The Art of Sham Elections

As Bueno de Mesquita notes, democracy is good for the people but terrible for leaders. Perhaps de Mesquita’s theory of one-party dominance/fragmented electorate is the preferred method of Putin’s United Russia party to retain power. However, in a past parliamentary election, Putin’s party seemed to take a nosedive in the polls winning slightly under 50%, even with charges of vote rigging and corruption. So why did Putin allow himself and the United Russia party to drop in public support or vote totals if he didn’t need public support at any rate?

Eurasian foreign policy expert Ivan Krestev offered an interesting take. He noted that a common argument that democracy's advocates push to forecast the end of authoritarian rule, such as Putin's, is “that such rulers unavoidably put their electoral authoritarian regimes at risk. ‘If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall,’ Anton Chekhov once reportedly advised his fellow playwrights, ‘then in the following one it should be fired.’ Political scientists contend that if authoritarians adopt elections and other democratic institutions—even in a limited, manipulative way—at some point these institutions will ‘fire.’ The presence of democratic institutions, even if they are perverted ones, will eventually bite authoritarian regimes where it hurts.” Perhaps it would be best for Putin to remind himself of Bueno de Mesquita’s rules for holding on to power.