Ethnicity and electoral manipulation in Russia

To what extent does electoral manipulation follow ethnic lines in Russia? Using an original dataset based on raion-level data, we find that the “ethnic component” of electoral manipulation is more nuanced than previous studies have suggested. Electoral manipulation was most prevalent in majority-minority raions across ethnic and non-ethnic as well as richer and poorer regions. We argue that concentrations of ethnic minorities provide: (1) greater incentives for electoral manipulation by the central state and regional elites in order to signal political dominance and (2) greater capacity to carry out electoral manipulation through networks of local co-ethnic elites. However, multilevel analyses suggest that the extent of electoral manipulation was also strongly contingent on regional context. Electoral manipulation was significantly higher in the more politically volatile Muslim regions, while socioeconomic differences among regions, by contrast, had no discernible effect.