The Covid-19 epidemic came at a sensitive time for Russia’s leadership, which was attempting a political reset and structural reforms, including the removal of President Putin’s presidential term limits. This article examines how issues related to the pandemic provided new opportunities for the systemic opposition, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who emerged as the main beneficiaries after capitalising on opportunities created by the epidemic. The underappreciated role of systemic opposition parties in electoral authoritarian systems, which balance “voice” and “loyalty” to benefit both themselves and the regime, is examined in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. 

The electoral arena is an area in which all four aspects of authoritarian resilience have been in evidence in the case of the Russian Federation in recent years. Drawing on the concept of electoral authoritarianism (Schedler 2013), the paper will examine the engineering of the electoral and party system in a manner that has systematically favoured the ruling elite; drawn lessons from other regimes’ attempts to systematically disenfranchise political opponents; used the threat of foreign interference in the electoral system to justify ever-more stringent restrictions on campaign activity, funding and candidacy; and increasingly given up even the pretence of pluralism and open debate in the electoral arena.  With the aid of a detailed examination of electoral law and party system development, the paper will focus on the key question of whether electoral authoritarian regimes inevitably tip into full authoritarianism, as has happened in Russia in recent years.  Alternatively, could the early 2000s model of ‘managed democracy’ (relatively free competition within a moderately-controlled arena) have created the conditions for a consolidated democracy in the right circumstances?  A particular focus is on the ‘toolkit’ of measures used to constrict competition and ensure favourable electoral outcomes for the Kremlin and its associates, and on public confidence (or the lack thereof) in the legitimacy of the electoral process.  

Soviet electoral processes invited popular approbation by encouraging ‘everybody to the polls!’ (‘vse na vybory!’), even in the absence of multiple candidates. The 99.9% turnout in the 1984 Supreme Soviet election was claimed, without irony, to provide ‘convincing new evidence … of the working people’s full support for the domestic and foreign policy of the CPSU and the Soviet state’ (Pravda, 7 March 1984: 1).  But how do modern electoral authoritarian regimes — which hold nominally pluralist elections but combine ‘formal institutions of democratic representation’ with ‘severe and systematic manipulation’ (Schedler 2013) — maintain and demonstrate their popular support? 

Even in the absence of genuinely free and fair elections, the pretence of legitimacy through the ballot box is a key part of the toolkit for electoral authoritarian regime survival.  The paper examines the Russian Federation since the early 2010s, where regional political machines have been used by the regime to mobilise the pro-Kremlin vote in key regions, whilst demobilising voters in more opposition-inclined districts – ensuring that the margin of victory is enhanced even if the level of turnout is not.  Through a detailed examination of regional turnout patterns from official election results over the last three rounds of presidential and parliamentary elections, the paper shows that the 2024 presidential contest – the first national election since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine – represented the most successful use hitherto of the joint mobilisation/suppression strategy.  Vladimir Putin’s margin of victory was significantly enhanced – by nearly 20% - by differential levels of turnout across the country.  As in previous cases, the electoral campaign and its outcome were used to bolster societal control and, above all, legitimacy claims.  

Variance in electoral turnout among immigrants may lead to certain groups being systematically under or over-represented in political decision-making. Voting is a valuable indicator of integration in civic life, and the project casts new light on the dynamics of immigrant electoral participation and its implications for the health of democracy. Sweden – which enfranchises all over-18s in local and regional elections after three years of residence, and has one of the highest foreign-born populations in the EU – features as a case study.

The talk presented the current Swedish Research Council project of the same name, outlining preliminary findings and planned research activities. For the first time, register-data on the whole electorate from three consecutive elections (2018-26) allows the investigation of long-term bases of immigrant electoral turnout. The project delves deeper into the heterogeneity of political resocialisation, examining the links between ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ through interviews and focus groups, and examines whether the election of foreign-born public representatives increases the turnout of immigrant voters. Third, it looks at the facilitating and inhibiting factors to immigrants’ participation, through extensive focus groups with key groups of voters.

This article seeks to fill a research gap by analysing refugees’ voting behavior, using Sweden (known for high refugee immigration, relatively liberal enfranchisement rules, and comprehensive electoral data) as a case study. Relying on register data on turnout from Swedish municipal elections, the article sheds new light on how the political integration of refugees varies. We test theories of resocialization and examine the extent to which a refugee’s political integration is affected by the surrounding environment, focusing on the political culture of the areas surrounding their neighborhoods. The results show that two major factors strongly affect refugee turnout rates: the acquisition of citizenship, and the degree of diversity of nationality in the districts in which refugees live, based on different experiences of “bonding” and “bridging” with the surrounding environment.

Insofar as the Russian state of the 2020s has developed an ideological basis, it is as a self-projected great power defending ‘traditional values’, in contrast to the supposedly misguided liberal West. But has the illiberal turn of the country’s leadership been matched by a similar increase in intolerance and perception of threat amongst the population? The paper will examine in more detail the evolution of the Putin regime’s ‘traditional values’ rhetoric, and – using a series of biennial national representative surveys from the 1990s through to the start of the war in Ukraine – how these have resonated with and affected the social attitudes amongst the Russian population. Does the regime’s mythmaking build on, or drive, public sentiment that legitimates its rule?

Studies of political trust tend to focus primarily on national and international levels rather than subnational ones, and more on democratic than non-democratic states.  Set in the wider context of studies of trust across Europe and beyond, the present study addresses this gap and examines trust in regional and local authorities in the Russian Federation using a national representative opinion survey that focuses on regional and local government.  It finds that generalised trust transfers between levels of government, but policy delivery and a citizens’ sense of efficacy also plays a role. The paper adds to existing knowledge of political trust. Methodologically, it separates regional and local levels from each other.  Empirically, it studies the interactions between citizens and state in the everyday governance of Russia’s vast peripheries.  In more general terms, it examines how trust mechanisms differ between democratic and non-democratic regimes, and the role that subnational governance structures can play in preserving pluralism even where central authorities move in a more authoritarian direction

As was the case with other federal states, Russia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was decentralized and devolved responsibility toregional governors. Contrary to the common highly centralized governance in Russia, this approach is thought to have helped insulate the government from criticism. Using local research and analysis based on a national representative survey carried out at the height of the pandemic during the summer of 2021, the article charts the public response to the pandemic across Russia. It examines the regionalization of the response, with an in-depth focus on two of the Russian cities with the highest infection rates but differing responses to the pandemic: St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk. There are two main findings: at one level, the diffusion of responsibility meant little distinction was made between the different levels of government by the population; at another level, approval of the pandemic measures was tied strongly to trust levels in central and regional government.