| Popis: |
This chapter focuses on mobilisation and turnout in Russia’s parliamentary elections. Through the use of electoral data, and focus group and survey results, it examines how voters balance cost, benefit, civic duty, and systemic disenchantment in a calculus of whether to vote. The first part of the chapter looks at the efforts of the authorities to mobilise voters using ‘administrative resources’, while the remainder of the chapter looks at how voters respond to these. Examination is made of the bases of turnout; patterns of and explanations for abstention; and the profiles of non-voters compared with those who cast a ballot. Many of those who do so vote out of a general sense of civic duty, rather than because they feel any sense of efficacy; and cynicism about the process has steadily been growing throughout the past few years. |
