How Russians View Electoral Fairness: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

There is a broad consensus that the Duma and presidential elections held in Russia in 2007–2008 failed to meet internationally recognised democratic standards. Post-election public opinion surveys, however, show that most Russians thought that the elections were mainly fair. This discrepancy between the views of international observers and of Russians themselves has not been adequately explained. The main aim of this article, utilising data from a series of focus groups, is to identify potential explanations for why so many Russians assessed these elections as fair, when there was so much evidence to the contrary. Why did so many Russians view egregiously unfair elections as fair? What, furthermore, can this tell us about Russians' political values and what are the possible implications of this for Russia's political development?

Notes

This survey was conducted with the support of ESRC grant RES-000-22-2532, as part of a collaborative award to Stephen White of the University of Glasgow and Ian McAllister of Australian National University. The author wishes to thank Stephen White for making the survey data available.

For an interesting discussion of similarly divergent views held by Russians and international observers concerning the state of democracy in Russia, see Whitefield (2009).

The author wishes to thank Stephen White for kindly making the transcripts of these discussions available to the author.

On the usefulness of focus groups for uncovering why participants think as they do, see also Mickiewicz (2008, especially p. 11). For discussions of the benefits of the similar method of intensive interviewing, see Carnaghan (2007) and Hochschild (1981).

A summary of the data presented in this section is provided in Table B1 in Appendix B.

Two respondents expressed no view in answer to these questions; a further two, whose comments are recorded later, stated that they did not care about falsification or the fairness of the elections.

On the importance of television, and television as a source of news in daily life in Russia, see Mickiewicz (2008, pp. 12–26).

A summary of the data presented in this section is provided in Table B2 in Appendix B.

An additional nine participants either could not or did not express a view concerning the media coverage of the campaigns.

Mickiewicz believes consequently that broadcasters' election messages, ‘encounter viewers' processing that nullifies the intent of the message’ (2008, p. 179).

Four of these seven—Anatolii (Novomoskovsk), Nikolai (Novomoskovsk), Igor' (Kaluga) and Yurii (Kaluga)—also offered criticisms of the media coverage. Of the other three, Vladimir and Raisa (both Kaluga) thought the media coverage fair, while Marina (Mytishchi) did not say.

Such contradictory views are, of course, not exclusively Russian. A seminal study of belief systems by Converse (2006) found most Americans holding ideologically contradictory views. Indeed, Converse concluded from this (p. 51) that ‘large portions of an electorate do not have meaningful beliefs’.

For one discussion of such criteria see Goodwin-Gill (2006).

Rose and Mishler (2009, p. 132), however, viewed the outcome of the 2007 Duma election as fair because, ‘the most popular party won’.

Carnaghan (2007, p. 157), for instance, finds that many Russians who express a desire for ‘order’ do not have authoritarianism in mind, but rather a rule of law that is fully compatible with democracy. Similarly, Mickiewicz (2008, pp. 139–40) found that some of those favouring ‘censorship’ sought censorship of issues such as sex and violence, not political regulation.

Lukin's study (2000, p. 298) of Russian ‘democrats’ in the early 1990s concluded that they viewed democracy not as a system of compromises or separation of powers, but as the unlimited power of the democrats replacing the unlimited power of the communists. Oates (2006, pp. 62–65) concluded that the Russian television audience is more concerned with national image than with liberal concepts of freedom of speech.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kenneth Wilson

The author is grateful to Archie Brown, Andrei Rogatchevski and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on this article.