Putin Re-elected and Pre-Elected in a Showcase for Authoritarian Democracy
Westerners find the election of Validmir Putin to have been a democratic sham. By any basic democratic standards, the reelection of Putin in 2024 failed. It was predetermined by engineering and manufacturing the outcome through such devices as the elimination of serious opposition, such as Alexei Navalny, threats to anyone speaking against the ‘special military operation’ (SMO), and to literally escorting people to the ballot box to cast their ballots. The only opposition candidates were not well known and all supportive of the war. Culling the opponents in an election is perhaps the greatest farce but on many counts, it did not pass muster as any form of democratic election.
However, it was obvious that the Kremlin could organize crowds of supporters to show their support for the President’s victory. Seeing these curated crowds of flag waving people cheering the appearances of Putin is difficult for me to understand. And watching Putin during these celebrations was amazing as well he seemed to bashfully, but also joyfully accept the ‘will of the people’. He thanked his team. You can see in faces of the crowd and the victor that this certain election outcome was exactly what they wanted and expected from their leader. I am not a functionalist, but since this charade may seem ridiculous from those living in a more liberal democratic society, the election must have served a number of functions as over 33 billion Russian rubles (approaching half a billion $US dollars) were spent on this symbolic victory. And I have heard higher estimates of close to a billion $US.
Most importantly, Presidential elections are defined by Russia’s constitution, so it is easier, if not a necessity, to go through these motions, even if Putin has hopes of rewriting Russia’s constitution. With a constitution defining elections, Russia is an authoritarian nation and follows a form of authoritarian democracy. We can’t understand these practices from the perspective of liberal democratic traditions. So how does a so-called ‘democratic’ election support an authoritarian regime? It’s an authoritarian democracy with an authoritarian orchestrated democratic election. To paraphrase one post-election person-on-the-street interview in Russia: This is the way we do it! Nevertheless, as one commentator put it, Putin may be pushing “the boundaries of dictatorial absurdity”, but it worked for 87 percent of the voters, surpassing any election in the nation’s history, even under Stalin.[i]
Secondly, it supports the public in an authoritarian nation. Historically, Russia has evolved its authoritarian culture in ways that can adapt to new technologies, like mass media and then the internet and social media. Censorship of the mass media and social media was stepped up immediately in the aftermath of the ‘special military operation’ (SMO). Many of the more liberal minded members of the middle class left Russia shortly before or after the operation, as they were free to go. Generally, those who remained were unquestionably okay with censorship and governmental management of the narrative of the SMO. This has been an historical pattern that, despite optimistic dreams of a progressive state, such as when Mikhail Gorbachev sought to restructure the Russian economy after 1985, has not disappeared. We know little about authoritarian political cultures. Not surprisingly, they are under-researched. But it is fair to say that they are more collectivist than individualist than the US and most western European democracies.
Given the authoritarian culture of Russia, many of the public must have felt reassured that their country is in firm hands. If their president could not engineer a stunning victory, there would be major questions about his competence and support within the state’s apparatus. And the vote of nearly 9 out of 10 voters is a message to all those who might question the President that they are a small minority of the population. That said, it must be that while many voted genuinely to support the President, many voters may have felt they simply had no choice and no motivation to risk being seen as an opponent. This is a perfect case in point of Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann’s ‘spiral of silence’.
I also find it important to note how Putin has used sham elections in other contexts. He not only illegally annexed Crimea but orchestrated a referendum for Crimeans to vote in 2014 on leaving the Ukraine and joining Russia. Imagine Russia annexing part of France, for instance, and orchestrating a referendum for the region to join Russia. Unimaginable! But he gets away with this in Ukraine. Then he followed in 2022 with annexation referendums in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Russia then holds these referenda up as evidence that these were the will of the people. So expect this election victory to be used to bolster his international legitimacy.
To be fair, there are pre-determined and pre-engineered elections in liberal democratic nations, such as the US. The gerrymandering of election districts has left many election districts in the US non-competitive – overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican. The difference here is that democratic institutions, such as state legislatures, created these non-competitive districts, and they are continually cited as not conforming to the spirit of democratic elections. There is some critical reflection even if reform has been weak. Gerrymandering districts remains an aberration, sharing much of the responsibility for the almost certain re-election of incumbent legislators. Perhaps the stark engineering of the Russian election could focus attention on the reform of undemocratic aspects of other national electoral systems.
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxAJZzd68FQ&ab_channel=TheTelegraph