Modelling Elections in the Caucasus

Abstract

This paper constructs formal stochastic models of the elections in Georgia in 2008 and in Azerbaijan in 2010. The models include various kinds of valence, where valence is defined as being associated with the non-policy considerations involving the electoral perceptions of party leaders. Valences can be (i) exogenous, held by all members of the electorate, giving an estimate of the perceived “quality”of the political leaders, and empirically estimated by the intercepts in a spatial model; (ii) sociodemographic, associated with the various propensities of subgroups in the polity to choose one candidate over another.

We consider logit models of electoral choice, involving these valences, as well as spatial components derived from policy differences between voters' and candidates' positions. We compute the “equilibrium” vote maximizing positions of the candidates or parties in the two elections and show that these involved divergence from the electoral center.

We argue that oppositional candidates faced different political quandaries in the two countries. In Georgia the opposition candidates had low valences and were associated with relatively non-centrist policy positions. In Azerbaijan the survey we used indicates that there was a degree of political apathy, due to the perception that the election would not be democratic. This made it difficult for opposition candidates to offer credible political competition to the dominant party of the president.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Merab Pachulia, Director of GORBI, Tbilisi, Georgia for making the survey data for the 2008 election in Georgia available. We also thank Rauf Garagozov, Leading Research Fellow, International Center for Social Research (ICSR), Institute of Strategic Studies of the Caucasus, Baku, Azerbaijan. He and his colleagues, Tair Faradov and Rajab Sattarov, of ICSR, carried out the pre-election survey in Azerbaijan in 2010.

This paper is based on work supported by NSF grant 0715929 and a Weidenbaum Center grant. Earlier versions were first completed while Gallego was a visitor at the Center and later when Schofield was the Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, 2010. The authors thank the anonymous referees of the journal for very helpful comments.Versions of this paper have been presented at APSA, Seattle, 2011 and the SPSA, New Orleans, 2012.

Notes

Powers and Cox (1997), Fidrmuk (2000a,b), Grzymala-Busse (2002), Kitschelt et al. (1999), Markowski (2006), Tucker (2006), Markowski and Tucker (2010a,b), and Owen and Tucker (2010).

See for example Epstein et al. (2006), Vreeland (2008), and Fjelde (2010) on partial democracies.

See Gandhi and Vreeland (2004) and Regan and Bell (2010).

Shevardnadze had been baptized into the Georgian orthodox church in 1991.

Following a referee's suggestion, we used multiple imputations so as to be able to use a sample size of 676.

Ansolabehere and Snyder (2000), Groseclose (2001) Aragones and Palfrey (2002, 2005), Schofield (2003, 2004), and Peress (2010).

Clarke et al. (2005, 2006, 2009b, 2011a,b), Schofield (2005), Schofield et al. (2011a,c), and Scotto et al. (2010).

We assume the stochastic error is given by a Type I extreme value distribution.

Enelow and Hinich (1982, 1984a,b).

The electoral distribution of preferred points can be obtained from a survey. Assuming there are w dimensions in the policy space, then the electoral covariance matrix, ∇₀ ^, will be a w by w matrix, whose diagonal terms give the variances on each axis, taken about the mean on that axis.

Another similarity between Georgia and Russia involves the funding of electoral competition. Sonin and Tucker (2007) suggest that the dominance of the pro-Putin party, United Russia follows from its control of economic resources. Notice that Prime Minister Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev announced in late September, 2011, that they had reached an accord under which Putin would again stand as President in the next election.

See Table 8. Because of the survey design, AXCP and MP were not differentiated and are regarded as one party block. See question wording in Appendix B for vote choice.

The variable “city” is a binary variable indicating whether the respondent resides in a city area or not. The categories 1, 2 and 3 in the question “type of location” are coded as city, and 4 and 5 are coded as non-city residents.

We may say the electoral mean is a “repellor”.