Saturday, February 8, 2025

Why Do Autocrats Like Putin Hassle to Maintain Elections?


The elections in Russia earlier this month had been extensively condemned as a efficiency that fell someplace between tragedy and farce. Though President Vladimir Putin does have substantial public assist, the vote was stage-managed to make sure that he could be “re-elected” with greater than 87 p.c of the vote.

And the outcome was mounted lengthy earlier than Russians even arrived at polling stations: The political opposition has been ruthlessly crushed, unbiased media has been silenced and public protesters have been given draconian jail sentences. Russia’s most outstanding opposition politician, Aleksei Navalny, died in jail final month.

All of which raises an fascinating query: Why do autocratic leaders hassle holding rigged elections in any respect?

It may be useful to think about elections in autocratic states as an train in propaganda, focused at a number of audiences. Fixing a vote is usually a manner for an incumbent like Putin to exhibit his management over the levers of energy: there may be worth in demonstrating that bureaucratic companies, native governments, safety forces and the media are loyal (or cowed) sufficient to take part in such a considerable, costly and complicated challenge.

That efficiency of management also can function a warning to the opposition and any of its potential allies, underlining the obvious futility of protest. “If in case you have an 87 p.c victory, it’s like, ‘Do I actually wish to die, when that is simply pointless as a result of he’s acquired such an iron grip on energy?’” Brian Klaas, a political scientist at College Faculty London who coauthored the guide “Tips on how to Rig an Election.” “A part of that’s to principally exhibit dominance over the home sphere and deter opposition.”

The general public would possibly know that the election has been rigged, however not know by how a lot. So even a manipulated election can contribute to the picture of a frontrunner’s recognition, particularly if the press is already closely loyal, Klaas mentioned.

International audiences matter, too. Simply as human rights-violating states typically create sham justice tribunals to create the phantasm of accountability, making it much less embarrassing for allies to proceed propping them up, autocratic regimes generally use rigged elections to permit their allies to say they’re supporting an “elected” authorities.

That’s most likely much less of a consideration for Russia, which was closely sanctioned by Western nations after it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and now appears to be like to autocratic states like China and North Korea for assist. However for international locations which can be extra reliant on help from democratic allies, holding some type of elections could be an essential ingredient of sustaining that assist.

Elections may also be a significant supply of knowledge. “Dictators are victims of their very own repression as a result of nobody tells them the reality,” Klaas mentioned. “So one factor that dictators do is that they use elections as a proxy to determine how in style they genuinely are.”

Permitting some campaigning and some different names on the poll paper can provide a window into a frontrunner’s precise enchantment — even when the federal government then tweaks the outcomes to stop the actual data from ever turning into public.

The method also can assist leaders determine opposition figures who would possibly grow to be threats. Putin, as an illustration, cracked down on the nascent opposition and protest motion that shaped across the 2011 Russian elections, utilizing arrests, compelled exile and different repressive strategies to additional focus energy in his personal arms.

However that technique can sometimes backfire. Researchers have discovered that merely holding elections can open a door to eventual regime change, even once they had been meant to do the alternative.

Analysis by Beatriz Magaloni, a Stanford political scientist, reveals that stolen elections can generally result in “civil revolutions,” by which the tried manipulation results in mass protests, which then immediate the navy and different elite allies to defect from the incumbent regime, forcing it from workplace. That was what occurred in Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004, as an illustration, and Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003.

In fact that continues to be a reasonably uncommon final result. Ukraine and Georgia had a much more substantial political opposition, for instance, than in Russia, the place Putin has ruthlessly prevented opposition figures like Navalny from even making it onto the poll. Makes an attempt to spark an analogous revolution in Russia after the 2011 elections fizzled, and the crackdown on dissent that adopted would make such a motion far tougher to type now.

Generally, if the opposition unites, a vote meant as a rigged efficiency can grow to be an actual contest. Yahya Jammeh dominated Gambia for many years, utilizing repression and torture to silence dissent and crush political opposition. He was accustomed to “successful” elections with greater than 70 p.c of the vote and anticipated the identical lead to 2016. However as an alternative he misplaced.

The opposition managed to coalesce round one candidate, Adama Barrow, a real-estate firm proprietor. The big Gambian diaspora overseas gave his marketing campaign the sources it wanted, and a few of the rigging strategies that Jammeh was apparently counting on failed: A warehouse believed to include false voter IDs meant to help electoral manipulation was burned down in an arson assault proper earlier than the election, leaving too little time to make extra. When it grew to become clear that the voting tally favored the opposition, the top of the electoral fee reported the outcomes regardless of authorities strain to cease.

And whereas overseas allies may be keen to look the opposite manner when elections are manipulated or rigged, there are a lot stronger norms in opposition to really overturning outcomes. Jammeh’s enchantment to different African leaders to maintain him in workplace fell on deaf ears, and so they backed Barrow as an alternative. A couple of weeks after the election, overseas troops from ECOWAS, a regional group of West African nations, entered the nation to assist drive him from workplace.

However such electoral revolutions are uncommon, and maybe turning into extra so. Latest many years, Klaas mentioned, have amounted to a interval of “authoritarian studying,” by which autocratic leaders have grow to be more and more expert at electoral manipulation.

“Solely amateurs steal elections on Election Day,” he mentioned. “The professionals are actually doing it prematurely, by way of a sequence of way more savvy, delicate methods.”


  • The Warfare Attorneys: America, Israel, and Juridical Warfare,” by Craig Jones, is a deeply researched research of the position that legal professionals play in warfare, significantly aerial bombardments. Though the guide, which was revealed in January 2021, predates the present navy operation in Gaza, the authorized and operational points that Jones discusses stay extremely related.

  • Guidelines of Civility,” by Amor Towles. I’d in some way by no means learn something by Towles, regardless of devoting a whole summer time to novels of snobbery final yr. (A lot of you really useful his work, so I solely have myself responsible.) I loved the prose very a lot, and the gently twisting story line, however in the long run it felt a bit hole. Maybe that was the purpose?


Thanks to everybody who wrote in to inform me about what you’re studying. Please hold the submissions coming!

I wish to hear about issues you have got learn (or watched or listened to) that you just advocate to the Interpreter neighborhood

If you happen to’d wish to take part, you possibly can fill out this way. I’ll publish your response in a future publication.

Related Articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest Articles