Power to the People? Explaining Authoritarian Referendums in Post-Soviet Eurasia

• In Event: Authoritarian Consolidation and State Institutions

Abstract

Why do authoritarian regimes hold referendums? Referendums—that is, direct votes by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue—are the flagship form of direct democracy. And yet, they occur with surprising frequency across a variety of authoritarian settings. Authoritarian referendums are not just common; they also concern questions of major importance. In July 2020, for example, Russia held a nationwide vote on constitutional reforms, including a change that permits President Vladimir Putin to remain president until 2036. Although Putin claimed this vote would allow for the expression of the ‘will of citizens’, most observers agreed that the actual results largely reflected the Kremlin’s efforts to reach their desired outcome. Why bother holding such a vote?

Recent political science research has shown how non-democratic regimes use institutions – like parties, elections, and legislatures – to capture and control the public’s voice. Once viewed as window-dressing, scholars now argue that elections serve important functions in sustaining authoritarian rule, including co-opting other members of the ruling class (Boix and Svolik 2013) or broad swaths of society (Gandhi 2008; Gandhi and Przeworski 2006). They also allow dictators to spread the spoils of office, make credible commitments to power-sharing, and deter defection among members of the elite (Svolik 2009). Yet within this ‘neoinstitutionalist turn’, the distinctive dynamics of autocratic referendums have been largely overlooked.

The paper takes a mixed-methods approach to investigating this question. First, we draw on a new dataset on authoritarian referendums across post-Soviet Eurasia between 1991-2021 to identify the broad contours of when, how, and what topics are put to a vote. We then examine a paired comparison of recent referendums in Kazakhstan and Russia. These cases represent instances in which an autocrat calls a public vote despite not being constitutionally mandated to do so, and thus offer particular insight into the leader’s strategic calculus.

In explaining why autocrats call public referendums, we argue that there is no single logic of authoritarian referendums. Instead, we find that two broad causal pathways emerge. In one pathway, the autocrats put issues to a public vote out of political weakness. That is, that they call referendums as a means of quelling public discontent or sidelining internal opposition to these changes. In a second pathway, they indicate moments of regime strength: rulers use public votes to capitalise on their accumulated political power and legitimize the proposals. Further, we find that adjudicating between these two scenarios depends on (a) the content of referendums, and (b) the political context in which they occur.

By examining the causes of authoritarian referendums, this study extends our understanding of the interplay between elites and society in authoritarian regimes. The argument emphasizes the complex relationship between rulers’ authority and citizens’ voice, which in turn sheds new light on the workings of authoritarian institutions. Taking a fine-grained, region-centric approach to the study of authoritarian referendums allows us to emphasize the contingent factors and strategic decisions that lie behind the interplay between formal and informal politics in these regimes.

Authors

• Nicholas James, Oxford University

• Jody Marie LaPorte, University of Oxford

• Ben Noble, University College London