Providing Goods and Votes? Federal Elections and the Quality of Local Governance in Russia

Europe-Asia Studies published a new article of the upcoming special issue Good and Bad Governance in Russia: Actors and Institutions (2021, vol.73, N6), edited by Margarita Zavadskaya and Vladimir Gel’man. The article published on the 21st of June is titled “Providing Goods and Votes? Federal Elections and the Quality of Local Governance in Russia” and is written by Margarita Zavadskaya and Lev Shilov (Director,  Urbanism & Participation Research Centre, European University at St Petersburg).

Does electoral support affect the quality of public goods provision? In this study, we explore the variety of governance patterns on the level of Russian municipalities from 2012 to 2018. We estimate the effects of budget autonomy and electoral loyalty during federal elections on public goods provision and explore whether elected heads provide better services. Our findings suggest that since elected heads have limited capacity to provide better services, electoral loyalty does not uniformly result in improved public goods provision in municipalities.

The article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.