THE INFLUENCE OF ELECTION OBSERVATION ON INCUMBENT’S ELECTORAL RESULTS: THE CASE OF GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS IN ST. PETERSBURG
Keywords:
autocracy, elections, civil society, legitimation, imitation practices, Russian politics, election observationAbstract
The article includes a literature review on election observation in contemporary Russia and empirical research of the election observation influence on the results of the gubernatorial election in St. Petersburg. In the literature review section, the two approaches towards election observation are distinguished: election observation as a tool of control and participation, and election observation as imitation and legitimation. In the empirical section, due to the lack of systematic data, election observation is operationalized as the share of election committee members nominated by different political forces. The empirical section concludes with the thesis about the limited effect of the electoral monitoring on the incumbent’s results (the results of the acting governor were to a higher extent influenced by the turnout level, the share of voters, who cast their ballots at home, and those who voted against all of the candidates). The results of the analysis support the argument about the existence of two models of election observation: participatory and imitation-legitimizing. In the concluding section the possible directions for further research are suggested: studying of the electoral fraud mechanisms at the level of individual election committees, legitimation of frauded results, and ways in which independent election committee members and election observers combat and prevent electoral fraud.DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2021-1-57-65References
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