Explaining Electoral Competition across Russia's Regions

Russia can only be considered an electoral democracy to the extent that its constituent parts also fit this classification. In this article, Bryon J. Moraski and William M. Reisinger assess how well competing theories drawn from the literature on democratization explain the variation across Russia&#...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Slavic review 2003-07, Vol.62 (2), p.278-301
Main Authors: Moraski, Bryon J., Reisinger, William M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative politics
Competition
Democracy
Democratization
Discussion
Economic competition
Elections
Governors
Incumbents
Political candidates
Political development
Political elections
Political parties
Politics
Regional politics
Regions
Russian Federation
Russian language
Russian politics
Social structure
Social structures
Statistical significance
Trends
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Russia can only be considered an electoral democracy to the extent that its constituent parts also fit this classification. In this article, Bryon J. Moraski and William M. Reisinger assess how well competing theories drawn from the literature on democratization explain the variation across Russia's regions in their progress toward competitive electoral politics. Their analysis reveals that distinctions among the regions in their social structure, arising from developments in the decades before 1991, help explain political competition in a manner unanticipated not only by existing literature on democratization but also by existing studies of Russian democracy at the national and individual levels. Moreover, they find that the divergent experiences of the regions during the 1990s—in their economies and levels of crime, for example—and variations in party development also help us discern which regions have moved furthest along the path toward electoral democracy.
ISSN:0037-6779
2325-7784
DOI:10.2307/3185578