Feeding the Hand that Bit You: Voting for Ex-authoritarian Rulers in Russia and Bolivia

What could be motivating voters in transition countries to vote for leaders who have proven themselves to be skilled at violating human rights, repressing civil liberties, and ruling without democratic institutions? We test hypotheses related to this question by using a least-similar-systems design in which we search for common predictors of vote choice in presidential elections from two countries that differ in their past and present political and economic situations: Bolivia and Russia. We find consistent patterns in these two very different countries, which leads to the conclusion that voters for ex-authoritarian candidates or parties are not merely motivated by considerations that typically shape vote choice in long-standing democracies, but are also distinguished by a preference for nondemocratic political systems.