Who is to blame? Centralisation and titular ethnic groups’ electoral behaviour in the Russian republics

East European Politics. 2023. P. 1–25.

Shkel S.

According to many studies, ethnic republics demonstrate a higher level of electoral loyalty compared to the national average. Recently, however, in some ethnic republics a decrease in electoral support for the Russian president among the titular ethnic groups was recorded. At the same time, this trend was not found in other republics. In this article I propose a theoretical explanation for this variation. My main thesis is that the decrease in the electoral support of the incumbents occurs only when the regional electorate addresses the responsibility for unpopular reforms to two levels of power simultaneously: national and sub-national.

Keywords: выборы, elections, Russian regions, российские регионы, этнополитика, sub-national politics, субнациональная политика, ethnopolitics