Electoral Engineering in the Russian Regions (2003–2017)

Abstract

This article addresses the puzzle of electoral engineering in autocracies using data from three rounds of Russian regional legislative elections between 2003 and 2017. The analysis shows that electoral engineering was widespread in regions where governors lacked the resources necessary to rely on blatant forms of electoral malpractice for the benefit of United Russia. This pattern became evident during the third round of regional legislative elections. The study indicates that the manipulation of electoral systems may be important for authoritarian rulers when they are unable to rely on blatant electoral malpractice to ensure the certainty of electoral outcomes.

Notes

1 The term ‘electoral engineering’ is used as a synonym for electoral system manipulation (Grofman 2016, p. 536).

2 The term ‘electoral round’ is used in this study to signify the chronological sequence of regional legislative elections after the 2002 electoral reform. The period between December 2003 and October 2008 is the first round of regional elections after the 2002 electoral reform. The period March 2008–September 2013 is the second round; and the period from December 2011 to September 2017 is defined as the third round.

3 Federal’nyi zakon ot 6 oktyabrya 1999 goda No 184-FZ ‘Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii zakonodatel’nykh (predstavitel’nykh) i ispolnitel’nykh organov gosudarstvennoi vlasti sub’’ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_14058/, accessed 10 October 2019.

4 On 3 November 2013, Moscow and St Petersburg received permission to elect all deputies by a single-member plurality (SMP) system.

5 Federal’nyi zakon ‘Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel’nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendume grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ ot 12.06.2002 No 67-FZ, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_37119/, accessed 10 October 2019.

6 The Republic of Kalmykia was the only exception, having used the d’Hondt highest average method for the election of the regional legislative body in 2003.

7 According to Imperiali HA, the number of votes for each eligible party needs to be divided by a series of divisors. Under modified Imperiali HA, the same divisors are applied after allocating one seat to each party that crossed the legal electoral threshold. The effects of modified Imperiali HA are very similar to those of the d’Hondt method (Lyubarev 2011, p. 424; Golosov 2014a, p. 1620).

8 It is the official political opposition necessary for the appearance of democratic legitimacy both home and abroad, which nevertheless does not pose a real threat to the regime being fully controlled by it.

9 In addition to the establishment of a maximum legal electoral threshold and promotion at the regional level of Imperiali HA as a seat allocation formula, in 2010 the federal centre conducted a reform aimed at unification of regional assembly sizes (Kynev 2014, p. 54). The results of this reform were not, however, unidirectional: the number of regions that had to cut their assembly size was similar to the number of regions that had to increase it.

10 In the 2014–2017 period, Moscow was the only region that used the opportunity to decrease the proportion of PR seats in its electoral system in full: the elections to the Moscow city Duma in 2014 were held under a pure SMP system. One more region—Kursk Oblast’—decided to elect one more deputy by SMP than by PR in the 2016 elections.

11 ‘Nezavisimyi institut sotsial’noi politiki’, available at: http://www.socpol.ru/atlas/indexes/index_democr.shtml, accessed 28 July 2018.

12 ‘Vserossiiskaya perepis’ naseleniya 2002 goda: svodnye itogi’, available at: www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_14_25.xls, accessed 28 July 2018; ‘Vserossiiskaya perepis’ naseleniya 2010 goda: natsional’nyi sostav i vladenie yazykami, grazhdanstvo’, available at: www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/perepis2010/croc/Documents/Vol4/pub-04-04.xlsx, accessed 28 July 2018.

13 ‘Tsentral’naya izbiratel’naya komissiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii: informatsiya o vyborakh i referendumakh’, available at: www.izbirkom.ru/region/izbirkom, accessed 28 July 2018.

14 On 8 October 2006, 11 March 2007 and 2 December 2007 the second post-reform parliamentary elections were held in Sverdlovsk and Volgograd oblasti, and the Republic of Mordovia, respectively. Although these elections formally belonged to the second round of the periodisation used throughout this article, it appears to be more analytically sound to consider the second round of regional elections with the vote of March 2008, when second elections were held in seven regions.

15 On 2 March 2008, the third round of elections were held in Sverdlovsk Oblast’.

16 ‘Regional’naya informatsiya’, available at: http://ivo.garant.ru/#/startpage:0, accessed 28 July 2018.

17 Data for this control variable were obtained from the official webpage of the Central Electoral Commission of Russia, ‘Tsentral’naya izbiratel’naya komissiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii: informatsiya o vyborakh i referendumakh’, available at: www.izbirkom.ru/region/izbirkom, accessed 28 July 2018.

18 Data for this control variable were taken from the 2002 Russian national census for the first round of regional parliamentary elections, and from the 2010 census for the second and third rounds (see ‘Vserossiiskaya perepis’ naseleniya 2002 goda: svodnye itogi’, available at: www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_14_25.xls, accessed 28 July 2018; ‘Vserossiiskaya perepis’ naseleniya 2010 goda: natsional’nyi sostav i vladenie yazykami, grazhdanstvo’, available at: www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/perepis2010/croc/Documents/Vol4/pub-04-04.xlsx, accessed 28 July 2018).

19 Data for this control variable were derived from the Russian Statistical Agency, available at: http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/publications/catalog/doc_113862535901, accessed 28 July 2018.

20 Term of office also could be operationalised via the months in power, which gives the same results (‘Tenure_Months’; results are not presented).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mikhail Turchenko

Mikhail Turchenko, Political Science Department, European University at St Petersburg, Gagarinskaya 6/1, St Petersburg, 191187, Russian Federation. Email: [email protected]