Turovsky Rostislav

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  • ¹ 1, 2020

    • New Players in Party Systems of Old Democracies: Is There a Threat to Political Stability?

      In the recent decades one of the main trends in Western democracies has been the emergence of new political players articulating the changing demands of the society (populists, nationalists, Eurosceptics, feminists, environmental movements etc.). By transforming into parties, these players challenge the existing party system, which makes it more volatile.

      In the research presented in the article, the authors focused on the dynamics of the nationalization of party systems as one of the components of volatility, reflecting the territorial heterogeneity of the electoral support of political players. Their analysis of the last 4—6 electoral cycles in 18 Western democracies, which they compared with the elections of the 1960—1970s (viewed as a starting point) revealed the divergence of the modern processes of party system nationalization. According to the authors, the development paths of these processes are primarily determined by the within-country political context and individual characteristics of the evolution of party systems and almost never follow the patterns revealed in the earlier studies. Not only did parties with a long history of being active on the political stage keep the support of the electorate, but in some cases they even strengthened their positions. However, it is the old parties that are responsible for the main challenges for the homogeneity of the electoral space. The most successful new parties are not inferior to the old ones in their level of nationalization, which on the whole indicates a high degree of consolidation of the electoral space of Western democracies.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2020-96-1-154-183

      Pages: 154-183

  • ¹ 2, 2018

    • Presidentia Elections in Russia: Opportunities and Limits of Electoral Consolidation

      The article analyzes the processes of electoral consolidation around incumbents, as well as opposition candidates in the presidential elections in Russia. On the basis of the comparative analysis of the parliamentary and presidential campaigns within 6 electoral cycles, the author reveals shifts in the turnout and voting patterns for candidates in the presidential elections in comparison to the previous State Duma elections. His research shows that almost all viable candidates in presidential elections rely on the electorate of a certain party — usually the one from which the candidate is nominated (the only important exception to this rule is the vote for P.Grudinin in the 2018 elections). The study also shows that the increase in turnout in the presidential elections plays into the hands of the incumbent (except for B.Yeltsin in 1996), although in some cases it can boost support for a strong opposition candidate (e.g., G.Zyuganov in 1996) or an entirely new candidate (e.g., M.Prokhorov in 2012). Having compared voting patterns between parliamentary and presidential elections, the author comes to the conclusion that an incumbent is usually able to court swing voters, and, depending on the political context, voters from various party clusters such as supporters of “A Just Russia”, LDPR, liberal parties and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (the latter — at the level of certain regions). Opposition candidates possess much more limited opportunities or lack them altogether. The author interprets the revealed trends as a manifestation of strategic voting, which is based on a rational choice of voters in favor of an incumbent.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2018-89-2-23-50

      Pages: 23-50

  • ¹ 3, 2017

    • Economic Influence on Electoral Behavior in Russia: is "Contract" Between Power and Society Working?

      The article studies the influence of economic factors on the electoral behavior of Russians during the federal parliamentary elections in 2003—2016. The conducted research proved the existence of the so-called “Putin contract”, but also revealed a number of patterns that partially contradict initial assumptions. According to their statistical model, in dynamics economic voting in Russia manifests itself as an exchange of population’s loyalty for medium-term economic growth and lower poverty levels. However, this is different from “voting with your wallet” and seeking immediate benefits, which, añcording to R.Turovsky and Yu. Gaivoronsky, partly explains the absence of the negative trend in the performance of the “United Russia” in 2016 elections: two years of crisis were not enough for the electorate to lose trust in current power that earned a certain level of credibility.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2017-86-3-42-61

  • ¹ 1, 2016

    • NATIONALIZATION AND REGIONALIZATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS: APPROACHES TO RESEARCH

      The Russian studies of party systems usually focus on their genesis and actor structure, competition and institutionalization. Meanwhile, such crucial characteristic of a party system as its nationalization has been largely overlooked by the Russian scholars. The situation with regionalization of party systems is not much better: it is mainly studied in the framework of the electoral geography, if studied at all. As a first step to remedy the situation, R.Turovsky refers to the existing international political science approaches to the study of nationalization and regionalization of party systems. He considers the origin of the relevant notions, research trends and indicators used and tests some of them on the Russian elections.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2016-80-1-162-180

  • ¹ 4, 2014

    • SUBNATIONAL POLICY: INTRODUCTION TO POTENTIAL THEORY

      One of the main problems of regional political studies is deficit of unifying concepts, which leads to the focus of researchers on relatively narrow topics, the study of which impedes complete and comprehensive understanding of the subject. As a possible step to solving this problem, R.Turovsky introduces and justifies a concept of subnational policy, through which a variety of political processes occurring inside the country and related to its territory can be examined. The article defines subnational policy and identifies its three dimensions – vertical (inter-level), horizontal (inter-territorial), and local, and examines the relation of subnational policy with such traditional research paradigms as federalism, regional policy, local government, and international politics.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-86-99

  • ¹ 1, 2013

    • Social and Political Efficiency of Regional Power: Measurement Problem

      The article is devoted to developing a methodological base that allows to explore social and political efficiency of the regional government in Russia. Having analyzed the existing approaches to evaluating the efficiency of public administration, R.Turovsky identifies four dimensions of power efficiency (administrative, financial, social and political) and three approaches to efficiency (resource-based, instrumental and problem-based). The presented methodic prepares the basis for the subsequent determination of specific indicators that can be used to assess the performance of the regional authorities structures.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2013-68-1-175-196

  • ¹ 3, 2012

    • ELECTORAL SPACE OF RUSSIA: FROM IMPOSED NATIONALIZATION TOWARDS NEW REGIONALIZATION?

      The article prepared in the framework of the program “Structural analysis of regional political regimes and electoral spaces” attempts to test the methods that are used in the explorations conducted by the Laboratory of Regional Political Research within the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The author sets his goal as substantiatingthese methods as well as demonstrating their usage by the Russian example, which in its turn allows him to draw conclusions about the structure and dynamics of the electoral space in the modern Russia. The paper employs the official statistical data from the Central Electoral Commission, the Russian Statistics Committee and the Ministry of Regional Development of the Russian Federation. All the calculations are carried out by the author.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2012-66-3-100-120

  • ¹ 2, 2009

    • PRACTICES OF APPOINTING THE GOVERNORS: INERTIA AND RADICALISM IN THE CENTRE’S POLICY

      Based on the analysis of the experience of appointing governors in 2005–2008, R.Turovsky demonstrates that the established approaches to the formation of governor corps have amplified centralization compared even to formal norms of the new legislation. The institute of governors is now losing its significance in the political system by turning into a structural element of the federal executive power at the regional level. According to the author, both of today’s most typical scenarios – conservation of the established system of governing and the appointment of a “Varangian” or other little known functionary – have similar negative aspects: they provoke increasing discontent of local elites and intensify the alienation of power from the society. The control by the center over the governors has grown, whereas the control of governors over political processes in the regions has diminished, which creates conditions for open protests.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2009-53-2-72-89

  • ¹ 4, 2005

    • Conceptual Electoral Map of Post-soviet Russia

      The results of the author's research which are published in this article became the development of the conceptual electoral map of post-soviet Russia. It is based on vertical and horizontal political geographic dimensions of the electoral process. In R. Turovskiy's opinion the hierarchy relations "center-periphery" in the political geographic space made it necessary to develop such a map.

      In the view of the center-periphery split the author revealed and designated the "ideal types" of electoral cultures – the capital periphery, the quasi capital periphery, industrial semi-peripheries (which in their turn are divided into economically advantaged and disadvantaged), defense semi-peripheries, ethnic peripheries and Russian peripheries. According to the author each of the above mentioned electoral cultures is characterized by its specific electoral behavior and the sets of such behavior reasons.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2005-39-4-161-202

      Pages: 161-202

  • ¹ 4, 2004

    • Geographical patterns of electoral transit in post-communist states.

      The study of geographical patterns of voters’ electoral behaviour rests upon foreign countries’ material and serves an empirical basis for the article. Issues 1 and 2 of last year’s “Politeia” journal have already published articles analyzing such processes in 24 Western democracies. In this work R.Turovsky studies the voting patterns in post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the CIS.

      The author defines particular features of elections in innovational centers, peripheries and semi-peripheries, establishing the fact that regional elections depend on the cleavages between centers and peripheries, as well as cultural and geographical cleavages. The article reveals complex interrelationship between geographical, socio-cultural and political parameters.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2004-35-4-110-149

      Pages: 110-149

  • ¹ 2, 2004

    • Electoral geographic structures in western democracies: an attempt of a systemic comparative analysis. Article 2

      The article determines conceptual foundations for geographic simulation of factorial analysis of election campaign. A comparative analysis of electoral geographic structures is carrying out on the base of ternary geographic model: “centre – periphery “, innovation diffusion and cleavages (geocultural and sociogeographic). The research was accomplished by expertise of 25 western democracies. The author determines consistent patterns connected with influence of relations between “centre – periphery “, geocultural and sociogeographic cleavages on electoral geostructures; reveals more typical models of geostructures and motives of their genesis.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2004-33-2-200-217

      Pages: 200-217

  • ¹ 1, 2004

    • Electoral geostructures in western democracies: attempt of systemic comparative analysis

      The author examines regional elections outcomes in different countries of the world, compares and analyzes them. He uses in his research electoral materials on 24 (!) countries (19 countries – members of the European Union, as well as Norway, Switzerland, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). That gives R.Turovsky an opportunity to see the objective laws of voting both for left-wing and conservative political forces. Analyzing the combination of geocultural and social and economic factors also permits to identify typical voting models.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2004-32-198-232

      Pages: 198-232

  • ¹ 5, 2001

    • GOVERNORS AND OLIGARCHS: THE HISTORY OF RELATIONS

      The author describes the aim of his work as the attempt of the system analysis of the process of the regional power and the oligarchs merging and of the forms of their interaction. In this respect, he designates and analyzes the three models of regional authorities behavior. In R. Turovskiy’s opinion, the process of the intensive search of the common meeting ground was shaped comparatively not long ago, and it is paradoxically related to the policy of the new president. As a result, both subjects feel to be in the role of a victim.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2001-5-23-120-139

  • ¹ 4, 1999

    • PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS OF 1999: REGIONAL ASPECT

      On the basis of the analysis of interregional differences in voting for certain political forces during the parliamentary elections of 1999 the author makes the conclusion that a number of new tendencies in the electoral preferences of the Russian voters have appeared. As it seems to the author, the most important of these tendencies are: a) decrease of the polarization of the Russian regions’ attitude towards the left electoral culture, which confirms the conclusion about the limited and confined nature of the electoral base of the left forces, which doesn't permit to them to count on the victory on a whole Russian scale; b) the formation of the nationally conformist electoral culture, first of all on the semiperipheral territories. The latter tendency is not so far irreversible and depends on further actions of the federal authorities upon the formation of the social support basis. In this conditions the author sees the most effective strategy in the consolidation of the amorphous but extensive noncommunist and non-liberal electorate, which perceives positively the populism and strong statehood.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-14-4-102-121

      Pages: 102-121

  • ¹ 1, 1998

    • «Centre - regions » relations in 1997-1998: between conflict and consensus

      The elections of the heads of the executive power bodies in Russian regions have created an absolutely new background for the further relations between the centre and the subjects of the federation. The governors enjoy the legitimacy proved by the popular elections and thus they feel their responsibility before the voters. The current situation makes them conduct an independent socio-economic policy and protect themselves against the interference of Moscow. The federal centre in its turn tries to get adapted to the new situation and looks for a new strategy of relations with the regions.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1998-7-1-5-32

      Pages: 5-32