Project  Description
How electoral systems affect democratic accountability in Russian regions
Research Proposal

Introduction
The choice of electoral system inescapably has a significant impact on the nature of regional government and policy decisions it makes. The locus of the current study is exploring the electoral system - accountability nexus. There is no need to stress the importance of this issue that has become the focus of ongoing and hot debate in both the public sphere and academic circles. In the Russian context this issue is even more important since corruption was not just redistributing goods in ways detrimental for both the manifest purposes and prescribed procedures of governance, but created major distortions in the democratic process as well.

Accountability is a broad concept that encompass several aspects - monitoring, auditing, oversight, control and punishment (Schelder, 1999). Governments must be subject to oversight from below. In the scholarly literature this control mechanism is conceptualized as vertical accountability - strengthening the ties between the regional government and its constituents by increasing its transparency and empowering capacity of citizens to influence policy decisions. Citizens must be able to oversee and restrain the political process in regional governments in virtually each stage of the policy decision-making and implementation processes, assess the outcome of the policy decisions and if needed, impose sanctions on the accountable party. In order to advance this form of accountability a strong network of binds connecting the government to general public has to be established. Seemingly, this strategy is more feasible in increasing both answerability and enforcement dimensions of accountability  in nascent democracies. It can be done by developing endogenous remedies for abuses, one of which is via development of various agents of accountability that ensure persuasiveness of formal institutions in decision-making process and lead to greater commitment of politicians to democratic norms and procedures.

The comparison on the regional level, as chosen for the presented project, allows for a ceteris paribus situations: the influence of a single variable (electoral system) is testable and the regularities for theory building are easily testifiable. Moreover, by limiting the analysis to the sub-national units we hold several intervening variables constant: historical background, cultural differences, federal political institutions, and so forth. In the chart below the general scheme of the behavioral outcomes of institutional change is presented, where the highlighted sections represent the causal chain in question: ‘electoral system – accountable behavior of politicians’.
              
Electoral systems, as institutions in general, determine ‘relevant’ actors and their preferences, their allowed actions, the information given to the actor, and the particular procedures used to produce the outcome: the behavior of the actors.
 
1. Theoretical background
Is there a link between the electoral system and the level of political accountability? Dominant political theories point out that the plurality rule is more inductive for vertical accountability (Powell, 1982, Blais and Dion, 1990, Persson, Tabellini and Trebbi, 2001), since plurality system tends to produce one-party majority government. This type of government, in turn, provides political stability, strong leadership and decisive elections, which allow greater accountability (Blais, 1991).

However, under conditions of extreme party underdevelopment, the opposite outcome can be the case. As it was demonstrated by Moser (1999), in constraining the number of parties and providing political stability, the proportional representation may be more successful than the plurality system. The fragmented character and low institutionalization of the Russian party system provide grounds for the hypothesis that runs counter to the conventional wisdom mentioned above: proportional representation can be more inductive for accountability.

Another explanation draw on the assumption that electoral rules vary in their monitoring capacity and therefore create stronger or weaker constraints on elected officials (Rose-Ackerman, 2001). It is assumed that in candidate-centered systems, contrary to party-centered systems, politicians are more directly accountable to voters, consequently, the plurality rule makes elections better monitoring device to hold politicians accountable. Under the plurality system, candidates are elected by geographical constituency, which makes them accountable to a distinct constituency, while in proportional representation system individual politicians are first accountable to the party.

We do not know whether the greater accountability, associated with plurality system is causal, or it is due to a third factor causally linked to both country’s government’s accountability and to its selecting plurality system. In order to circumvent this problem, it is advisable to choose the cases, where the influence of these factors can be easily controlled for. One of the possible ways to do so is shifting from cross-country to cross-regional (within one country) empirical research.

2. Research Design
Comparative analysis tradition, which goes back to Aristotle, lies in the heart of political science. Using comparative methods, a research can acquire features of quasi-experimental analysis, introducing controllable conditions analogous to those in the natural sciences. Comparisons using methodology that places a particular unit of analysis (country, province, municipality) in a wider prospective can lead to research outcomes that are valid beyond the borders of that unit. Along with cross-country comparisons, the comparisons focused on sub-national units, such as states, provinces, or even municipalities have become academically recognized area of comparative political research.

One of the most recognized advantages of this form of comparison is the relatively large number of units available for comparisons: unlike countries, regions/municipalities are more numerous, which allows for more sophisticated statistical analysis. For example it is possible to control for socio-structural (size, occupational structure), and cultural differences. Second, the danger of spurious correlation is much lower than in the case of cross-country comparisons due to greater homogeneity of regions within a country than of countries themselves. This makes it easier to isolate explanatory variables from confounding factors on the regional level than on national level. Third, the comparability of the available data in terms of measures is much easier to attain between the regions of one country than between different countries.

The analysis of Russian regions comply the two key requirements for comparative studies: they provide variety in dependent and independent variables, and the N has an impressive value – 89 regions. Even though federal government suggested that the regional elections were conducted under first-past-the-post system in single-member districts, in a bulk of regions this suggestion was ignored. Starting from the first regional elections 1994-1995, mixed, or ‘two-vote’ system for parliamentary election systems was adopted in eight regions (in Krasnoyarsky krai, Sverdlovskaya, Saratovskaya, Kaliningradskaya oblasts, Ust’-Ordynsky Buryanskii and Koryakskii AOs,  and republics of Tyva and Marii-El), six regions added run-off systems (City of St Petersburg, republics of Buryatia, Chuvashia, North Ossetia, Sakha and Tatarstan), and many other regions employed multi-member districts (McFaul and Nikolai Petrov, 1998).

Russian regions not only differ in the choice of electoral systems, but they are relatively autonomous. The turnout in regional elections is not significantly lower than in national elections (Slider, 1996), this fact indicates the importance of the regional elections to voters. Second, the autonomy of the regions implies the wider scope of political institutional choices available for regional politicians. Therefore it is feasible to identify the mechanisms that drive regional politicians to boost ‘classic’ mechanisms of accountability and/or facilitate the emergence of non-elective independent specialized bodies of oversight. The project will identify how electoral rules create powerful institutional limitations on the propensity for corruption.

Therefore, in the case of Russian regions, the variety of regional electoral systems along with uniformity of majority of political institutions allows for an accurate analysis of the impact of the electoral systems on political developments . The project will take form of ‘large-N’ statistical research, which is complemented by a case study. Units of comparison are regional governments in Russia. The research seeks to understand which type of electoral system is more likely to enhance political accountability of representatives to the people. In order to fulfil the mentioned tasks the research is designed to investigate:
 
1. Assessment of the actual levels of accountability in the regional governments
2. Interrelationships between the electoral rule and actual levels of accountability
3. Case studies will provide insights into the specific mechanisms, which connect the electoral systems to creation of institutions that boost or hinder accountability.

2.1. Selection of units of analysis 

In the first part of the research, all 89 regions of Russia will be analyzed. The design of the second part of the research, case study, requires that the selected cases are based on categories of explanatory variables, and research involves finding out the values of dependent variables for each region. Consequently, regional governments that vary with respect to their electoral system will be selected for the second part of the project.

2.2 Analysis of actual accountability

This part of project will involve the assessment of the actual level of accountability in both ex ante and ex post forms, in other words, it will be analyzed whether and how officials are prevented from taking decisions which are illegal, arbitrary or impolitic, and to what extent unlawful or improper action, already implemented, is sanctioned. Therefore, I do not restrict the study to injurious actions previously taken but also take into account measures that  are designed to oversee actions that are not yet implemented, and in some cases not even enacted.

2.3. The relationship between electoral system and actual accountability of regional governments.

In this part of the research I will explore the nexus between the electoral rule and the level of accountability of sub-national governments in Russia. In-depth interviews will reveal the ways in which different electoral systems bring different mechanisms of vertical accountability.

3.    Policy Implications and Dissemination of the Results
The policy proposals will expose ways to increase the effectiveness of the mechanisms of vertical accountability, which can take the form of changes in practice or even proposals for electoral reform. The outcome of this research will provide valuable information for better informed policy choices. 
I intend to disseminate the results of the proposed project in several ways, as follows
1. the results will be presented in forthcoming conferences and workshops related to the topic.
2. final outcome will be published in Russian language as an article in Russian academic journal
3. the outcome of the research will be also disseminated via several (in Russian and English language) Internet outlets
4. the outcome will be published as a brochure in Russian in order to disseminate the results among general public and particularly, targeted audience of regional legislators and their aides.

References


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