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.

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. 

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.

The article examines electoral politics over the last 35 years in the Russian Federation, since the end of the Soviet Union to the present day. It traces the party and electoral system through several phases of development, from hyper-pluralism in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse to the electoral authoritarianism of the late Putin period. 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. Whilst we can over-romanticise the pluralism of the late 1980s and 1990s, there is an inherent danger for the Kremlin in relying on extracting ever greater gains from an ever-narrower base of support, at the expense of systemic renewal. In the long-term, this may presage another epochal shift in the Russian political system. 

Over the post- Soviet period, the vibrancy of Russian democracy has diminished significantly,and the national electoral process has become increasingly consolidated and predictable. Whilst this to some extent has reflected sustained support for the president and its reflection in the party system, a significant amount has also come from continual legislative engineering of the electoral system by the regime in order to benefit from incumbency.  The chapter gives an overview of the Russian elections since Soviet times to the present day, focusing on electoral behaviour, legislative engineering, political parties and the integrity of the electoral process.  It is noted that the word 'vybor' in Russian means both “election” and “choice”. Whilst there is still a menu of parties and candidates, it has been increasingly clear in recent years that the regime would prefer that menu to be table d’hôte rather than à la carte. More than three decades after perestroika ushered in a new political pluralism, Russia again has elections without (real) choice.

We still know remarkably little about the voting behavior of immigrant populations, and in particular, the children of immigrants – who grow up in the same society as their contemporaries, but may be subject to different patterns of socialization. This article uses verified voting behavior in Swedish municipal elections to offer at least two new perspectives on these questions. First, we are able to separate out the impacts of family socialization, general societal socialization, and citizenship acquisition on electoral participation. Second, we are also able to add to our knowledge of the differences in political participation levels between different groups of foreign-background voters.

In July 2020, Russian voters gave strong support to a package of constitutional reforms that reconfigured the Russian political system and enshrined social guarantees and conservative identity values, consolidating the regime that has been built over a 20-year period. This was achieved through an alteration that `zeroed' presidential terms that commenced before the constitutional change, potentially allowing President Vladimir Putin to overcome term limits and continue in office beyond 2024. The article explains how such a far-reaching and important change was successfully endorsed by the Russian electorate. The analysis shows that the main explanation rests with variations in voting patterns across the regions, a pattern that has been evident in previous Russian elections and resulted in strong pro-Putin support. The article also evaluates questions raised about the legitimacy of the result, and its long-term significance for the Russian political system.

The inventory catalogues sources of official information on turnout and electoral registration for the two most European Parliament elections, prior to 1 January 2019 (generally 2009 and 2014, except for Croatia). This inventory was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of this inventory represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The inventory catalogues available sources of official information on turnout and electoral registration amongst mobile EU citizens for the two most European Parliament elections, prior to 1 January 2019 (2009 and 2014, except for Croatia in 2013) and the most recent municipal elections to which Directive 94/80/EC applied, prior to 1 January 2019. This inventory was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of this inventory represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

This report gives an overview of the obstacles to political participation among mobile European Union (EU) citizens – people holding the citizenship of one Member State who have used their freedom of movement rights to live or work in another. It focuses on how their non-citizenship status in their country of residence, and external status relative to their country of citizenship, affects their ability and propensity to take part in elections in both countries. Drawing on an extensive body of research conducted for the FAIR-EU project, funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020), the report summarises and synthesises the findings of other FAIR-EU reports to give an overview of the obstacles to electoral participation amongst mobile EU citizens, and the extent to which these impede their propensity to vote and participate in public life.

The inventory catalogues sources of official information on turnout and electoral registration for the most recent elections to which EU Directive 94/80/EC applies, prior to 1 January 2019. This inventory was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of this inventory represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

Democracy is one of the fundamental values of the European Union (EU). The starting point of democracy is that it represents ‘rule of the people’. But which people should be represented? In this report, particular focus is on the representation of ‘mobile EU citizens’ – the 14.3 million people of voting age holding the citizenship of one Member State and living and working in another. With a particular focus on supra- and sub-national elections, it first looks at the scope and enactment of Directives 93/109/EC (EP elections) and 94/80/EC (municipal elections) that in principle grant mobile EU citizens the right to vote on the same terms as national citizens of their countries of residence. Thereafter, based on the most comprehensive database hitherto, it examines the available information on registration and turnout rates amongst mobile EU voters in the most recent municipal elections and EP elections prior to 2019 in each Member State. Finally, it examines the available registration and turnout data of mobile EU voters in depth in a selection of key countries. Based on these three levels of analysis, conclusions are drawn about the representation of mobile EU, and policy suggestions are made based on them. 

This Key Country report focuses on electoral registration and turnout in Sweden, where the most recent general election was held on 9 September 2018. It provides a historical perspective on patterns of electoral registration and turnout among foreignborn voters (non-citizens and Swedish citizens) in local and regional elections. In a handful of municipalities, a significant proportion of the electorate comprises non- Swedish citizens with voting rights. However, the likelihood of voting is higher among foreign-born voters who have acquired Swedish citizenship – which potentially leaves non-citizen residents under-represented in local and regional representative organs. A second focus is on non-resident Swedish citizens in the country’s national elections. The number of Swedish voters abroad has increased in every election since 1968. Though a very small proportion of the total electorate, their ballots make a slight difference to the distribution of seats in the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag.

As a nuclear power, UN Security Council member, emerging Arctic hegemon and the largest state in the world, Russia — and its stability — is of extreme importance in global politics. In the most comprehensive long-term study to date, Derek Hutcheson argues that Russia's legislature, the Federal Assembly, forms an integral part of the country's political system and machinery of governance. Having previously formed a counterweight to presidential power under Boris Yeltsin, the legislative agenda has become more centralised under Vladimir Putin. Successive changes to the electoral and party systems have resulted in the dominance of a four-party 'cartel', with the pro-presidential United Russia party at its centre. A perception that Russian elections are predictable, controlled and pointless to examine has grown, but Hutcheson reminds us that real voters cast real ballots. This book tells the story of how the electoral system has evolved, how campaign strategies have developed and how voting behaviour has changed. Hutcheson has utilised a combination of official data and new primary material to set 25 years of Russian parliamentary elections into context. Putting forward an in-depth analysis of post-Soviet politics, he looks forward to the next stage in Russia's political evolution.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's party system has suffered a difficult and turbulent infancy. Moscow based parties have had only very limited territorial penetration, and fragmentation has been one of its most significant features. Based on extensive fieldwork in three Russian regions, this book examines the development of the country's party system and the role played by parties in regional politics. Using a comparative approach, it scrutinises the internal structures and activities of the parties, looks at their decision-making processes, their everyday party life, the activities of party members, and the role of regional party organisations in federal and local election campaigns.

The 2018 Russian presidential election was effectively a contest not between Vladimir Putin and the other seven candidates on the ballot paper, but between Putin and the level of election turnout. Anything less than a large majority based on a respectable level of turnout would have undermined Putin’s legitimacy to serve for a further six-year term. In the event, Putin achieved his goal. In this paper we examine the background to the election and the conduct of the campaign, and analyse the result. Putin’s success can be traced to, first, long-standing patterns of differential turnout across the regions and, second, administrative initiatives by the election authorities which created a renewed confidence in the integrity of the election process. While there is evidence that those wishing to protest against Putin spoiled their votes, the impact of this was minor.

An overview is given of the 2016 Russian State Duma election, and its significance for the current Russian regime. As the first in a series of five articles in this edition of Russian Politics, it sets the 2016 State Duma election into context. It begins by discussing the role of the Duma in Russian politics, and reviews political developments between the protests that followed the 2011 parliamentary election, and the successful conclusion of the 2016 one. It then examines how institutional and political changes came together in the 2016 campaign. The resultant supermajority for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party is analyzed, before the remaining articles in this issue – which examine the issues of turnout, voting behavior, electoral manipulation and the future of the regime – are introduced.

Because of the predicable outcomes of recent Russian elections, voters are often characterized as passive actors in the electoral process. However, as we show in this article, political and social factors still underpin the motivations for people’s voting behavior. The article analyzes voting behavior in the 2016 State Duma election, using a post-election, nationally representative survey to assess the differences between the four parliamentary parties’ support bases. It finds that voting decisions in the 2016 election were strongly related to voters’ attitudes to the national president, Vladimir Putin, as well as to their attitudes to corruption and the economic situation. Voters who were more positive to the president and viewed the economic crisis more benignly were more likely to vote for the ‘party of power’, United Russia. Moreover, the four parties’ electorates had distinctive social profiles that were consistent with long-term patterns established in previous State Duma elections.

Knowledge about electoral participation of people with foreign background helps us understand how political engagement in immigrant countries can develop in the long term. The current study focues on Sweden. We conduct multigeneration study at the individual level of people born abroad or with foreign background, based on records of their actual participation. With the municipal elections in 2014 as a case study, we confirm previous research on immigrant voting behavior, and explore differences between how foreign-born and Swedish-born with at least one foreign-born parent exercise their democratic rights. Differences between groups with a foreign background are also studied.

In this chapter - one amongst 10 countries studied in the book - we analyze the nationalization of electoral behaviour in Russia, systematically studying 204 elections for the lower chamber of regional (sub”ekty) parliaments held between 7 December 2003 and 13 September 2015. In the Russian context, nationalization has occurred mainly because of the increasing vote shares won by the United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) party. Despite an overall trend of nationalization, however, we find significant traces of regionalization of the vote. In other words, the depth and speed of nationalization have been unequal across the territory. In particular, we find that nationalization has been particularly pronounced in ethnic and more populous regions. Furthermore, we find that electoral institutional engineering has facilitated nationalization.

Survey evidence suggests that Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy rests on three pillars: domestic order, economic prosperity, and the demonstration of great power status internationally. This is problematic inasmuch as it is based on high degrees of personal popularity which inhibits and contravenes the legal-rational legitimacy of state institutions. This requires continued delivery in all three areas in order to maintain the legitimacy of the regime. This framework allows us better to interpret the 2014 Ukraine crisis as an attempt to shore up support in one ‘pillar’ as performance-based legitimacy recedes.

Who should have the right to vote – and who does? This chapter focuses on these two central questions, and combines discussion of the normative principles of the demos with a comprehensive mapping of the electoral rights in national elections of citizens and resident non-citizens in all 28 states of the European Union. We consider five possible constructions of the demos, examine the extent to which these principles are followed or observable in practice, and examine the correlation between the inner and outer boundaries implied by the models and the empirical reality of voting rules in Europe. When we compare these normative models with the empirical reality of national electoral regimes, the main distinctions in constructing the European demos revolve around citizenship and residence. From a normative perspective of democracy and justice, citizenship and residence alone are not adequate criteria for constituting the decision-making basis of a country’s electorate, but in practice it is generally these criteria that determine inclusion or exclusion of potential voters, rather than affectedness, subjection or contribution; even the stakeholder model is reflected to only a limited extent in the definition of the demos.

The article compares the institutional constraints that limit the potential electoral impact of external voting in national legislative elections in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). It shows that the discrepancy between policy aims and outcomes can be mainly attributed to a variety of institutional constraints restricting the scope of the policy (through residence and professional qualifications); limiting eligible voters’ access to the ballot (through cumbersome registration procedures and voting methods); and reducing the electoral weight attributed to their votes (through distinct modes of representation). It argues that the discrepancy is at least partly the result of a combination of electoral and normative concerns about the influence that external voters could and should have in elections. Institutional restrictions on the franchise of external citizens may be interpreted as a way to keep the ‘Pandora’s Box’ of unexpected electoral consequences half-shut, by extending the suffrage to a traditionally excluded electorate while at the same time moderating the implications.

The report summarises the key findings of the EU-funded ACIT (Access to Citizenship and its Impact on Immigrant Integration) Project conducted by the European Union Democracy Observatory on Citizenship. It outlines the project's main findings and the indicators developed to measure the inclusiveness of citizenship law, implementation, acquisition and integration. The final part sets out certain standards against which these can be measured.

This Study analyses some key trans-border situations in which citizens may find difficulties in exercising their electoral rights – both to vote in elections, and to stand as candidates. It focuses on the electoral rights of EU citizens when resident outside the state where they are citizens, and on the electoral rights of third country citizens resident in the EU Member States. It also covers several complementary issues by examining the consular representation of EU citizens outside the territory of the Union, and also the restrictions placed by the Member States on the access of non-citizens to high public office.

The article applies and develops Katz and Mair’s ‘cartel party’ thesis to the Russian case. Challenging the accepted characterization of the Russian party system as ‘hegemonic’, the article contends that this underplays the systemic importance of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and its collusion with pro-Kremlin parties in the fields of electoral and party reform. By applying the concepts of cartelization to the Russian case, it appears that the intersection of state and party goes beyond simply the ‘top-down’ establishment of political parties towards a party system in which there is inter-party collusion around a strong state-based regime.

The research question at the heart of the EUDO Access to Citizenship and its Impact on Immigrant Integration (ACIT) project is the extent to which changes in citizenship status affect levels of integration. This paper establishes a basic framework for understanding the concept of integration itself, and how best to measure it through indicators of integration (CITINT), and contains empirical data from the EU LFS and EU-SILC survey that casts light on this.

The article examines patterns of party finance in Russia. In comparative terms, Russia now has one of the most regulated party finance regimes amongst established and emerging democracies. Over time, the amount of money circulating in the party sphere – or at least officially acknowledged – has increased. The reliance of the leading parties on state finance is now substantial, indicating that the pro-Kremlin groupings and the nominally opposition Communist Party of the Russian Federation have systematically built up a parliamentary ‘cartel’ to reinforce their position within the Russian party system.

The September 2011 Danish parliamentary election led to a change of government as the centre-right coalition of the previous ten years was replaced by a centre-left one headed by the leader of the Social Democrats, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. The victory was very narrow, however, and Thorning-Schmidt’s own party endured its worst result for more than a century. The new government is moreover reliant on parties with very different policy agendas to pass its legislative programme.