Crafting elections under authoritarianism: electoral manipulation as an authoritarian response to uncertainty in Russia’s regional legislative elections

Thesis

Authoritarian elections are becoming a common phenomenon, at the heart of which lies a range of manipulative practices designed to perpetuate authoritarian victory. This dissertation examines the patterns in electoral manipulation and probes the existence of a systemic logic behind the use of such tactics in Russia. Conventional wisdom assumes that authoritarian elites engage in manipulation from a position of strength - they spot opportunities to exercise their power over a weak electorate and interfere with elections in order to obtain impressive results that serve to stabilise and prolong authoritarian rule. In contrast, this dissertation proposes that authoritarian regimes interfere with elections out of weakness - manipulation is a way of overcoming uncertainty over how voter sentiments will translate themselves at election time in difficult electoral contexts.

The study narrows down the concept of manipulation to four major strategies (electoral fraud, candidate exclusion, spoiler candidates and voter mobilisation), and uses a wide range of electoral and candidate data, citizen reports and court cases. Focusing on the sub-national elections to Russia’s regional legislatures, the thesis argues that there emerge common intra-regional trends in the use of electoral manipulation, which point to the existence of a regime-wide logic. Specifically, the dissertation explains how uncertainty affects the strategies adopted, with a particular focus on how strategies vary across urban and rural districts. I argue that electoral uncertainty increases with the level of urbanisation, and subsequently examine the extent to which the deployment of manipulative strategies varies according to the urban-rural divide. As a result, this thesis seeks to enhance our understanding of electoral authoritarianism by identifying the contexts in which certain strategies of manipulation are more likely to be used.

Authors: Tsenina, A

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Russian regional elections; candidate exclusion; electoral authoritarianism; electoral manipulation; voter mobilisation; electoral fraud; spoiler candidates; authoritarian elections
• Subjects: Elections; electoral authoritarianism; Russian Politics; Politics and government; Electoral manipulation