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This article examines the December 2, 2007 State Duma elections in Russia in terms of their significance and implications for Russian politics. The article argues that the success of the United Russia party in the State Duma elections created the most conducive conditions for Vladimir Putin's handling of the presidential succession problem in 2008. By keeping the State Duma under the control of his Tarty of Power: Vladimir Putin became able to nominate his close ally Dmitry Medvedev to the Presidency since the election results enabled him to use the State Duma to counterbalance the overwhelming presidential power which will be transferred to Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. The article begins by examining the significance and the actual organization of the December 2, 2007 State Duma elections in Russia. On the basis of the analysis of the election results, the article goes on to discuss the implications of the December 2, 2007 State Duma elections for Russian politics.

The Russian political system needs elections. Especially at the regional level, they serve to cultivate loyalty and as an initiation ritual for governors, their aides, and local power brokers.

Be it for the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the intervention in Syria or the alleged interference in the US presidential election, Russia has been increasingly under the spotlight over the last years. In 2018, the world's eyes will be upon two events: the presidential elections taking place on March 18, and the World Cup, which will kick off in June. While the outcomes of the latter are still uncertain, President Vladimir Putin's victory looks like a safe bet. Even so, these elections bear important consequences for both Russia's domestic and foreign policy, since they will affect Putin's ability to both cement his power at home and pursue his objectives abroad. What are the main domestic and international challenges facing Russia? Will Putin continue to question the Western-championed liberal order or seek reconciliation with the West? The authors of this Report address these key issues, offering in-depth analyses of Russia's political system, economy and society, as well as tracing their evolution and pointing at future scenarios for the EU-Russia relations.

Be it for the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the intervention in Syria or the alleged interference in the US presidential election, Russia has been increasingly under the spotlight over the last years. In 2018, the world's eyes will be upon two events: the presidential elections taking place on March 18, and the World Cup, which will kick off in June. While the outcomes of the latter are still uncertain, President Vladimir Putin's victory looks like a safe bet. Even so, these elections bear important consequences for both Russia's domestic and foreign policy, since they will affect Putin's ability to both cement his power at home and pursue his objectives abroad. What are the main domestic and international challenges facing Russia? Will Putin continue to question the Western-championed liberal order or seek reconciliation with the West? The authors of this Report address these key issues, offering in-depth analyses of Russia's political system, economy and society, as well as tracing their evolution and pointing at future scenarios for the EU-Russia relations.

As expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin has unofficially begun his campaign for re-election ahead of the presidential election scheduled for 17 March 2024. Exhibitions celebrating the Putin era are already on display, and cultural performances ...

On 18 March 2018, Vladimir Putin was reelected for a fourth term as president of Russia, receiving 77 per cent of the votes. He will remain in office for another six years, up to 2024. While this result did not come as a surprise, political events in the run-up to the election require more attention. Not only did protests take place in cities all over Russia; liberal elites were also strikingly present in both political and economic discussions, occasionally openly challenging the existing system. At the same time, the regime demonstrated a high level of tolerance vis-à-vis such challengers. These observations appear surprising in the context of Russia's authoritarian political system. The paper analyzes two cases of political confrontation in the context of the 2018 elections: Xenia Sobchak's presidential campaign and the competition between the economic groupings around the liberal Kudrin and the statist "Stolypin Club". It can be shown that in both cases, the roots of the seemingly independent political debates can be traced back to initiatives of the existing regime. On the basis of this observation, the paper comes to the following two conclusions: First, a certain level of political controversy is regarded as important for legitimizing the regime. This shows, secondly, that the "electoral authoritarian" regime in Russia has to respond to expectations of its citizens, which include the demand for political options. Overall, this paper suggests that despite its turn to increased authoritarianism and repression in the last years, the Russian government attempts to manage political stability by applying a mix of certain freedoms as well as restrictions.

Russia is experiencing a wave of state repression ahead of parliamentary elections on 19 September 2021. The crackdown is unusually harsh and broad, extending into pre­viously unaffected areas and increasingly penetrating the private sphere of Russian citizens. For years the Russian state had largely relied on the so-called "power verti­cal" and on controlling the information space through propaganda and marginalisation of independent media. The political leadership, so it would appear, no longer regards such measures as sufficient to secure its power and is increasingly resorting to repression. The upshot is a further hardening of autocracy. Even German NGOs are experiencing growing pressure from the Russian state. This trend cannot be expected to slow, still less reverse in the foreseeable future.

How do flawed elections and post-election protest shape political attitudes? Taking advantage of the largely exogenous variation in the timing of a survey conducted in Moscow, we examine the short-term impact of the parliamentary election of December 4th, and the large protest of December 10th on trust in the Russian government. The fraud-marred parliamentary election had little effect on attitudes toward government, perhaps because allegations of vote improprieties were not new information. In contrast, the large protest of December 10th increased trust in government. Heightened trust arises largely from non-supporters of the ruling party updating their beliefs rather than from social desirability bias, a perceived improvement in government performance, or a "halo" effect. This finding is consistent with the view that autocrats can increase trust in government by unexpectedly allowing protest without repression. It also suggests that when evaluating trust in government citizens may cue not off the content of the protest, but off the holding of the protest itself.

Donald Trump has once again claimed victory in the US Republican primary, and Russia's Vladimir Putin is guaranteed to be leading in this year's election in Moscow. The big surprise this month, however, is the surge of the Far Right in Portugal which has gained an unprecedented following under the new Chega party.

Moscow and Beijing likely worked together to sow disinformation globally that was propagated locally by political parties in the lead-up to Solomon Islands' national and provincial elections on 17 April 2024. Both countries' propaganda systems ...

Under the system of presidential appointments of regional governors, which existed in Russia from 2005 to 2012, gubernatorial loyalty to the central government and particularly governors' ability to deliver satisfactory results to the ruling party in national-level elections were crucial to their likelihood of being reappointed to the next term. In this paper, we argue that governors, anticipating the relationship between loyalty and reappointments, attempted to deliver additional votes to the ruling party, and show that those attempts were subject to regional political cycles. Exploiting variation in the starting and expiry dates of Russian regional governors' terms of office, we find that the winning margins for a pro-government party across Russian regions in national-level elections held between 2007 and 2012 were substantially higher when elections were closer to the beginning or to the expiration of a regional governor's term. The effect is driven almost exclusively by the governors serving their first terms. However, for elections held between 1999 and 2004, when governors were subject to direct votes by regional constituencies, no similar effect is found. The results can be explained by, e.g., first impression and recency biases in appointment decisions. We then implement several exercises to identify the sources of the additional votes for the ruling party and demonstrate that governors, while unlikely committing electoral fraud, likely exerted effort to stimulate turnout among ruling party supporters. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. ; This research was supported by a grant from the CERGE-EI Foundation under a program of the Global Development Network (GDN). All opinions expressed are those of the authors and have not been endorsed by CERGE-EI or the GDN. All errors remaining in this text are the responsibility of the authors. This article was prepared in part while Dmitriy Vorobyev held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with the Wisconsin Russia Project, sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Under the system of appointing regional governors by the president, which existed in Russia between 2005-2012, governors' loyalty to the central government and particularly their ability to deliver satisfactory results to the ruling party in national-level elections were crucial to their likelihood of being re-appointed for the next term. In this paper, we show that governors, anticipating the relationship between loyalty and re-appointments, attempted to increase their likelihood of being re-appointed by delivering additional votes to the ruling party, and that these attempts were subject to regional political cycles. We argue that delivering satisfactory results may have different importance to a governor depending on the stage of his term at which elections are held. If elections are held close to the expiration of a governor's current term, the results are likely to be pivotal to his further political career. Exploiting variation in the starting and expiry dates of Russian regional governors' terms of office, we find that the winning margins for a pro-government party across Russian regions in national-level elections held between 2007-2012 were substantially higher when elections were closer to the expiration of a regional governor's term. However, for elections held between 1999-2004, when governors were subject to a direct vote by the regional population, no similar effect is found. We then implement several exercises to identify the source of the additional votes for the ruling party and demonstrate that governors, while unlikely using the means of electoral fraud, exerted efforts to stimulate turnout among ruling party supporters.

Deutsch

By Manuel Müller


2024 will be a global super election year: Among others, presidential and/or parliamentary elections will be held in Russia, the European Union, and the United States. They will carry implications not only for the domestic politics of these three polities but also for the international arena.
While the Russian presidential election lacks any democratic

The December 2011 legislative election was among the most fraudulent national elections in Russia since the communist period. The fraud, however, was not evenly spread across the country. Precinct-level election returns from the 83 regions of the Russian Federation suggest that the level of fraud ranged from minimal or small in some regions to extreme in some others, with moderate to high fraud levels in many regions in between. We argue that in an electoral authoritarian context like Russia, regional variation in fraud can be explained by differences in (a) the perceived need by regional authorities to signal loyalty to the center by "delivering" desired election results; (b) the capacity of regional authorities to organize fraud; and (c) the vulnerability of citizens to political pressure and manipulation. We test the effect of signaling, capacity, and vulnerability on electoral fraud in the 2011 legislative elections with data on the 83 regions of the Russian Federation. We find evidence for all three mechanisms, finding that the tenure of governors in office, United Russia's dominance in regional legislatures, and the ethnic composition of regions are most important for explaining regional variation in electoral fraud.

The thesis examines the motives of people in Arkhangelsk (Russia) to take part in the 10 December 2011 protest which emerged after the Duma elections. The objective of the research is to find out what motivated people in Arkhangelsk to take part in the protest (i.e. what kind of drivers triggered them to participate). The study draws on theory of spatial analyses of protest under the Russia's hybrid regime, which emphasizes local socioeconomic and political conditions as influential factors in formation of nature of protest. The results of the qualitative research indicate that protestors in Arkhangelsk were not only concerned with possible falsifications of Duma election results when they engaged into the protest. Due to specific local environments, protesters might also put forward demands based on discontent with socioeconomic and political situation in Arkhangelsk. The findings suggest that protest in Arkhangelsk was not purely political but combined traits of social and economic protest as well.