Russias Authoritarian Elections
Russia is the worlds largest country, and its politics affect the entire international community. Formally, who exercises the power of government is decided, as in Western democracies, by competitive elections that are held at regular intervals. But there have increasingly been doubts about the extent to which Russian parliamentary and presidential elections can be considered free and fair, and it is the argument of this co-authored study that they are better defined as authoritarian elections, with a number of distinct characteristics.
Using a wide range of sources, including surveys, election statistics, interviews, focus groups and the printed press, the contributors to this important collection analyse Russias authoritarian elections in a variety of ways: how they are conducted, what citizens think about them, and how the Russian experience relates to a wider international context. Elections are the central mechanism by which citizens can seek to hold their government to account; this collection shows the ways in which that mechanism can be manipulated from above such it becomes more of an extension of central authority than a means by which the public at large can impose their own priorities.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.
Stephen White is the James Bryce Professor of Politics and a Senior Research Associate of the Universitys School of Central and East European Studies. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in History and Political Science, and then completed a PhD in Soviet Studies at Glasgow including an exchange year at Moscow State University and a DPhil in Politics at Wolfson College Oxford. He is the chief editor of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, and was for some time also the editor of International Politics.
Routledge Europe-Asia Studies Series
A series edited by Terry Cox, University of Glasgow
The Routledge Europe-Asia Studies Series focuses on the history and current political, social and economic affairs of the countries of the former communist bloc of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Asia. As well as providing contemporary analyses it explores the economic, political and social transformation of these countries and the changing character of their relationships with the rest of Europe and Asia.
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Russias Authoritarian Elections
Stephen White et al.
Russias Authoritarian Elections
Stephen White
With
Sarah Birch, Valentina Feklyunina, Grigorii V. Golosov, Derek S. Hutcheson, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, Evgeniya Lukinova, Ian McAllister, Mikhail Myagkov, Peter C. Ordeshook and Cameron Ross
First published 2012
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2012 University of Glasgow
This book is a reproduction of Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 63, issue 4. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.
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ISBN13: 978-0-415-69671-5
Disclaimer
The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book are referred to as articles as they had been in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.
SARAH BIRCH is a Reader in Politics at the University of Essex. She specialises in the study of electoral and other forms of corruption. Her latest book, The Plundered Vote: Electoral Malpractice in Comparative Perspective, is due to be published by Oxford University Press in early 2012.
VALENTINA FEKLYUNINA is a Lecturer in Politics in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. Her most recent publications include Belarus, Ukraine and Russia: East or West?, co-authored with Stephen White and ian McAllister and published in the British Journal of Political and International Relations (2010), and Image and Reality: Russias Relations with the West, forthcoming in M. R. Freire and R. Kanet (eds), Russia and European Security (Palgrave Macmillan). She is currently working, with Stephen White, on national identities and foreign policy perceptions in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
GRIGORII V. GOLOSOV is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Sciences and Sociology of the European University at St Petersburg and Project Director at the Center in Support of Democracy and Human Rights Helix. He is author of Political Parties in the Regions of Russia: Democracy Unclaimed (Lynne Rienner, 2004) and several other books, and he has published extensively on Russian politics, political parties and elections, including articles in Comparative Political Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Government and Opposition, International Political Science Review, Party Politics, Political Studies and other journals.
DEREK S. HUTCHESON is Lecturer in Comparative Politics and Head of Subject in European Studies in the University College Dublin School of Politics and international Relations. His research focuses on various topics. He is the author of Political Parties in the Russian Regions (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) and The Quality of Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (ed., with Elena Korosteleva, Routledge, 2006) as well as several articles on aspects of electoral and comparative politics, particularly in the post-Soviet sphere, and on the quality of democracy and democratic accountability.
OLGA KRYSHTANOVSKAYA is head of the Department of Elite Studies at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and director of the Institute for Applied Politics. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Glasgow. Her most recent book is
