The Regional Roots of Russia's Political Regime

Coordinating the machine: subnational political context and the effectiveness of machine politics

“…For example, in Argentina, effective brokers are rewarded by electoral assistance, and in Russia, municipal leaders can be promoted on the basis of electoral performance in 'their' localities (Kynev et al 2012;Szwarcberg 2012a, b). Officials higher up in the government hierarchy, such as subnational governors, can also be monitored for their ability to deliver votes for the regime (for evidence from Russia, see Reuter and Robertson 2012;Reisinger and Moraski 2017). Thus, political leaders in various contexts seem to be keenly aware of the agency problems in machine politics and seek to mitigate these by actively monitoring the ability of lower level agents to deliver votes for the machine.…”

“…The process of the Kremlin gaining the upper hand over the regional elites culminated in the removal of the gubernatorial elections after the Beslan hostage crisis in 2003 (although the governors also obtained some smaller concessions from the centre in return, see Reuter 2017). Several studies have shown that the Russian regional governors are held accountable for their success in mobilizing votes for the Kremlin in federal elections (Reuter and Robertson 2012;Reisinger and Moraski 2017). Regional governors on their turn are known to delegate voter mobilization to powerful local 'meso-elites', such as mayors or powerful 'rayon' ('county') heads, who control 'sub-pyramids' of local brokers (Matzusato 2001a, b;Buzin et al 2012;Sharafutdinova 2013).…”

“…Post-Soviet machine politics is thus conducted via a multi-layered 'pyramid' with complex chains of delegation. Yet, the effectiveness of machine politics has varied markedly between and within the subnational regions in Russia (Hale 2003;Reisinger and Moraski 2017). What accounts for this variation in the subnational machines' ability to 'deliver' votes?…”

The Role of Core Enterprises in the Establishment of the City Manager (Based on Single-Industry Towns in the Sverdlovsk Region)

“…Особый интерес для нас имеют труды Т. Витковской (Витковская и Рябова, 2011), О. Рябовой (Рябова, 2008), Д. Тева (Тев, 2012), А. Фадеевой (Фадеева, 2011), А. Чириковой (Чирикова и др., 2014). Вопросы влияния региональных политических режимов на локальные политические институты, процессы и отношения исследовали А. Либман и В. Рейзингер (Reisinger and Moraski, 2017). Муниципальной политике и реформам в России посвящены работы К. Росса (Ross, 2006;2009a;2009b) и Л. Вейги (Veiga et al, 2007).…”

Russia’s centralized authoritarianism in the disguise of democratic federalism: Evidence from the September 2017 sub-national elections

“…Indeed, the available literature on voting in Russia identifies many factors of electoral performance. In particular, there is a large body of literature that uses different operational definitions of elite political control at the regional level as key explanatory variables (Gel'man and Ross, 2010;Golosov, 2011b;Reisinger and Moraski, 2017;Reuter, 2013). As established in this literature, these effects are not independent in themselves but rather, they are strongly conditioned by the socio-economic and ethnic composition of the regional population (Bader and Van Ham, 2015;Panov and Ross, 2013;White 2015), which makes it possible and sometimes desirable to include the respective control variables into statistical analysis.…”