Making Managed Democracy Great (Again)
The Role of Parliamentary Elections
Russian elections for the Duma—the parliament—are crucial for the state’s authority. Managed well, they foster an illusion of political solidarity and support for the state’s policies. Managed poorly, they weaken the state’s hold over the political institutions, organizations, and personalities that make up Russia’s governing structures. This so-called “power vertical” cannot function freely without the appearance of legitimacy, creating pressure for reforms that threaten the maze of graft, rent-seeking, and private-public power structures that decides political matters in Russia. Sunday’s parliamentary elections results reasserted the Kremlin’s dominance as United Russia—the Kremlin’s party—won 76% of the seats in the Duma with the “loyal opposition” winning the remainder. After the last elections, president Putin and his circle needed to centralize official political power, legitimize the regime, and strengthen United Russia at the expense of the opposition. The victory showcased the Kremlin’s new strategy to maintain its grip on power.
The Regime’s Wakeup Call
In December of 2011, disillusionment with Russia’s Duma elections erupted into mass-mobilized protests. United Russia only managed 49.3% of the vote with widespread rigging of ballot boxes, busing voters to multiple polling stations, and other controls over candidates, parties, and speech. The results came as a shock. Riding high oil prices and a strong economy, United Russia carried almost 65% of the vote in the 2007 along with 315 of 450 seats in the Duma. A supermajority in hand, Putin had ostensibly neutralized dissent in the political sphere. But empty promises of political, civil, and economic reform during Medvedev’s tenure and Putin’s controversial return to the presidency angered tens of thousands who took to the streets in Moscow and elsewhere to demand fair elections. The regime’s public power base had shrunk. Though Putin won his presidential election campaign four months later with nearly two-thirds of the vote, opposition became a real threat.
Russia’s Electoral Divide and Rule
The Kremlin faced contradictory imperatives after 2011: recentralizing authority in the hands of United Russia and implementing reforms to improve the transparency and fairness of elections for voters and smaller parties. The result was an ad hoc mix of policy changes that created a façade of liberalization.
In 2013, the Duma elections were changed from a system based on allocation by plurality of votes received a given party to a mixed-system where half of the seats would be awarded to candidates who won a majority of votes in a single-seat district. Local elections have been readjusted so that up to 75% of seats may be apportioned by the single-seat model and Moscow and St. Petersburg may apportion 100% of their local parliaments as such. Direct elections of regional governors were reinstituted, creating another localized channel for voter participation. Further, registration procedures were eased for small opposition parties and now, parties win seats in the Duma with 5% of the national vote instead of 7%.
Opening up access has simply served the Kremlin and United Russia’s interests. There are only four parties in the Duma—United Russia, A Just Russia, The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and the Liberal Democratic Party—all of which are explicitly or functionally pro-Kremlin. There are over seventy parties of varying political stripes vying for opposition votes. If they don’t unify in single-seat districts, they remain irrelevant. According to the New York Times, “no [opposition] party presented a strong economic program to counter the current recession . . . so in the end, those who voted chose the status quo.”[1] Greater access exists to divide votes and neuter parties from attaining real support.
United Russia won more seats than ever by moving elections from December to September and lowering turnout to a record 48.7%, further undercutting the divided block of opposition voters. Even if parties developed coherent platforms, they lack access to media outlets or public spaces. Andrey Pivovarov, leader of the opposition PARNAS party, explained at a CSIS event this Monday that “different political parties have different starting positions and, for example, PARNAS couldn’t get permission for any public events or meetings with constituents.” Candidates for regional governorships have to collect a certain percentage of signatures from municipal deputies to qualify for the ballot, a process controlled by local authorities. Though the Kremlin has given up some direct control, legal and administrative methods fix results. “Liberalization” has centralized power while providing false legal legitimacy to the electoral process.
Silencing Critics
In 2012, the Duma passed laws forcing NGOs to register as “foreign agents” and all foreign funding and discretionary state grants were cut off from any organization not deemed “regime friendly.” Restrictions on the Internet, public demonstrations, libel, and even laws defining treason have been tightened alongside moves to break up the infrastructure of a democratic civil society. Just as the regime gave greater access to new parties, it silenced grassroots support from non-governmental organizations to funnel all political speech and action towards state-controlled outlets, whether it be the media or public events requiring permits.
The first week of September, the polling organization the Levada Center was declared a “foreign agent,” likely because of poll results showing United Russia’s support at 31%. Seen as the last independent pollster in Russia, the move will effectively choke off the Russian public and west from independent political polling data. Writes Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute, the regime “has enveloped this election in a tightly sealed cocoon of the monopolistic propaganda din . . . that Levada has challenged mightily.”[2] In the past, such organizations conveyed quasi-legitimacy. Now discourse is largely state-controlled, hiding the extent to which results are fixed by various barriers to entry or the process of choosing candidates.
A Cause for Hope?
This election, legitimacy was manufactured by the promise of transparency and competition. Ella Pamfilova—a respected leader on human rights in Russia—was picked to replace the now-disgraced Vladimir Churov as head of the Election Commission. Promising to fight ballot-stuffing and other forms of corruption, Pamfilova was a fig leaf to those who wanted transparency and a symbol of the regime’s rejection of its 2011 practices. The OSCE monitors observing polling stations without restrictions found that elections, while marred by unfair administrative practices and legal norms, were largely clean and that the Election Commission responded to reports of irregularities. However, the State controls over half the economy and most local authorities, giving it broad reach to influence citizens before they vote. Administrative authoritarianism is replacing blatant corruption, evidenced by the decision to waive the results in 6 districts due to fraud.
Still, the promise of transparency may well increase the demand for fair elections in time. Writes Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, “the Kremlin’s window-dressing has provided a small opening for a new generation of opposition activists . . . to appeal directly to Russian citizens and present them with a democratic European alternative.”[3] The leading democratic opposition parties Yabloko and PARNAS only received 2% and 1% of the vote respectively but the Kremlin itself has sought to promote younger political figures into United Russia through campaigns and debates in primaries. If such political culture normalizes and democratic expectations rise, the regime may find mixed reforms threaten its stability. A severe counter-reaction would turn apathy to anger, something the regime can ill afford with the recession. But the new system of controls has effectively silenced the opposition for the foreseeable future.