Transformation of electoral systems in Russian regions

Abstract

One of the features of the political environment of modern Russia is the absence of a real separation of powers. Over the past twenty years, the national government has completely subordinated the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. This goal was achieved through the construction of a vertical of power. As a result, the rights of the president and his administration increased, the regions submitted to the Kremlin, and the hegemony of the pro-presidential ruling party in the national and local parliaments was established. In the early 2000s, Russian regions were independent of the Kremlin; they controlled the regional budget, pursued their policies, and traded. To build a vertical of power for the national government, it was essential to repair local parliaments by introducing the party in power. For this, both violent and illegal methods were used, such as falsifying elections or eliminating political competitors, and more formal ones, for example, changing articles of the Constitution and laws of Russia. From 2003 to 2018, there were more than 200 changes to electoral rules in Russian regions, which ensured the victory of the ruling United Russia party. Since the regions differ from each other in social, political, and economic parameters, the changes in the conduct of elections and the reasons for these changes are different. In this paper, I attempted to identify the factors of the transformation of electoral systems in Russian regions. Using the theory of rational choice institutionalism as a theoretical framework and logistic regression as a research method, I found out that United Russia and the governors were the leading players who influenced the changes in electoral systems in the regions. It was also possible to find out how political actors influenced the transformation of the components of electoral systems, such as the size of the parliament, the electoral threshold, and the rules by which parliamentarians are elected.