Stolen Elections vs Stolen Votes: Politicization through Elections in Russia 2011-12

Problems of Post-Communism. 2016.

Savelieva N., Zavadskaya M.

The ambiguous conduct of the State Duma elections of the 4th of December 2011 and the voters’ outrage provoked many scholarly debates over the prospects for civic movements and regime change in Russia. However, recent developments, coupled with an overall enfeeblement of the opposition and civic organizations, seem to contradict the optimistic forecasts for civic protest and liberalization being made in Russia. In this study we return to the post-electoral protests of 2011-12 and look into the specific mechanisms and dynamics of elections as a “transformative event” and as one of the causes of the Movement For Fair Elections. We do this by using two types of empirical evidence: semi-structured interviews, collected during the protest campaigns of 2011-12, and quantitative analysis of protest frames drawing on the PEPS dataset.  We argue that the regime’s liberalization prepared the ground for an increase in political participation, while the perception of electoral malpractice by thousands of voters served as a sufficient condition for further protests.

Keywords: elections, protest, electoral integrity, For Fair Elections