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ABSTRACT
We use electoral system change in Russia to identify the means by which a proportional representation (PR) system yields strategic electoral behavior that favors the ruling party in an authoritarian regime. Specifically, we argue that Russian regions enjoying greater representation via the ruling party in Russia’s first PR-only elections relative to the previously mixed electoral system should have been more likely to deliver votes in that party’s direction in the second PR-only election as a way to maximize their representation under the new rules. Using robust regression analysis, we demonstrate that regional experiences under the first PR-only election did influence the supply of votes to the ruling party and that this outcome holds when controlling for other explanations of vote delivery. With this finding in hand, we take a closer look at the representation of Russia’s regions over time to demonstrate how electoral system effects in authoritarian states are not simply the product of regime trajectory.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Aidan Klein is a PhD student in Political Science at Indiana University, who is currently studying development of federalism under Russia's authoritarian regime.
Bryon Moraski is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. His research examines the operation, evolution, and manipulation of political institutions and elections, primarily in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Notes
1 While Duverger’s work has profoundly influenced the study of electoral systems and party systems, scholars have questioned the extent to which electoral laws affect party systems. For example, Lipset and Rokkan (Citation1967, 30) argue that it makes little sense “to treat electoral systems as independent variables and party systems as dependent” given the role party strategists play in electoral legislation. Likewise, Colomer (Citation2005, 1) contends that electoral systems merely “crystallize, consolidate or reinforce previously existing political party configurations.”
2 On other tactics that President Putin used to minimize the uncertainty surrounding his decision to observe Russia’s presidential term limit, see Hale (Citation2015, 276–280)
3 The move to gubernatorial appointments is probably the most prominent example of “major institutional changes, aimed at securing [the Kremlin’s] political monopoly” (Gel’man Citation2015, 14) and it has received quite a bit of scholarly attention (e.g., Reuter and Robertson Citation2012; Sharafutdinova Citation2010; Turovskii Citation2010). This change also contributed to Freedom House’s 2005 decision to lower its assessment of the Russian Federation from “partly free” to “not free” (see www.freedomhouse.org).
4 Mass demonstrations against election fraud that followed the 2011 Duma elections cast a shadow on Putin’s 2012 return to the presidency. Among the “concessions” that the Kremlin made to the opposition during this period was a return to a mixed electoral system for the 2016 Duma elections.
5 United Russia formed with the 2001 merger of two centrist rivals that faced off in the 1999 Duma elections: Unity and Fatherland-All Russia.
6 This outcome is not new. Reisinger and Moraski (Citation2017, 167–168), for example, point out that, from 1995 on, the percent of eligible voters supporting Russia’s party of power has been significantly higher in Russia’s ethnic regions than in non-ethnic regions.
7 Data on Russian elections and regional representation come from Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation (Citation2016) and Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (Citation2016).
8 Even if the share of representatives from regions housing Russia’s federal ethnic minorities increased thanks to the use of PR rules, this outcome says little about the quality of representation since the authoritarian nature of Russia’s elections means that the system still appears to have been designed to prize loyalty to the party over loyalty to regional voters, including co-ethnic interests. We leave questions about whether and how the quantity of regional representatives may have influenced policymaking for future research.
9 We thank Michael Alexeev and Andrey Chernyavskiy for sharing the data on federal budget transfers with us (see Alexeev and Chernyavskiy Citation2018).
10 While United Russia may have appeared electorally unassailable during the 2007 Duma election with over 64 percent of the vote, this was not the case in 2011. In that election United Russia squeaked out a majority of seats with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. In separate work, Moraski (n.d.) argues that the 2011 election revealed that Russia’s closed-list PR system had 1) served its purpose by having reined in independently minded deputies and having established United Russia as a source of continuity in between Putin presidencies, 2) outlived its usefulness since the PR rules no longer proved as effective at delivering votes in United Russia’s direction following the removal of governors who had overseen many of the country’s most capable political machines, and 3) introduced new risks to the regime with United Russia’s drop in popular support leading to a greater reliance on election fraud that would be seen as coordinated from above.
11 Among Russia’s republics, for example, the cell in the upper right corner includes Dagestan, Buryatia, Chechnya, Bashkortostan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Tatarstan.
12 In Adygea and Ingushetia, for example, representation levels were greater in both elections governed by mixed rules (2003 and 2016). Note as well that the representation of these two republics were also lower in all authoritarian elections since the return to a mixed system in 2016 was not enough to return their levels of representation to 2003 levels. Although one might be tempted to explain this outcome as the national regime’s authoritarian trajectory having a negative effect on these republics’ representation levels, we would not want to rule out the possibility of another electoral system effect, like a reduction in the number of single-member-districts allocated to these two regions in 2016 relative to 2003. Of course, the country’s authoritarian trajectory could have easily facilitated such a redistribution of district mandates, but this topic requires additional research.