The Rise and decline of elecToRal auThoRiTaRianism in Russia

Many scholars argue that the political regime in contemporary Russia exemplifies the global phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism. But, what are the major features of such a regime in the case of Russia? Why and how did it proceed through a life cycle of emergence, development, and decay? And how might it evolve in the foreseeable future? This article seeks answers to these questions. B the 2010s, almost nobody used the term “democracy” when referring to Russia, and debates among experts were mostly focused on how far the country deviated from democratic standards.1 While “pessimists” wrote of the consolidation of an authoritarian regime in Russia,2 “optimists” avoided such firm claims, focusing instead on the low level of repression by Russia’s political regime3 or labeling it as a “hybrid” due to the presence of some democratic institutions.4 To some extent, these terminological controversies reflected conceptual problems in the study of regimes 1 This article is a part of “Choices of Russian Modernization,” a research project funded by the Academy of Finland. 2 Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press; Grigorii V. Golosov. 2011. Regional Roots of Electoral Authoritarianism in Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, 63 (4): 623-39. 3 Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes. 2012. “An Autopsy of Managed Democracy.” Journal of Democracy, 23 (3): 33-45. 4 Daniel Treisman. 2011. “Presidential Popularity in a Hybrid Regime: Russia under Yeltsin and Putin,” American Journal of Political Science, 55 (3): 590-609. Vladimir Gel’man is Professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, and Finland Distinguished Professor at the Aleksanteri Institute, P.O. Box 42 (Unioninkatu 33) FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland (gelman@ eu.spb.ru). 504 Demokratizatsiya globally.5 But, beyond that, most scholars agree that Russian politics under Vladimir Putin has been marked by such pathologies as outrageously unfair and fraudulent elections, the coexistence of weak and impotent political parties with a dominant “party of power,” a heavily censored (often self-censored) media, rubber-stamping legislatures at the national and sub-national levels, politically subordinated courts, arbitrary use of the economic powers of the state, and widespread corruption. In this article, I attempt to explain the logic of the emergence and development of Russia’s current political regime, identify its major features and peculiarities, reconsider its institutional foundations and mechanisms of enforcement, analyze the trajectory of the regime’s “life cycle,” and reflect on possible trajectories for future evolution. Electoral Authoritarianism: Why? If one placed post-communist Russia on the world map of political regimes, it would fit into the category of “electoral” or “competitive” authoritarianism.6 These regimes, although authoritarian, incorporate elections that are meaningful, and stand in contrast to “classical” versions of authoritarianism, which are known for their “elections without choice.”7 However, in electoral or competitive authoritarianism, and in contrast to electoral democracies, elections are marked by an uneven playing field based on: formal and informal rules that construct prohibitively high barriers to participation; sharply unequal access of competitors to financial and media resources; abuses of power by the state apparatus for the sake of maximizing incumbent votes; and multiple instances of electoral fraud. The uneven playing field serves as a defining distinction between electoral authoritarianism and electoral democracy. Recently, there has been a proliferation of electoral authoritarian regimes as a result of two different, although not mutually exclusive, forces. First, regular elections under tightly controlled party competition allows rulers of authoritarian regimes to effectively monitor their country’s elites, the state apparatus, and the citizenry, thus averting risks of the regime’s sudden collapse due to domestic political conflicts.8 Second, autocrats across the globe hold elections as a means of legitimizing the status 5 Matthijs Bogaards. 2009. “How to Classify Hybrid Regimes? Defective Democracy and Electoral Authoritarianism.” Democratization, 16 (2): 399-423. 6 Andreas Schedler. ed., 2006. Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner; Levitsky and Way. Competitive Authoritarianism; Yonatan L. Morse. 2012. “The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism.” World Politics, 64 (1), 161-98. 7 Guy Hermet, Richard Rose, and Alain Rouquie (eds.). 1978. Elections without Choice. New York: Wiley. 8 Barbara Geddes. 2005. Why Elections and Parties in Authoritarian Regimes? Paper presented at the APSA annual meeting, Washington, DC. The Rise and Decline of Electoral Authoritarianism in Russia 505 quo in the eyes of both domestic and international actors.9 However, such elections have become a crucial test of survival for electoral authoritarian regimes: rulers must not only defeat their challengers in unfair elections, but also persuade both domestic and foreign audiences to acknowledge such victories and to mute criticisms about electoral unfairness. Although many electoral authoritarian regimes resolved these tasks more or less successfully, post-electoral protests following unfair elections could often become challenges to regime survival, as the experience of the “color revolutions” in post-communist states and the “Arab Spring” demonstrates. The variation in longevity among electoral authoritarian regimes raises an important question: Why do some electoral authoritarian regimes persist for decades in some countries (as in Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party or in Egypt until the Arab Spring), while in other states electoral authoritarianism proved either to be a temporary developmental stage in the wake of democratization (e.g., Serbia), or to result in the replacement of one electoral authoritarian regime with another (as in Ukraine before and after the “Orange Revolution”)? The evolution of post-communist Russia may shed light on the sources of strength and weakness among electoral authoritarian regimes. Observers differ in their explanations for the failure of electoral authoritarian regimes. Some experts highlight the success of anti-system mobilization by opposition elites in countries ranging from Serbia to Ukraine.10 Others stress the vulnerability of authoritarian regimes themselves due to their lack of insulation from Western influences, the weakness of their coercive capacities, and their inability to establish strong, dominant parties.11 But the discussion of “who is to be blamed” for the failure of electoral authoritarianism – the regime or the opposition12 – is limited by the lesser attention paid to “success stories” among such regimes, of which Russia, at least until the protests of 2011-2012, appears to be one. Russia’s rulers invested heavily in building their political monopoly, by placing both the state apparatus and the dominant political party, United Russia (UR), under hierarchical subordination to central authority, and by effectively insulating domestic politics from direct Western influence. To the regime’s advantage, moreover, popular demand for political changes long remained only latent.13 The regime averted possible challenges to the 9 Beatriz Magaloni. 2010. “The Game of Electoral Fraud and the Ousting of Authoritarian Rule.” American Journal of Political Science, 54 (3): 751-65. 10 Joshua Tucker. 2007. “Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and Post-Communist Colored Revolutions.” Perspectives on Politics, 5 (3): 535-51. 11 Levitsky and Way. Competitive Authoritarianism. 12 Lucan Way. 2008. “The Real Causes of the Color Revolutions.” Journal of Democracy, 19 (3): 55-69; Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik. 2009. “Getting Real about ‘Real Causes.’” Journal of Democracy, 20, (1), 69-73. 13 Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Neil Munro. 2011. Popular Support for an Undemo506 Demokratizatsiya status quo by building prohibitively high barriers to entry to the political market, skillfully implementing divide-and-conquer tactics, coopting loyal “fellow travelers” of the regime, and coercing “non-systemic” actors, which pushed them into a narrow, anti-establishment “ghetto.”14 Even though the rise of protest activism in 2011-2012 did somewhat shake the previous equilibrium, there is no basis to predictions anticipating the nearterm collapse of electoral authoritarianism in Russia. Why and how has the electoral authoritarian regime been consolidated in Russia? What are the causes of its emergence, mechanisms of its maintenance, and possible trajectories of change? In search of answers to these questions, I analyze the institutional and political factors, then specify the developmental stages of Russian electoral authoritarianism, and, finally, discuss the prospects for its political evolution. Institutional Foundations and Political Pillars of Russia’s