Russia : Nationalization Achieved Through Electoral and Institutional Engineering

In this chapter - one amongst 10 countries studied in the book - we analyze the nationalization of electoral behaviour in Russia, systematically studying 204 elections for the lower chamber of regional (sub”ekty) parliaments held between 7 December 2003 and 13 September 2015. In the Russian context, nationalization has occurred mainly because of the increasing vote shares won by the United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) party. Despite an overall trend of nationalization, however, we find significant traces of regionalization of the vote. In other words, the depth and speed of nationalization have been unequal across the territory. In particular, we find that nationalization has been particularly pronounced in ethnic and more populous regions. Furthermore, we find that electoral institutional engineering has facilitated nationalization