithuania (eight referendums during the same period).