Russia: nationalization achieved through electoral and institutional engineering

Scholars have observed the gradual encroachment and eventual domination of russian regional elections by the kremlin’s ‘party of power’, edinaya rossiya (united russia). This raises the question of what accounts for the excessive nationalization of the russian vote? in this chapter we analyze this phenomenon systematically by studying elections for regional (sub”ekty) parliaments held between 2003 and 2015. We find strong evidence that electoral institutional engineering has strongly facilitated nationalization. However, despite an overall trend of nationalization, we also find significant traces of a regionalization of the vote. The depth and speed of nationalization have been unequal across the territory, but we find that nationalization has been particularly pronounced in ethnic regions―a finding that runs counter to international trends.keywordsvote shareelection cycleopposition partiregional electionfederal electionthese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves