Election Manipulation Offenses in the Russian Legal System: Preliminary Findings

• In Event: How Courts Impact Democratic Erosion

Abstract

In keeping with a long literature on authoritarian institutions, a growing strand of research has pointed to the benefits that non-democratic governments can gain from genuine improvements in judicial independence, in addition to destabilizing drawbacks. One such drawback for ruling parties may be limits on the ability to manipulate an election. This project aims to test the relationship between election manipulation and courts in a non-democratic setting in more detail. I have collected the texts of the final outcomes of over 7,000 Russian court cases dealing with alleged violations of election law from 2012 through 2022 (the full population of such cases). In particular, this paper will examine whether election-manipulating agents face a greater risk of coming before a court in more competitive regions of Russia, whether agents face a greater risk in regions where a particular type of manipulation is more likely (using election forensic analysis), and whether the risk of prosecution and conviction have decreased over the time period studied as Russia has become more politically closed. The findings from this paper should improve our understanding in several ways. First, by using individual cases as observations, it should improve the microfoundations of existing theories of judicial independence and election manipulation. Second, it will demonstrate concrete risks to individuals who participate in election manipulation efforts (or the lack of such risks) in an increasingly closed authoritarian system. In turn, researchers will be better able to gauge the constraints on ruling parties’ ability to manipulate in such settings. In other words, can agents be successfully shielded from legal risk as the political environment closes, or does the risk persist?

Author

• Cole J Harvey, Oklahoma State University