Games with Leviathan

The elections have almost finally lost its meaning. Interest in them is saved approximately like leaps: on the eve of violent disputes - which horse will come the second, which third, and which one will fall at a distance - and the very next day the return of life to the usual track, which does not depend on the election.

The main feature of the current elections is that they are not needed by the authorities - well, except for the development of some political technologies for the next year. The faster and, if possible, they will pass, the better. Elections today need authorities as a ritual, and not as a way of preserving or increasing legitimacy. After Crimea, she has a completely different legitimacy, which does not go up from the bottom up - from the voter to the political elites and further to the president - and from top to bottom - from the leader of the ultra -large -glance to the superiors appointed or supported by him in the field. From the latter, it is necessary not to deliver the problems associated with scandals and election malfunctions. The need for democratic mimicry for image purposes practically disappeared, and the only (however, significant) real factor that restrains power is a fear of running into mass protests.

Elections-2015 were held as a whole according to the previous model, only a little worse. This time the danger of competition was crushed on distant approaches, in the embryo itself: in the elections to the Legislative Assembly - at the stage of "before registration", and at the governor's - at the stage "before the nomination". This year, as in the past, the current governors did not have real rivals in the election - the benefit of the municipal filter allows them to register only candidates convenient for the authorities. But if last year in several regions, such as, say, Bashkiria or Altai Republic, strong alternative politicians - local and federal - put forward their candidates and collected signatures for registration, then this time there wasn’t even this. Opponents of the current heads of regions greatly performed in the Omsk, Amur and Irkutsk regions. In the latter, the current governor could not even get 50% of the vote necessary for victory in the first round. But in these cases, one can rather not speak of strong alternative candidates, but about the weakness of governors and the political technology they used. However, the second round of the governor’s elections in the country has not been since January 2005, and its holding in the region, known for examples of effective electoral protest, is interesting in itself.

The combined effect of the economic crisis, excessive centralization and the lack of public policy has made a very filtered election of governors introduced into practice since 2012. It is characteristic that experts, despite all their efforts, managed to find a semblance of the program only among 11 governors of 21, who participated in the elections, and only four of the current chapters took part in the debate.

The Sovietization of the elections in the context of the transformation of the regime from the hybrid into the authoritarian manifested itself not only in the demonstration of the non -alternative of candidates of the authorities, but also in emphasizing the fact that it can decide to whom to participate in the elections and who does not, without shaving considerations of the legality and legal purity of the procedure. This was most clearly manifested in relation to the democratic coalition, and even when it was not allowed to elections in the legislative assembly, and in that sole case - in the Kostroma region, when they allowed the Kremlin’s command. It seems that in the Kostroma elections there was a tactics of suppressing the real opposition in the context of its breakthrough through the prohibitive barrier. Judging by the numbers of the election commission, the tactics worked out completely, but in an image sense, politically the opposition won a lot more than one mandate in the Kostroma Legislative Assembly, not to mention the experience acquired and conducting the campaign.

The prevention of real competition in the elections is only one component of the electoral "success" of the authorities. The suppression of independent observation is different. And here, perhaps, negative dynamics are most noticeable. With the consistent suppression of the activity of “Voice”, “Open Russia”, other observation networks, the possibility of operational detection and suppression of violations, and most importantly, the political effect of cases of opening the dirty game is sharply reduced. However, here, for the authorities, the ghost of 2011 is a serious restraint - it is afraid of a repeat of mass protests.

Does all this mean that it is useless to fight in the elections with Leviathan and that these attempts should be left? Not at all. And the point is not only the importance of elections as a key institution, without which neither transformation nor a democratic change of regime is impossible. The authorities are already increasingly forced to resort instead of a simple falsification to more complex and laborious manipulations like old “carousels” or new large -scale manipulations when cutting districts for the 2016 elections to the State Duma. Elections in their current form for the authorities are an unimaginative game. Even so far and not very losing, but exhausting, tiring and associated with increasing risks.