Electoral Certainty and Policy Uncertainty in Authoritarian Regimes: Russia as a Case Study

Under the guidance of Professor Rivera, I attempted to study two hypotheses using the data on perceptions of Russian elites. The two hypotheses respectively question the influence of (1) Russian elites on electoral uncertainty and (2) Russian elites on policy uncertainty. First, I explored the established relationship between authoritarianism and uncertainty, especially from a comparative perspective with case-studies from authoritarian countries around the world. Second, I investigated the case of both electoral and policy (un)certainty in Russia to explain why it is reasonable to use Russia as an empirical case to test the hypotheses. Followed by the literature review section, I will present the data analysis on uncertainty in electoral and policy outcomes, especially by looking at predictive perceptions rather than past results (i.e., perceptions of political succession and stability in the future). The conclusion will demonstrate whether the data confirms my hypotheses and how my study contributes to the current literature resources on this topic