Monitoring the 2021 Russian Parliamentary Election from Abroad

• In Event: Shaping Public Opinion in Electoral Authoritarian Russia

Abstract

When exploring election monitoring activity, scholars usually analyze international observers as “norm entrepreneurs” who internalize international norms of election conduct in states’ domestic institutions (Hyde 2011, Kelley 2012) or domestic watchdogs as local civil society groups who conduct observation during the whole electoral cycle (Bjornlund 2004, Lean 2012, Grömping 2017). This research project provides a new dimension in election monitoring studies by exploring how citizens living outside their country observe homeland elections from abroad. Specifically, the project investigates the Vote Abroad movement created by opposition-minded Russian emigrants before the 2021 State Duma election. Emerged for the first time in 2021, this grassroots movement incorporated nearly 300 observers who participated in election-day pall-watching at polling stations located at Russian embassies and consulates in 45 countries. Relying on social movement and civil society scholarship, this project aims to answer the following questions: What are monitors’ motivations, goals, strategies, and outcomes? What does this experience mean to the actors involved? What repertoires of contention do monitors apply vis-à-vis electoral authorities? How do these transnational actors communicate with each other and coordinate their activity? How do they collaborate with domestic election watchdogs and political opposition? To which extent do observes from abroad reinforce broader civic participation of Russian diaspora in homeland politics? The study of this transnational monitoring activity before, during, and after election day (September 19, 2021) will shed light on opportunities for Russian emigrants to control the homeland electoral process at the time of the Putin regime’s increasing crackdown on political opposition and civil society, including independent domestic election monitors. Unlike conventional studies of election monitoring in democratizing countries, the analysis of the Vote Abroad movement allows us to see how election observation is organized under authoritarian settings with limited political opportunities and mobilization mechanisms. The research draws on methods of political ethnography, including in-person participant observation (my election monitoring experience at the polling station located at the Russian Consulate in New York City during the voting day), online participant observation (communications in Telegram chats, zoom training sections and meetings), in-depth semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with observes, and analysis of their social media posts. The ethnographic data also includes reflections on my positionality relevant to my multiple online/offline field sites and power relations experienced and observed during my fieldwork.

Author

• Grigory Hakimov, University of Massachusetts Amherst