Watchdogs or attack dogs? The role of the Russian courts and the central election commission in the resolution of electoral disputes

Do Russian courts constrain the state? Or do they facilitate arbitrary state action by favouring state agents over other litigants where such bias is not built into the written laws? Are Russian elections fair? The answers to these questions would help us assess Russia's progress towards establishing the rule of law and a democratic regime. The evidence presented in this article suggests that in electoral registration cases where incumbent politicians have a stake, the Russian courts and the Central Election Commission (CEC) are responsive to pressure from them. More specifically, the systematic analysis of all denials of registration by a District Election Commission (DEC) associated with the 1999 parliamentary election suggests that the Russian judiciary was subject to pressure from the regional authorities. Regional oppositionists tended to seek redress at the CEC, rather than at the local courts. Protégés of the regional administration, on the other hand, preferred to take their appeal to the local courts. A further indicator of the weakness of rule of law in Russia is that previous experience with the legal system made a candidate less rather than more likely to pursue an appeal. At the same time, however, scathing journalistic accounts of judicial corruption, inefficiency, and total subservience to politicians seem to be exaggerated. In 1999, both the courts and the CEC were acceptable appeal venues, since opposition candidates used them to defend their electoral rights more often than all other groups of candidates.     

Disproportionality by Proportional Design: Seats and Votes in Russia'sRegional Legislative Elections,December 2003–March 2005

From a normative perspective, one of the major merits of electoral systems involving proportional representation (PR) is that they entail high levels of correspondence between voters' preferences, as expressed at the polls, and the levels of representation attained by political parties. From December 2003, federal law made it imperative to use mixed electoral systems in Russia's regional legislative elections. Thus PR, previously used in only a few regions, emerged as a principal mechanism of representation at the sub-national level of the Russian polity. The political incentives that drove this sweeping reform had little to do with normative considerations. When bringing mixed electoral systems to the regions, the federal centre apparently sought to open up the regional political arenas to national political influences, which could be achieved by introducing national political parties as important actors in regional elections. 1 ¹See Grigorii V. Golosov (2004) Political Parties in the Regions of Russia: Democracy Unclaimed (Boulder, Lynne Rienner), pp. 260–268. View all notes However, one might expect that even if without clear intent, high proportionality of electoral outcomes could have emerged as a side product of the electoral reform. It did not. Instead, the conversion of votes into seats in Russia's regional elections produced persistently disproportional outcomes that greatly favoured some political forces at the expense of others. The goal of this study is to examine this idiosyncratic tendency and to build an explanatory model incorporating both institutional and political determinants of disproportionality. By its methodological design, the study is based primarily on a statistical analysis of aggregate electoral results.     

Judicious choices: designing courts in post-communist politics

One area which has been generally overlooked in the literature on institutional choice in post communist politics has been the design of judicial institutions. This paper seeks to evaluate a number of different explanations for judicial systems choice in post communist politics, especially those which emphasize the influence of socio-cultural factors, economic factors, the judicial legacies of the past, and political bargaining. As an empirical test of these explanations, we examine variations in the amount of judicial power that constitution makers granted to the constitutional courts in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe.     

Democracy Promotion and Authoritarian Diffusion: The Foreign Origins of Post-Soviet Election Laws

Flawed electoral legislation in post-Soviet states has facilitated the conduct of undemocratic elections. This article argues that the low quality of electoral legislation in the region results in large part from a process of ‘authoritarian diffusion’, whereby the election laws of the post-Soviet states extensively borrow and adapt from Soviet laws and post-communist Russian laws. The authorities of most post-Soviet states have routinely disregarded recommendations by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Venice Commission to improve electoral legislation. Besides presenting evidence of ‘authoritarian diffusion’ across the post-Soviet area, the article highlights the enduring impact of the Soviet legacy and of Russia's relatively hegemonic position in the region.     

T-Test for Terrorism: Did the Introduction of Proportional Representation Reduce the Terrorist Threat? A Time-Series Case Study of Algeria and Northern Ireland

Can electoral reform lead to a reduction in the number of terrorist incidents? Economists have shown that the introduction of constitutional institutions such as courts in the early eighteenth century had a direct effect on investment. Could there be a similar link between the introduction of proportional representation (PR) electoral systems and a reduction in the number of terrorist attacks? Previous studies using cross-sectional data have found a negative correlation between the presence of PR-electoral systems and the number of terrorist incidents. However, earlier studies were based on aggregate figures, not on time-series data. They did not provide a direction that could be used to measure the possible effect of the introduction of PR. This research note addresses this problem. Using a paired samples t-test it is possible to show that the introduction of proportional representation in Northern Ireland and Algeria led to a marked reduction in the number of terrorist attacks. The note thus adds strength to earlier studies.     

Surviving the political consequences of neoliberal policies

In many countries in Latin America and also western Europe, leftist parties have succeeded in winning repeated re-election even though they have implemented neoliberal economic policies when in government. According to the existing literature, these parties should suffer electoral punishment since they are diverging from their traditional policy course and their electoral promises, and their neoliberal policies are potentially costly for their core support groups. Analysing the cases of left-of-centre parties in Spain and Costa Rica, this article argues that policy implementation strategies, together with strategic use of institutional rules, help to obfuscate the policies' impact, deflect blame, and make re-election possible. The reform of welfare and the way we live now: a critique of Giddens and the Third Way     

What Accounts for Party System Stability? Comparing the Dimensions of Party Competition in Postcommunist Europe

Why do party systems stabilise quickly in some new democracies while others remain in extended flux? As a core variable of comparative politics, party system stability has led scholars to generate various theoretical explanations, but consensus is still lacking. Given its widely divergent party systems, postcommunist Europe presents an important opportunity to revisit stability's determinants. Applying hypotheses derived from theories about competition in multidimensional policy spaces, I find that they better explain variation in a 14-case sample than contending hypotheses about the electoral system, economic performance, constitutional design, political culture, or previous democratic experience.     

Populism in Taiwan: The Rise of a Populist-Democratic Culture in a Democratising Society

Taiwan's democratic transition has emerged alongside a rise of populism. Based on an analysis of post-electoral survey data, it is shown that populist resentments – embodied in such emotion-laden campaign issues as ethnic identity, national identity and a party's image of interest representation and clean politics – have been the most efficient vote-getting appeals in Taiwan's post-authoritarian electoral competition between two major political parties, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). In Taiwan's democratic transition, mass demands for the ‘indigenisation’ of politics and the people's worry about an ever-increasing military threat from Mainland China have also popularised as well as polarised these populist appeals. As empirical data show, due to its position as the first Taiwanese party with a lion's share of populist advantages, the DPP was able to win the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In sum, Taiwan's electoral politics in the past decade have given rise to a kind of ‘populist-democratic culture’, which inclines Taiwanese politicians to bring up populist issues rather than the rational policy debates of an electoral democracy.     

TQM in the courts: Maybe so,maybe not

Courts are prime candidates for the application of Total Quality Management (TQM) but also difficult settings in which to implement it. The leadership structure of courts discourages strong leadership but also requires negotiation and mediation to install new programs, so an effective chief judge can bring most of the governing body--the other judges--along when a decision is made to adopt TQM. As turnover on the bench is slow, the governing body remains throughout the period needed to institutionalize TQM. Courts already have a valuable and useful tool for thinking about “customers” and using data effectively in the Trial Court Performance Standards. Courts have been slow to adopt TQM to date, but there is growing interest and several leadership courts using TQM to improve various court functions. Courts' work mostly is processed in assembly-line fashion; using TQM's principles can help courts improve productivity, recognize and respond to customer needs more readily, and generally be better able to obtain taxpayer support. The courts are at once prime candidates for Total Quality Management (TQM) and a setting in which TQM is a hard sell. This article will explore why both elements of this statement are true. Acknowledging the difficulties, this article nonetheless concludes that TQM can and should be sold and that the courts will be better for the effort. Most Americans do not understand how courts work.(') Even less do they understand how courts are managed or why courts should involve any different management issues from other public agencies. To understand both the difficulties in having TQM accepted in courts and the fertile ground they offer, it may help to explore briefly the management context.     

Environmental administration,the courts and public policy, 1980-1989

Of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's seven major enabling statutes, six contain citizen suit provisions which reward anti-EPA plaintiffs. This fact, coupled with the agency's increasing use of the courts to bolster its enforcement efforts, yield a multitude of avenues through which courts have affected the policies and administration of the agency. This article discusses how the courts have affected the EPA in the 1980s and then briefly assesses the implications of such court-agency interaction for the successful operation of public agencies in the next decade. ^{? ?}This paper, particulary sections three and four, draws heavily upon a more detailed presentation examining the impact of federal court decisions on the policies and administration of the EPA from 1970 through 1988, published as O’Leary, R. Administrative Law Review, vol. 41. no. 4 (Fall, 1989).      

Why can't Europe save itself? A note on a structural failure

Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has been struck by one financial crisis after another. Yes despite many bold new initiatives, instability and uncertainty persist. Why can't Europe save itself? The answer, this chapter argues, lies in a structural failure. EMU lacks a credible mechanism to cope with the threat of imbalances within the group – a framework to manage the European region's internal payments problems. The challenge was foreseen from the beginning. How could a regional monetary union manage the risk of fiscal imbalances among its members? Europe might have turned to the USA for inspiration. For analytical purposes, the USA too can be considered as a regional monetary union comparable to EMU, facing the same fundamental challenge. America's solution was to create a permanent ‘transfer union’, featuring more or less automatic flows of funds through the federal budget at the centre. But European policy-makers chose otherwise, for reasons that go to the very heart of their ongoing integration project. EMU is a league of sovereign states, each determined to retain for itself as many rights and privileges as possible. In such a structure, a permanent transfer union never had a chance; and since no adequate substitute has yet been found, Europe is forced to pay a high price in terms of instability and lost growth.     

Local electoral systems in Western Europe

This article describes and classifies the wide range of local electoral systems in Western Europe. A classification based on three fundamental dimensions of electoral systems shows that there are many different local electoral systems used in Western Europe. The question is addressed whether local electoral systems matter. Two potential ways to answer this question are explored, but actual research along these lines appears to be very scarce. This means that the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of local electoral systems will probably continue without much guidance from empirical research. It is argued that careful experiments at the local level and reporting about these experiments might give both politicians and political scientists some insight into the consequences of changing the local electoral system.     

Patterns of political instability: Affiliation patterns of politicians and voters in post-communist Estonia,Latvia, and Lithuania

In contrast to established party systems, the transformation of post-communist party systems is not only shaped by shifts in electoral preferences, but also by the changing organizational loyalties of politicians. Post-communist politicians pursue a wide range of organizational strategies such as party fusions, fissions, start-ups, and interparty switching. By focusing on the interaction between these organizational strategies and voters’ electoral preferences, we argue that the seeming instability of post-communist party systems actually reveals distinct patterns of political change. The article develops an analytical framework, which incorporates politician-driven interparty mobility and voter-induced electoral change. It uses this framework to show that the apparently inchoate party systems of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania actually follow definable modes of transformation. Marcus Kreuzer is assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. His work focuses on how electoral and legislative institutions shape the organizational and electioneering practices of parties in interwar Europe and post-communist democracies. He also is studying the origins of liberal democracy in nineteenth century Europe. He is author ofInstitutions and Innovation—Voters, Politicians and Interest Groups in the Consolidation of Democracy: France and Germany, 1870–1939 (2001). Vello Pettai is lecturer in political science at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He specializes in comparative ethnopolitics and party politics. He has published previously inNations and Nationalism, Post-Soviet Affairs, East European Politics and Society, andJournal of Democracy. We would like to thank for Artis Pabriks and Darius Zeruolis for sharing their knowledge of Latvian and Lithuanian party politics as well as John T. Ishiyama, Scott Desposato, and two anonymous SCID reviewers for commenting on an earlier draft. Funding for this research came from an Estonian Science Foundation grant, nr. 4904. We gratefully acknowledge their support.     

Europe's novel political cultures in the early twenty-first century

In the course of national elections held in EU member states in the past five years (since the elections for the European Parliament in 1999), a shift in governments' composition, political style and public sensitivities denotes the emergence of novel political cultures in Europe. By way of articulating similarities in the electoral dynamics in EU member-states at the turn of the new century, this study discerns the signs of this transformation in European political cultures. As a result of this change, the left-right alignment along economic policies is being obliterated by a new fault-line: one that is dictated by the security- risk dilemma of the 'new economy'.     

Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections*

Despite United Russia’s (Edinaya Rossiya—UR) dominance in repeated Russian legislative elections, the correlates of the party’s electoral support remain noticeably understudied beyond the influence of electoral manipulation. I pinpoint the specific contours of UR’s strongholds in the two most recent parliamentary elections in Russia—2007 and 2011—focusing on raion- and regional-level correlates of the vote using an original dataset. UR has been undergirded by geographically concentrated ethnic minorities and the countryside, and these patterns of support have persisted even in the absence of fraud, suggesting that the dominant party’s electoral windfalls cannot be attributed solely to electoral malfeasance.     

Electoral theocracy and hybrid sovereignty in Iran

Post-revolution Iran is uniquely based upon the contradictory principles of divine and popular sovereignty but with ultimate authority delegated to jurists. At the same time, the theocratic basis of clerical dominance is rooted within a pluralistic and decentralised theological tradition peculiar to the Shiite establishment. Despite the tutelary institutional arrangements engineered by the ruling clergy, elections have generated unexpected outcomes and unleashed power and policy shifts. Emphasising the political dynamic generated by elections, this paper examines the uncertainties stemming from electoral processes that have been constructed by conflicting electoral and theocratic principles. In developing the concept of electoral theocracy, the paper highlights the paradoxes underpinning the hybridity of Iran’s clerical and electoral authoritarian system of governance. These hybrid features have remained largely neglected in the literature on electoral authoritarian regimes.     

Political Competition and Local Social Spending: Evidence from Brazil

Electoral theories of democracy imply electoral competition insures accountability. Using data on local elections, socioeconomic factors, and municipal budgets from more than 5,000 municipalities in Brazil for the years 1996, 2000, and 2004, we find that municipalities with more competitive elections allocate less to social spending compared to municipalities with little political competition. We argue that previous theory on political competition and public goods obscures the critical role that financial resources play in shaping the dynamics of social spending and political competition. Municipalities with small budgets lack the resources necessary to engineer convincing electoral victories. Where resources are negligible, voter turnout is low, and incumbents rarely win reelection. Incumbent parties in municipalities with large financial resources win big. Armed with adequate resources, incumbent parties mobilize voters and win by large margins. This new argument and evidence reconcile contradictory findings in the existing literature on competition and public goods.     

Forming community councils East Kilbride

The principle of directly elected mayors forms a key part of the Labour government's strategy to modernise local democracy and strengthen accountability. First applied to London, the government has sought to extend the institution, allowing local referendums to determine whether the public favours the principle or not. This article examines the state of public opinion regarding elected mayors before reporting on the outcome of referendums held since the 2001 general election. We then consider the results of mayoral elections, specifically addressing issues of electoral participation, legitimation and partisan support. In conclusion, we consider whether its experience with both referendums and mayoral elections may have affected the government's enthusiasm for further expansion of this institution across the local government system.     

A Criminological Fly in the Ointment: Specialty Courts and the Generality of Deviance

ABSTRACT

Specialty courts—such as drug courts, mental health courts, or domestic violence courts—tend to assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that particular groups of offenders have unique problems that can be best met with specialized case processing. Put simply, specialty courts assume that offenders themselves are specialists when it comes to offending. There is, however, a criminological fly in the ointment. The problem is that criminological theory and research have long demonstrated that offenders tend to be generalists and that they rarely specialize in any given form of misbehavior. Accordingly, the authors argue here that the notion of the “generality of deviance” presents a problem for the potential effectiveness of specialty courts because they are likely operating on a faulty set of ideas about offending behavior. The authors offer strategies for moving forward to better integrate the notion of the generality of deviance into specialty courts: in particular, embracing a rehabilitative philosophy and adopting well-documented correctional treatment approaches such as cognitive-behavioral interventions and the risk-need-responsivity model. They conclude by highlighting the risks associated with granting system efficiency a position of privilege among the multiple goals of corrections.     

Electoral Engineering in the Russian Regions (2003–2017)

Abstract

This article addresses the puzzle of electoral engineering in autocracies using data from three rounds of Russian regional legislative elections between 2003 and 2017. The analysis shows that electoral engineering was widespread in regions where governors lacked the resources necessary to rely on blatant forms of electoral malpractice for the benefit of United Russia. This pattern became evident during the third round of regional legislative elections. The study indicates that the manipulation of electoral systems may be important for authoritarian rulers when they are unable to rely on blatant electoral malpractice to ensure the certainty of electoral outcomes.