: Failure of paternalism

The failure of a pro -government candidate in the elections of the mayor of Yaroslavl became the result of several factors at once. The main one is simple: the citizens did not want the mayor imposed by him. “Voting with your feet” is largely akin to adolescent protest, but it also resembles the beginning of the end of the paternalistic relations of the state and citizens.

When voters “vote with their feet”, few can seriously affect their protest will. Political technology, administrative resource and other tricks of the electoral process are grazed. If voters for some reason decided that they did not believe the candidate from the authorities, he actually has no chance.

The proof of this was the next time the election of the mayor of Yaroslavl. The candidate from the authorities Yakov Yakushev did not even gain 30 percent of the vote in the second round of the election of the mayor of the city. Alternative candidate Yevgeny Urlashov broke away from him by 40 percent and this can be called a triumph.

This is generally an ordinary case for the mayor’s election. In the 2000s, the authorities have done a lot so that the process of folk experts would turn into a formality. The elections of governors were simply canceled, and instead of elected mayors, the positions of city managers appointed by city parliaments were everywhere introduced. And yet, where the election of the mayor has been preserved, each time the authorities have to experience fate in a difficult election race.

The failures of the authorities in this matter do not happen very often-after all, both the administrative resource, and the media support and the authority of the governor usually play on the side of the candidate from the authorities, and this means a lot. However, over the past five years, the authorities have lost a dozen mayor's elections. In March 2010, a pro -government candidate failed in the elections in Irkutsk, a little later there was a similar failure in Bratsk. Only by cunning manipulations of the authorities managed to keep Arkhangelsk in 2008. In 2011, the candidate from United Russia lost the elections in Pervouralsk of the Sverdlovsk region. And so on.

Undoubtedly, in all of the listed and not listed cases, representatives of the authorities came across a strong enemy - professional political technologists worked on alternative candidates, they had a good financial resource. And in the case of the struggle of resources, not only their competition becomes an important factor, but also the perception of the population of real or imaginary successes and failures of the authorities. He managed to reject the population with something-the transportation of pensioners and state employees to sites, the distribution of grocery sets and threats to teachers may not help.

In the case of the Yaroslavl elections, it was difficult to go to these innocent pranks.

From the capital to the city to the second round of elections, the whole landing of observers from several organizations arrived from the Voice Association to the Communist Party of the Communist Party (on the fan slang: “Observers issued a near exit”). In fact, observers with a margin blocked all city sites, which made the process of direct falsifications, if not impossible, then extremely difficult. The "angry townspeople" took an obvious revenge for the December humiliation. Mikhail Prokhorov also scored certain political glasses, which last year promised to support the opposition where it would be possible.

The attention of the federal media was great to the elections. Almost every Moscow edition sent a correspondent to the nearby regional center. The proximity factor to the capital in this sense played a negative role for the regional authorities who put on Yakushev.

However, to see in the Yaroslavl case only the “export of the snow revolution” would be extremely naive.

Like "Awakening of Russia from sleep after Putin's stagnation." These are also important things, but the main reason for the failure of the authorities in Yaroslavl is simple: the population is tired of the authorities and it decided to change this power. For this, it seems. And the democratic procedures such as elections are invented?
However, the Yaroslavl case, coupled with other failures in the regional elections, is a serious challenge for the federal center. Since it proves: the population periodically takes out the figure deeply hidden from the pocket and demonstrates it to the authorities.

If the mayor’s election is usually relatively easy to replay - by establishing a criminal case to the winner, a recount of votes or simply by the conclusion of an informal contract with a new mayor, then with the upcoming governor's elections the situation may not be so simple. Under the governor’s elections, interested parties will tighten a much larger resource and simply assign a victory, if and when citizens vote again, it will not be so simple.

Perhaps the promised “presidential filter” will help to remove the contradictions that are already completely unpleasant for the federal authorities (like passing a deliberately unpleasant candidate), but there will be no doubt excesses in the form of failures of power candidates. In Yaroslavl, citizens have already proved that they want to elect power. And if there is no worthy candidate, then they can vote for anyone, if only not for what they are imposed on top. You can call such a position the infantile (“spite of my mother’s ears”): Vladimir Putin justed the abolition of the governor's elections. He said, they say, they chose the comedian Evdokimov, what kind of elections are these clown.

However, this infantilism - actually for rallies in the capital - is already seen quite a puberty protest.

This is no longer a casual “spite of mom”, but a complete rejection of the non -limit recognition of authority of power. It may turn out that we are really witnesses to the end of the era of the paternalist state in Russia.