The range and limitation of sub-national regime variations under electoral authoritarianism: The case of Russia

ABSTRACT

As has been demonstrated by scholars, different levels of a polity may encompass different political regimes. In this study we examine variations in regional political regimes which have developed under Russia's system of electoral authoritarianism. Comparing the results of two cycles of regional assembly elections (2008–12 and 2013–17) we analyse and compare elections results and levels of electoral contestation in both the party list (PL) and single member district (SMD) contests. This allows us to identify the range of sub-national regime variations: ‘hegemonic authoritarian’, ‘inter-elite bargain authoritarian’, ‘clearly-competitive authoritarian’, and ‘moderately-competitive authoritarian’ regions. Approximately half of the regions demonstrate stable electoral patterns across both cycles. At the same time, none of the regions go beyond the authoritarian limitations imposed by the Russian regime. The variation is explained by a combination of structural and agency factors with a prevalence of the latter.     

Party Reforms and the Unbalancing of the Cleavage Structure in Russian Regional Elections, 2012–2015

This study analyses the influence of the party reforms of 2012 and the ‘counter-reforms’ of 2013–2014 on the Russian party system, and the structure of political and electoral cleavages in Russian regions. The emergence of new political parties in 2012–2013 led to a temporary increase in electoral competition, an augmentation of the political space, and a rise in the number of electoral cleavages, but these developments did not weaken the domination of United Russia. The trend towards an ever greater tightening up of entry requirements for contestation in the elections led to a lowering of the number of political and, consequently, electoral cleavages, in addition to a reconfiguration of the political space. The study shows that there was an unbalancing of the political cleavage structure in 2012–2015: the socioeconomic political cleavage, whose primary place is a key determinant of equilibrium, ceded the top position to the authoritarian–democratic cleavage in 2012–2013, and to the ‘Ukrainian’ (systemic) cleavage in 2014–2015.     

Was Idi Amin's Government a Terrorist Regime?

What does state terrorism look like? How do we distinguish it from other forms of mass state violence, such as repression or genocide? Based on the developing literature on state terrorism, this study presents three expectations that violence perpetrated by the state should meet if it is to be classified as state terrorism: these are (a) that the violence is perpetrated by agents of the state, (b) that the violence is visible, and (c) that state terrorism focused against a state's own citizens will be carried out by an autocratic, personalistic regime. Drawing substantially on a series of primary sources, this study demonstrates that Idi Amin's regime in Uganda from 1971 to 1979 did engage in state terrorism against its own citizens.     

Enacting Oblivion

After periods of major political change, incoming regimes have often declared “acts of oblivion” in which courts and sometimes citizens are commanded to forget what happened under the preceding regime. But how are courts and citizens supposed to obey this command? Must they not remember what it is they are commanded to forget? If so, obedience is only possible at the price of disobedience. This paper suggests this paradox raises important issues about the concept of memory. It argues that in order to understand acts of oblivion we need to distinguish between two aspects of memory: the cognitive, concerned with the transmission of information, and the conative, concerned with the transmission of will and affect. This distinction provides a way of avoiding the more overtly paradoxical features of acts of oblivion. However, there remain significant difficulties facing the political project of forgetting.     

The Impact of Emotional Disturbances on the Arrest Trajectories of Youth as They Transition into Young Adulthood

This article identifies the arrest trajectories of youth from ages 12 through 24 years old and tests hypotheses derived from Moffitt’s developmental taxonomic theory of crime concerning the impact of various emotional disturbances on the specific trajectories of the youth involved. The study uses exclusively administrative data sets and includes a gender and racially diverse sample of 10,360 youth (30.7 % females) who were arrested at least once between ages 12 and 24 in the early 2000s. Latent class growth analysis was employed in order to identify distinct arrest trajectories of youth in the sample. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify diagnostic and other characteristics associated with membership in the specific trajectories predicted by Moffitt’s theory. Five trajectory classes were identified, 3 of which were consistent with taxonomic theory including high and classic adolescence limited trajectory classes and a “snared adolescence limited class” described more recently by Moffitt. The distribution of youth among the 5 classes was very different for those with and without emotional disturbances. Youth with emotional disturbances in their late adolescent years were more likely to fall into the high arrest trajectory class and much less likely to fall into the low arrest trajectory class. Compared to youth without an emotional disturbance, youth with psychotic disorders were more than twice as likely to fall into the high as into the low arrest trajectory class. Youth with disruptive behavior disorders were more than twice as likely to fall into the high and intermediate classes as into the low trajectory class. Anxiety and depressive disorders were not associated with significantly greater likelihood of falling into any one of the trajectory classes. Youth in the snared adolescence limited class were more likely than those in the classic adolescence limited class to be male, black versus white and in the foster care enrollment category lending some support to Moffitt’s conceptualization of this class as an adolescence limited class composed of youth who are snared by involvement in the criminal justice and or social services systems. Implications of these results for public policy and the study of adolescence are discussed.