Introduction of our keynotes – part two

We continue to present the keynote speakers at our October International workshop “Electoral Integrity and Malpractice in Russia and Beyond: New Challenges and Responses”. Today we want to introduce you to the rest of our brilliant speaker group. If you want to hear their talks and discuss your research with them, make sure to apply for the workshop – the call is open until the 1st of June.

Our third keynote speaker is Åbo Akademi University Research Fellow Inga Saikkonen. Dr. Saikkonen specialises in electoral authoritarianism, electoral manipulation, and democratic developments.  Her latest publications are dedicated to how the COVID-19 affects democracyauthoritarian capacity, and electoral manipulation.  At the workshop, Inga Saikkonen will give a talk “Asymmetrical Effects: The Subnational Electoral Geography of Authoritarian Regime Stability”, which is based on the paper she is co-authoring with Assistant Professor Allison White from Colorado State University:

How do changes in subnational politics impact the stability of authoritarian regimes? Previous research has examined the spatial heterogeneity of support for authoritarian regimes and has argued that regime stability depends, at least in part, on the mobilization of support in key subnational strongholds. However, existing scholarship has not examined the electoral ramifications of changes in the relationship between the center and those important subnational constituencies. When the relationship between the center and key subnational actors changes significantly, how are the regime’s electoral fortunes affected? Why do authoritarian regimes pursue strategies with respect to key domestic allies that may jeopardize their electoral support? We examine these questions with fine-grained electoral and census data from one of the world’s most prominent authoritarian regimes–the Russian Federation–to evaluate the potentially far-reaching consequences of the Putin regime’s recent political campaign against its former domestic allies. In this paper, we compare the patterns of electoral support in four most recent national legislative and presidential elections to uncover implications for Russian electoral politics and the durability of the Putin regime. Our results highlight the importance of subnational political structures in securing electoral support for the current regime. Our paper also contributes to the broader literature on electoral politics in authoritarian regimes.


Our next keynote speaker is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Ora John Reuter. His research interests include comparative political institutions, authoritarianism, elections, democratisation, comparative political economy, and Russian politics. Professor Reuter is the author of the book the Origins of Dominant Parties: Building Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Soviet Russia and the recent papers on Clientelist Appeals and Voter Turnout in Russia and Venezuela; Protest Coordination in Authoritarian Regimes. At the workshop, Ora John Reuter will give a presentation “The Demand for Democracy: How Voters React to the Cancellation of Local Elections in Russia”:

One feature of democratic decline in Russia has been the cancellation of elections at the regional and local levels. How do voters react to these reforms? Does the cancellation of elections affect their approval of the regime? Why or why not? This paper utilizes the largest dataset on public opinion ever assembled in Russia–containing almost 2 million polling responses drawn from two decades of polling by Russia’s top polling agencies–to analyze how the cancellation of elections in Russia’s large cities has affected public attitudes toward the authorities.

And our last but absolutely not least keynote speaker is Katalin Miklóssy, a Senior Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute and Lecturer at the University of Helsinki. Katalin specialises in political history, nationalism and identity building, strategic culture, and the Central and Eastern European region. Dr. Miklóssy works as an expert evaluating research projects for the EURIAS, the Austrian Science Fund, and Baltic Sea Fund. Her recent publications are dedicated to Subregional Integration in East-Central Europe and Strategic Culture in Russia’s Neighborhood.  At the workshop, you can listen to her talk “Electoral adaptability in the Eastern EU”:

The current European concern about how to tackle the apparent erosion of the rule of law in the Eastern members of the EU has calibrated the focus on elections as the main democratic instrument of changing power-holders. Much less attention has been directed to ways in which contemporary illiberal leaderships apply to maximize their chances for staying in power. It can be argued that preparation for and proceedings of elections display a remarkable flexibility, designed to adapt to fast changing pressures coming from below or from the international arena. The administrations’ ability to react to upcoming challenges are partly due to their openness to networking with each other and resembling regimes. In addition, the Pandemic gave an extra opportunity to boost authoritarian tendencies especially because Western democracies applied also shortcuts in parliamentary decision-making, limited civic freedoms and rescheduled elections as crisis management. This provided an unexpected point of reference to apply new argumentative means, which became suddenly available for illiberal elites.

 

We are very proud to have such distinguished experts as our keynote speakers and we cannot wait to see them all at our October International workshop!

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