Ethnic voting in Russia: source of regime resilience or fragility?

Garifullina G.

Abstract

Book review: Stanislav Shkel, Bound by a single net. Elections, the Ethnic Factor and Patronal Politics in the Russian Regions.

---

Why ethnic voting?

Any work on Russian elections is met with an unavoidable question: why focus on what is probably a decorative institution? Amid evidence of widespread electoral manipulations [3; 9; 11] – how meaningful is the analysis of electoral politics in Russia? Stanislav Shkel in his new book [10] parries with an argument: elections are still around because they do play a fundamental purpose in an electoral authoritarian regime [4] – and it is therefore our responsibility to understand how they function and which specific points of regime resilience and fragility they reveal.

The book addresses the gap in our understanding of voting in Russia: ethnic regions are often identified as “special” cases with unusually high voter mobilization, and one of the bastions of the regime’s public support and therefore stability – but the mechanisms of such mobilization are only assumed, and not empirically demonstrated. Shkel’s core argument is that voter mobilization in the ethnic regions in Russia relies on the structure and strategies of the regional elites – not cultural or religious factors. When regional elites are not consolidated and choose an unpopular public stance, voters can use the opening to switch to protest voting instead of continued loyalty.

Case selection and analytical strategy

The book relies on a series of case studies and a mixed-methods approach. Shkel starts with a series of expert interviews across relevant regions to formulate the initial expectations, follows up with the data collected in focus groups with average residents of these regions, and compliments this evidence with statistical analysis of voting and demographic parameters of the ethnic regions. While Russia has a total of 21 regions that are referred to as “ethnic republics”, Shkel selects specific cases for each step of the analysis, with only 5 regions featured overall across the book. Each time, specific cases are selected to create a homogenous sample and focus on a particular difference or feature across several cases. Importantly, the author does not claim the findings can be directly generalized to the wider population of cases either in Russia or beyond, focusing instead on tracing detailed causal mechanisms.

The use of rich qualitative evidence is a clear unique advantage of the book. Ethnic republics (From Chechnya to Mordovia) are often lumped together in analyses of Russian politics – Schkel demonstrates how inaccurate this generalization may be. Qualitative analysis is particularly good for pointing out equifinality – sometimes different sets of conditions lead to the same outcome. One might ask: if Bashkortostan and Mordovia both deliver high electoral mobilization to the federal center – why do we care that it's for different reasons? However, knowing all the potential configurations is important if we want to notice and predict changes in the outcome.

Structure of the book

Six chapters take the reader through the author’s argument. In Chapter 1, we are presented with the author’s analysis of a series of expert interviews that shed light on the underlying patterns and mechanisms of ethnic electoral mobilization. Chapter 2 uses the materials from focus groups to discuss the citizens’ perspectives on the phenomenon. After that, Chapter 3 formulates the author’s theory and main expectations to be tested in the subsequent analysis. The theory contains several elements or steps that are tested separately. The causal scheme applies only to the situations of a conflict around an ethnically salient issue. As the first step, the regional elites should choose to maintain loyalty to the federal center and take its side in the conflict (and not the side of the ethnic group). In addition to that, the regional leader should be a “lame duck” nearing the end of their term. This combination would lead to the breakdown of the local political machine and an increase in protest voting in formerly loyal regions.

Chapter 4 relies on comparative case studies and statistical analysis of the electoral outcomes in five regions: Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Komi, Chuvashia, and Yakutia. In that chapter, the author uses the Russian presidential election in 2012 and 2018 to see the effects of the language reforms on ethnic voter mobilization. This chapter tests two main elements of the causal mechanism: regional elite choice of strategy and the effect of the “lame duck” governor. Chapter 5 looks deeper at the public perception of cultural conflicts relevant to an ethnic group (specifically any infringements on the use of the native language) – and how the responsibility for these conflicts is attributed in a multi-level setting where both federal-level and regional-level authorities might be made responsible. That chapter relies on the focus group data from Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, and Komi.

Chapter 6 focuses on an additional question: what would contribute to the breakdown of local political machines? The author uses the case study of Bashkortostan to suggest that an outsider governor would bring uncertainty to the existing local elite networks and therefore undermine their mobilizing potential. Statistical analysis of voting changes in Bashkortostan, which had 8 years of such an “outsider”, demonstrates how this mechanism would work.

Takeaways and limitations

The book makes a convincing case for the importance of political – and elite-centered – explanations of ethnic voting, as opposed to cultural and religious arguments, by showing how electoral mobilization works (and breaks) similarly across the regions. The author incorporates the voices of the citizens to create a powerful illustration of electoral mobilization as experienced by the people. The findings contribute to the ongoing discussion on the mechanics of voter mobilization in Russia [6], and ethnic voting in particular [5; 12]. Shkel’s findings also suggest that there are indeed sources of fragility within the magnificent voting machine that is Russia – and even in the strongholds of electoral support, such as ethnic regions, a combination of external shocks and local elite dynamics can shift the equilibrium away from loyalty.

The main potential limitation relates to the general drawbacks of the selected framework and not the quality of the analysis. Given the evidence-driven and detailed approach, the theoretical argument requires stretching from time to time to accommodate the peculiarities of the studied cases. For example, while the last chapter incorporates the effect of “Varangians” or outsiders as governors [1; 7; 8] on ethnic voting in Russia, the contribution of this factor to the overall causal mechanism remains unclear. Specifically, Chapter 4 treats two other things – elite loyalty and the “lame duck” effect – as sufficient conditions for protest voting. Furthermore, the causal explanatory scheme includes multiple steps and bifurcations – so many, in fact, that observing the whole set of conditions required for protest voting in an ethnic republic might be difficult anywhere outside of the already identified cases. Those features of the theory make it hard to apply the causal hypotheses elsewhere, at least directly.

At the same time, the chosen empirical strategy is well-suited for the author’s goals: explore the cases with fine-grained data, find potential causal mechanisms behind the regularities and patterns we see in large-scale studies, and demonstrate the plausibility of these mechanisms on selected cases. More comparative studies would be needed to explore the size of the identified effects across ethnic regions and the generalizability of the proposed explanation beyond the five cases studied. Particularly, as one of the core elements of the empirical design included unpopular reforms regarding the status of the native language – what are some of the other policies or events that might provoke similar adjustments in voter mobilization, given the right circumstances? Furthermore, does the “rural mobilization by elites” work in non-ethnic regions in the same way, or are there particularities to social networks specifically among non-majority groups? Shkel’s contribution helps us ask those and other questions and deepens our understanding of local political processes in Russia.

More than that, the presented evidence provides useful insights to anyone interested in the wider regularities of Russian society. Many observers bemoan "social atomization" and lack of solidarity and collective action in Russia – but this book demonstrates how the state weaponizes some forms of solidarity (see also [2] for a connected argument). And that creates a much more nuanced interpretation of the social fabric of authoritarianism.

Received 04.10.2024

---

References

1. Buckley N., Frye T., Garifullina G., Reuter, O.J. The political economy of Russian gubernatorial election and appointment. – Europe-Asia Studies. 2014. No. 66 (8). P. 1213–1233.
2. Forrat N. The Social Roots of Authoritarianism. Oxford University Press, 2024.
3. Harvey C.J. Changes in the menu of manipulation: Electoral fraud, ballot stuffing, and voter pressure in the 2011 Russian election. – Electoral studies. 2016. V. 41. P. 105–117.
4. Levitsky S., Way, L.A. Competitive authoritarianism: Hybrid regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
5. Minaeva E., Panov P. Dense networks, ethnic minorities, and electoral mobilization in contemporary Russia. – Problems of post-communism. 2023. No. 70 (4). 376–387.
6. Panov P., Ross C. “Mobilized voting” versus “performance voting” in electoral autocracies: Territorial variations in the levels of support for the systemic opposition parties in Russian municipalities. – Regional & Federal Studies. 2023. V. 33. No. 3. P. 333–354.
7. Petrov N. Regional governors under the dual power of Medvedev and Putin. – Journal of communist studies and transition politics. 2010. V. 26. No. 2. P. 276–305.
8. Remington T.F., Yakovlev A.A., Ovchinnikova E., Chasovsky A. Career trajectories of regional officials: Russia and China before and after 2012. – Eurasian Geography and Economics. 2022. V. 63. No. 5. P. 599–624.
9. Rundlett A., Svolik M.W. Deliver the vote! Micromotives and macrobehavior in electoral fraud. – American Political Science Review. 2016. V. 110. No. 1. P. 180–197.
10. Shkel S. Skovannye odnoi setyu. Vybory, etnicheskii faktor i patronalnaya politika v regionakh Rossii [Bound by a single net. Elections, the Ethnic Factor and Patronal Politics in the Russian Regions]. Moscow: Novyi Khronograf, 2024. 224 p.
11. Szakonyi D. Candidate filtering: The strategic use of electoral manipulations in Russia. – British Journal of Political Science. 2022. V. 52. No. 2. P. 649–670.
12. White A.C., Saikkonen I.A.L. More than a name? Variation in electoral mobilisation of titular and non-titular ethnic minorities in Russian national elections. – Ethnopolitics. 2017. V. 16. No. 5. P. 450–470.