A useful ritual: Why authoritarian regimes still need elections — and why Russia’s model is weakening

Research shows that while elections can pose short-term risks to authoritarian governments, allowing opposition forces to mobilize supporters and coordinate protests, over the longer term, elections tend to strengthen such regimes. In both democracies and autocracies, elections perform several important functions beyond simply deciding who takes office.

Co-opting elites

Elections determine who gets access to political office. In an autocracy, the regime controls the limits of acceptable choice and can use elections to bring people with their own independent resources into the system. A businessperson, regional politician or other influential figure receives an office and the benefits that come with it, but at the same time becomes integrated into institutions controlled by the state.

Elections can similarly co-opt part of the opposition. A potential rival is offered limited political influence within the system in exchange for giving up efforts to overthrow it.

In Russia, for example, businesspeople are more likely to enter politics in poorer regions and in places where parties spend less money building their own networks. That allows businesses to protect their lobbying investments and increase profits, while parties gain access to private resources in parts of the country where their own organizations are weak.

Researchers note that business-linked candidates are less likely to run in wealthy regions, less likely to compete simultaneously in both single-member districts and party lists — which would insure them against defeat — and less likely to receive paid political positions. Most importantly, they are less likely to run again after serving one term, even though incumbents usually have an advantage when it comes to reelection.

Gathering information

Election campaigns reveal which candidates can independently mobilize voters, which groups possess their own political resources and which issues attract public attention. For an autocrat, information about potential rivals is particularly valuable. An unexpectedly strong result by a candidate or party can reveal that they have a larger political network than authorities had assumed.

Past campaigns have helped Russian authorities identify where opposition groups are strongest and then target activists and prominent lawmakers in those areas. For example, the government may bar popular Communist Party lawmakers such as Nikolai Bondarenko from running or refuse to register lists of Yabloko’s candidates precisely in those places where the party has a realistic chance of winning seats.

Managing conflicts inside the political system and rotating elites

Political coalitions are constantly changing. Some groups become stronger, others lose influence. Governors are replaced along with the patronage networks surrounding them, and new categories of potentially loyal personnel emerge.

Election cycles allow these shifts to be translated into formal changes in representation without abandoning the rules through which offices are distributed. Russian political scientist Grigory Golosov, studying three electoral cycles between 2003 and 2014, showed that changes in regional governors were usually accompanied by unusually high turnover among regional lawmakers.

The same pattern was visible in the current campaign. Many lawmakers who did not seek reelection were either associated with governors who had left office, had fallen into conflict with sitting governors, or were tied to politicians and organizations that had lost influence (such as followers of the late nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky or some of the remaining figures associated with the All-Russia People’s Front, a Kremlin-created political coalition).

Legitimacy

Authoritarian regimes use the fact that voting takes place — and the officially declared support of a majority — to portray themselves as expressions of the popular will. The electoral process preserves the appearance of a public mandate, while high turnout and electoral victories allow regimes to demonstrate to loyal elites, society, and outside observers that they still command support.

Eliminating elections entirely can be risky for authoritarian governments. Studies show that democracies are considerably more stable and less likely to descend into civil war than multiparty autocracies. Multiparty autocracies, in turn, are somewhat more stable than one-party regimes that hold elections without genuine competition. The difference between those two authoritarian models is relatively small: when dominant-party autocracies become one-party states, intraparty competition often survives and replaces competition between parties meaning that even if United Russia were to ban every other party, internal primaries would still ensure some minimal form of political competition. Still, the bigger picture shows that such a regime would be less stable than Russia’s current multiparty authoritarian system.

A striking Russian example is the abolition of direct mayoral elections. Researchers analyzed more than 400,000 responses to Russian public-opinion surveys over the past 25 years and found that abolishing mayoral elections had reduced support for Vladimir Putin. The effect was strongest in places where elections had previously been more competitive. Citizens who had experienced a genuine choice reacted more strongly when that choice was taken away.