Legitimising Victories: Electoral Authoritarian Control in Russia’s Gubernatorial Elections

Abstract

We explore the evolution of the Kremlin’s election control strategy in response to the reintroduction of gubernatorial elections in 2012. Our analysis focuses on the evolution of four tools used to engineer electoral competition: auxiliary institutions, subnational punishment regimes, ballot construction, and turnout manipulation. We argue that election managers deploy these mechanisms to maximise victories for state-sponsored candidates while minimising the possibility for post-election protest. The analysis demonstrates that electoral manipulation presents conflicting incentives for the Kremlin and its regional officials. It also shows the critical role that Russia’s systemic opposition plays in the electoral management system and regime stability.

Notes

The authors are grateful for support from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER). This article is a product of the research project ‘Political Competition in Russia: Sub-National Dimension’ carried out by the National Research University Higher School of Economics as part of the 2015 Annual Thematic Plan for Basic and Applied Research. All findings and conclusions in the article are solely the responsibility of the authors.

¹ The regime used a number of formal and informal tactics to eliminate candidates, including manipulating the municipal filter, threatening or launching legal investigations against candidates, questioning valid registration documents, or miscounting signatures.

² The official codification of the 20% turnout level can be found in revisions to the law ‘On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation’ (Federal’nyi zakon “Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel’nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendume grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii”) Law No. 67-F3, passed 12 June 2002. Turnout regulations were abolished in an amendment to the law (225-FZ) on 5 December 2006. Laws, complete with amendments, are published at: http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102076507, accessed 29 January 2018.

³ In 2013, this figure was inflated by the large number of first-time candidates without prior political experience who ran as independents in the Moscow mayoral election. All of these candidates failed to meet ballot access requirements.

⁴ This analysis is based on the authors’ calculations drawn from Central Election Commission reports on the registration process in each district. These data are available at: http://www.cikrf.ru/, accessed 30 January 2018.

⁵ Authors’ calculations based on data available at the Central Election Commission website, available at: http://www.cikrf.ru/, accessed 30 January 2018.

⁶ Candidate biographies, including governmental experience, as well as the status of their registration are available at the Central Election Commission website, available at: http://www.cikrf.ru/, accessed 30 January 2018.

⁷ In addition to Central Election Commission data, see Kynev and Goode (2014).

⁸ Local press reported that, while the UR party attributed low turnout and low support to good weather and the holiday, Orlov acknowledged that the results reflected a low level of voter efficacy and promised to immediately replace the entire regional government as a first step to create better ties with the electorate (Gavrilova 2015).

⁹ It was widely discussed that the decision made late in the electoral period reflected some collusion between the incumbent and the regional Central Election Commission as the information was widely available upon registration, see: ‘Informatsiya k razmyslheniyu: chem zapomnyatsya tyumenskie vybory’, Tyumen, 9 September 2014, available at: http://www.tumenpro.ru/2014/09/09/informatsiya-k-razmyishleniyu-ili-chem-zapomnyatsya-tyumenskie-vyiboryi/, accessed 30 January 2018.

¹⁰ The Kremlin can glean more accurate information from party-list voting for regional legislative elections as these results do not reflect district-level candidate effects, including incumbent advantages.

¹¹ The calculations do not include the 2012 and 2013 elections because only five elections were held in 2012 and eight in 2013. In contrast, there were 30 elections in 2014 and 21 elections in 2015.

¹² Naval’nyi laid out his plan for surpassing the municipal filter on his Live Journal blog on 19 June 2013. The English version of the post is available at: http://navalny-en.livejournal.com/84355.html, accessed 30 January 2018. When this plan failed to secure the required number of signatures, the Presidential Administration together with Mayor Sobyanin requested UR deputies to support his nomination. Debate over this decision was widely discussed in the Russia press but is summarised by State Duma Deputy, Nikolai Rhyzkov (2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Regina Smyth

Regina Smyth, Associate Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, Department of Political Science, 210 Woodburn Hall, 1100 East Seventh Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-7110, USA. Email: [email protected]

Rostislav Turovsky

Rostislav Turovsky, Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Lead of the Laboratory for Regional Political Studies, Rublevskoje shausse, 30, bld. 1, apt. 87, 121609 Moscow, Russian Federation. Emails: [email protected], [email protected]