Soviet Elections Revisited: Voter Abstention in Noncompetitive Voting

Карклинс, Расма

doi:10.2307/1958268

Cited by 61 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The model developed in Shi's study, as Shi admits (1999a, 1134, resembles the models for competitive elections that predict positive correlations between voting, on the one hand, and such subjective orientations as political efficacy and the desire to penalize corrupt or unpopular officials on the other (e.g., Dalton 1988;Lukes 1974;Verba and Nie 1972). But our model is quite similar to those designed for noncompetitive elections in the former Soviet Union, predicting, for example, that those who are critical of the current regime tend to abstain from elections (e.g., Bahry and Silver 1990;Karklins 1986). This significant difference no doubt calls for more comprehensive reexamination of the issues against new empirical evidence from China.…”

Section: Multivariate Analysismentioning

confidence: 64%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China?

Chen¹,

Zhong²

2002

The Journal of Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of the post-Mao electoral reforms was semicompetitive elections, including those for local people's congresses. A better understanding of voters' subjective motivations in these elections is critical for explaining and predicting the significant effects of the elections on sociopolitical development in rapidly changing Chinese society. Using survey data collected in Beijing, China, in 1995, we reexamine arguments and findings about voters' subjective motivations reported by Shi (1999a). Contrary to Shi's arguments and findings, we find that people with stronger democratic orientation and a keener sense of internal efficacy are less likely to vote in these semicompetitive elections, while those who are identified with the regime and have affective attachments to the political authority are more likely to vote in the elections. In this article, we present the differences between our arguments and findings and Shi's. Then we draw some important political and theoretical implications from these differences.In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Deng Xiaoping amended the electoral law for the election of people's congresses-Chinese "legislatures"-at various levels. Specifically, the new law introduced direct elections for local people's congresses. 1 According to this law, in theory voters could nominate candidates and have a choice among multiple candidates for each contested seat. Under the new law, these local elections have certainly become more competitive and transparent than those in the Mao era, but they are by no means fully competitive and democratic by any standard. These elections are still dominated and controlled by the CCP, which firmly upholds the one-party rule and allows only one official ideology (see e.g.

show abstract

Section: Multivariate Analysismentioning

confidence: 64%

“…Upon request, full information on the bivariate relationships is available from the authors. 20 Some early studies (e.g.,Bahry and Silver 1990;Karklins 1986) of political participation in the former Soviet Union also suggest that nonvoting seems to be a form of protest.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China?

Chen¹,

Zhong²

2002

The Journal of Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Zaslavsky and Brym 1978;karklins 1986;Magaloni 2006;gandhi and Przeworski 2007;Wright 2008;cox 2009;Blaydes 2011;Fearon 2011;Malesky and schuler 2011;cheibub and Hays 2015;little 2012;Wig and rød 2016;Miller 2015a. 26 Przeworski find that autocracies that "institutionalize sufficiently" (that is, have the predicted number of parties given opposition strength) are more durable.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autocratic Elections

Knutsen¹,

Nygård²,

Wig³

2016

World Pol.

111

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Do elections reduce or increase the risk of autocratic regime breakdown? This article addresses this contested question by distinguishing between election events and the institution of elections. The authors propose that elections stabilize autocracies in the long term but at the price of short-term instability. Elections are conducive to regime survival in the long run because they improve capacities for co-optation and repression but produce short-term instability because they serve as focal points for regime opposition. Drawing on data from 259 autocracies from 1946 to 2008, the authors show that elections increase the short-term probability of regime failure. The estimated effect is retained when accounting for the endogeneity of autocratic elections; this finding is critical, since some autocrats may or may not hold elections because of perceived effects on regime survival. The authors also find that this destabilizing effect does not operate in the long term. They find some, although not as strong, evidence that elections stabilize autocratic regimes in the medium to long term, despite their destabilizing immediate effects. These temporal effect patterns are present for both executive and legislative elections, and they are robust to using different measures, control variable strategies, and estimation techniques. In line with expectations, both effect patterns are much clearer for multiparty autocratic elections than for completely uncontested elections.

show abstract

“…Members of the public were often unaware of the name of the deputy they had returned to the local Soviet, and few of them (just 10-14 per cent, in a poll in Sverdlovsk) could identify the questions with which their local Soviet had been concerned over the previous two years. 8 Most alarmingly of all, from the point of view of the authorities, this low level of support was tending to fall still further, with an increase in non-voting especially among the better educated and urbanized, 9 and falling levels of attendance at meetings called to hear the reports of local Soviet executive committees and their departments. 10 Among criticisms of the existing electoral system the crude imposition of central norms has been one of those most frequently identified.…”

Section: Reforming the Electoral Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming the electoral system

White

1988

Journal of Communist Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Soviet Elections Revisited: Voter Abstention in Noncompetitive Voting

Cited by 61 publications

References 18 publications

Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China?

Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China?

Autocratic Elections

Reforming the electoral system

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About