Explaining electoral competition across russia's regions

Slavic Review

Volumn 62, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 278-297

  Moraski, Bryon J ^a   Reisinger, William M ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33646526388     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3185578     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. On the state of Russian democracy, see Richard Rose, "How Floating Parties Frustrate Democratic Accountability: A Supply-Side View of Russia's Elections,"
2. William V. Smirnov, "Democratization in Russia: Achievements and Problems," and Archie Brown, "Evaluating Russia's Democratization, " all in Archie Brown, ed., Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader (New York, 2001), 215-23, 517-29, 546-68;
3. Stephen White, "From Communism to Democracy?" and Zvi Gitelman, "Russian Democratization in Comparative Perspective," both in Stephen White, Alex Pravda, and Zvi Gitelman, eds., Developments in Russian Politics 5 (Durham, 2001), 1-17, 289-302;
4. William M. Reisinger, "The 1999-2000 Elections and Russia's Prospects for Democracy," in Vicki L. Hesli and William M. Reisinger, eds., The 1999-2000 Elections in Russia: Their Impact and Legacy (New York, 2003).
5. See Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, "Thinking about Post-Communist Transitions: How Different Are They?" Slavic Review 52, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 333-37;
6. Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, "The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?" Slavic Revieiw 53, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 173-85;
7. Valerie Bunce, "Should Transitologists Be Grounded?" Slavic Review 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 111-27;
8. Robert H. Bates, "Letter from the President: The Death of Comparative Politics?" APSA-CP: The Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics 7, no. 2 (1996): 1-2;
9. Peter A. Hall, "Comparative Politics and Area Studies," APSA-CP: The Neiusletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics 8, no. 2 (1997): 22-24.
10. A map showing Russia's regional boundaries is available from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the on-line collection of the University of Texas's Perry Casteneda Library Map Collection: http://mnv.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ commonwealth.html (last consulted 17 February 2003).
11. Steven L. Solnick, "Gubernatorial Elections in Russia, 1996-1997," Post-Soviet Affairs 14 (1998): 50.
12. Indeed, the election of regional chief executives in the non-republics (or provinces) did not make them immune to the power of the Russian president. Thanks largely to the 1993 constitutional crisis between the president and the parliament, El'tsin was able to reassert control over the more unruly governors. In Amur oblast, for example, the governor at the time of the federal crisis (Aleksandr Surat) had been popularly elected, but on 5 October 1993 El'tsin removed him for supporting the Congress of People's Deputies. Likewise, in Briansk oblast, the popularly elected governor, Iurii Lodkin, was removed from his post for openly opposing El'tsin's actions. Michael McFaul and Nikolai Petrov, eds., Political Almanac of Russia 1989-1997, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1998), vol. 2.
13. Useful discussions of the struggle over post-Soviet Russian federalism include: Gerald M. Easter, "Redefining Centre-Regional Relations in the Russian Federation: Sverdlovsk Oblast'," Europe-Asia Studies 49 (1997): 617-35;
14. Peter Kirkow, Russia's Provinces: Authoritarian Transformation versus Local Autonomy? (New York, 1998), 55;
15. Daniel Treisman, After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia (Ann Arbor, 1999);
16. Matthew Hyde, "Putin's Federal Reforms and Their Implications for Presidential Power in Russia," Europe-Asia Studies 53 (2001): 719-43.
17. As Berman notes, however, any country's mezo-regions "function within a broad intergovernmental, economic, social and cultural environment. The intergovernmental aspect involves relationships between governments at different levels . .. and at the same level." See David R. Berman, State and Local Politics, 6th ed. (Dubuque, 1991), 4. Politics within Russia's regions are influenced, therefore, not only by ties between each region and the federal center, but by ties between the regional center and local governments. Local-level politics (outside Moscow and St. Petersburg) have received even less attention than regional politics in Russia. For exceptions
18. Peter Kirkow, "Local Self-Government in Russia: Awakening from a Slumber?"Europe-Asia Studies 49, no. 1 (1997): 43-58;
19. Kimi- taka Matsuzato, "Local Elites under Transition: County and City Politics in Russia 1985-1996," Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 8 (1999): 1367-400;
20. Tomila Lankina, "Local Government and Ethnic and Social Activism in Russia," in Brown, ed., Contemporary Russian Politics, 398-411.
21. Josephine Andrews and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, "Regionalism and Reform in Provincial Russia," Post-Soviet Affairs 11 (1995): 384-406.
22. This formulation comes from Joan DeBardeleben and Aleksander A. Galkin, "Electoral Behavior and Attitudes in Russia: Do Regions Make a Difference or Do Regions Just Differ?" in Peter J. Stavrakis, Joan DeBardeleben, and Larry Black, eds., Beyond the Monolith: The Emergence of Regionalism in Post-Soviet Russia (Washington, D.C., 1997), 57-80.
23. Vladimir Gel'man, "Regime Transition, Uncertainty and Prospects for Democratization: The Politics of Russia's Regions in Comparative Perspective," Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 6 (1999): 941.
24. See Jeffrey W. Hahn, "Regional Elections and Political Stability in Russia," Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, no. 5 (May 1997): 262.
25. Treisman, After the Deluge, 115.
26. For discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, see Alex Inkeles, ed., On Measuring Democracy: Its Consequences and Concomitants (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991);
27. Kenneth Bollen, "Liberal Democracy: Validity and Method Factors in Cross-National Measures," American Journal of Political Science 37 (1993): 1207-30;
28. David Beetham, ed., Defining and Measuring Democracy (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1994);
29. Tatu Vanhanen, Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries (New York, 1997), 31-42.
30. See Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, 1971);
31. Vanhanen, Prospects of Democracy.
32. G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions (New Haven, 2000), 4.
33. On the minimalist prediction, see Reisinger, "The 1999-2000 Elections and Russia's Prospects for Democracy."
34. See also Adam Przeworski, "Minimalist Conception of Democracy: A Defense," in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon, eds., Democracy's Value (New York, 1999), 23-55.
35. Freedom House, Annual Survey of Freedom Country Ratings, 1972-73 to 1999-00 (New York, 2000).
36. An empirical study of global democratization using Freedom House scores can be found in Ross E. Burkhart and Michael S. Lewis-Beck, "Comparative Democracy: The Economic Development Thesis," American Political Science Review 88 (December 1994): 903-10.
37. On the importance of executive turnover, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, 1991).
38. See Guiscppe di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley, 1990).
39. Solnick, "Gubernatorial Elections in Russia, 1996-1997," esp. 72-73.
40. Hahn, "Regional Elections and Political Stability in Russia."
41. In the democratization literature, scholars are careful to specify that a change inthe person holding the key office constitutes a "turnover" only when the new occupant represents a different political party or other political grouping. In our data, we cannot distinguish instances when the replacement of an incumbent fails to constitute a turnover. Parties only weakly structure Russia's gubernatorial elections. Yet in most of the instances when a sitting governor has been turned out, he has run in the election against a rival representing a different political grouping and lost.
42. See, for example, Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 2d ed. (New York, 1996), 194.
43. The clearest expression of this can be found in Alfred Stepan, "Russian Fedcralism in Comparative Perspective," Post-Soviet Affairs 16, no. 2 (2000): 133-76.
44. For evidence of this relationship in post-Soviet Russia, see James L. Gibson, "Social Networks, Civil Society, and the Prospects for Consolidating Russia's Democratic Transition," American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 1 (2001): 51-68;
45. William L. Miller, Stephen White, and Paul Heywood, Values and Political Change in Postcommunist Europe (New York, 1998);
46. William M. Reisinger et al., "Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania: Sources and Implications for Democracy," British Journal of Political Science 24, no. 2 (April 1994): 199-245.
47. On the other side of the urbanization coin, evidence from elsewhere suggests that more rural regions have higher electoral turnout, because of elite mobilizing efforts, and that higher turnout can translate into greater support for the governor's preferred candidate. See Ann Schulz, Local Politics and Nation-Slates: Case Studies in Politics and Policy (Santa Barbara, 1979).
48. Myagkov finds this occurring in Russia in 1999: Mikhail Myagkov, "The Duma Elections: A Step toward Democracy or the Elites' Game?" in Hesli and Reisinger, eds., The 1999-2000Elections in Russia.
49. See Seymour Martin Lipset, "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy," American Political Science Revieiu 53 (1959): 69-105;
50. Alex Inkeles and David H. Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries (Cambridge, Mass., 1974);
51. Edward N. Mullcr, "Democracy, Economic Development and Income Inequality," American Sociological Revieiu 53 (1988): 50-68;
52. Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, "Comparative Democracy."
53. This "individualist fallacy" is discussed in Erwin K. Scheuch, "Social Context and Individual Behavior," in Mattei Dogan and Stein Rokkan, eds., Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 133-55;
54. Michael T. Hannan, Aggregation and Disaggregation in the Social Sciences, rev. ed. (Lexington, 1991).
55. For a comprehensive analysis of Russia's national elections up to 1996, see Stephen White, Richard Rose, and Ian McAllister, How Russia Voles (Chatham, 1997). For a more recent analysis of the Russian electorate
56. See Timothy J. Colton, Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them in the New Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 2000).
57. Examples include Russell Bova, "Democracy and Liberty: The Cultural Connection,"Journal of Democracy 8, no. 1 (1997): 112-26;
58. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1996).
59. See Susan Goodrich Lehmann, "Islam and Ethnicity in the Republics of Russia,"Post-Soviet Affairs 13 (1997): 78-103;
60. Gail W. Lapidus, "Asymmetrical Federalism and State Breakdown in Russia," Post-Soviet Affairs 15 (1999): 74-82;
61. Pål Kolstø, Political Construction Sites: Nation-Building in Russia and the Post-Soviet States (Boulder, Colo., 2000).
62. Stepan, "Russian Federalism in Comparative Perspective."
63. Robert G. Moser, "Independents and Party Formation: Elite Partisanship as an Intervening Variable in Russian Politics," Comparative Politics 31, no. 2 (1999): 147-65;
64. Natal'ia B. Iargomskaia, "Izbiratel'naia sistema i uroven' partiinoi fragmentatsii v Rossii," POL1S: Politicheskie issledovaniia (1999): 122-29;
65. Rose, "How Floating Parties Frustrate Democratic Accountability";
66. O. Iu. Malinova, "Partiinye ideologii v Rossii: Atribut ili antu-razh?" POLIS: Politicheskie issledovaniia (2001): 75-96;
67. Darrell Slider, "Russia's Governors and Party Formation," in Brown, ed., Contemporary Russian Politics, 224-34;
68. Stephen Hanson, "Instrumental Democracy: The End of Ideology and the Decline of Russian Political Parties,"
69. M. Stephen Fish, "The Impact of the Elections on Political Part' Development," both in Hesli and Reisinger, eds., The 1999-2000 Elections in Russia.
70. For evidence on this point, see Grigorii V. Golosov, "From Adygeya to Yaroslavl: Factors of Party Development in the Regions of Russia, 1995-1998," Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 8 (1999): 1333-65.
71. Empirical support for the fragility of new democratic governments is presented in Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, "Modernization: Theories and Facts," World Politics 49 (1997): 155-83.
72. On the link between quality of life and voting behavior, see Treisman, After the Deluge, 92.
73. We are not, of course, sampling regions from a larger universe but looking at all the regions in our universe. Hence we do not need to rely on statistical significance in the way one does when working with samples. We draw primary attention to the beta coefficients, which provide a way to understand how changes in an explanatory variable are associated with changes in the dependent variable. Nonetheless, the statistical significance level of the coefficients is reported as another way of assessing impact.
74. Moreover, additional regression analyses failed to suggest that the lack of significance for the regional income level and the social structure scale stemmed from collinear-ity between the two variables. In neither case did the removal of one from the model allow the other to become significant nor did the removal of either variable increase the overall amount of variance explained by the model.
75. McFaul and Petrov, eds., Political Almanac of Russia, 1989-1997, 1:322-24.
76. For an argument that this trend is well underway, see Stephen F. Cohen, "Russian Studies without Russia," Post-Soviet Affairs 15 (1999): 37-55.
77. Derek W. Urwin, "Germany: From Geographical Expression to Regional Accommodation," in Stein Rokkan and Derek W. Urwin, eds., The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1982), 165-249.
78. Subatra K. Mitra, Power, Protest and Participation: Local Elites and the Politics of Development in India (New York, 1992).