Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 16 – Vladimir Putin’s
United Russia Party dominated the recent elections in the region less because
its activists consciously worked to drive down participation at a time when the
ratings of the party have fallen than because Russian society has entered a
period of “negative depoliticization,” according to a Moscow analyst.
On the Liberty.ru portal, Vyacheslav
Danilov argues that this was perhaps more important in determining the
electoral fraud liberal commentators have pointed to and is likely to be a
defining factor in Russian politics at all levels in the course of the next
several electoral cycles (liberty.ru/Themes/Pervye-vybory-epohi-negativnoj-depolitizaci).
According to Danilov, the defining feature
of “negative depoliticization” is that “people have lost faith in the existing
political institutions, including parties and the institution of elections as
such.” Their distrust, he suggests, is manifested now by low turnout but could
assume the form of “collective protest actions, sabotage, and other forms of
dissatisfaction.”
Thus, in his view, Russian citizens “remain
to a sufficient degree ready for potential political mobilization … display
interest in politics [at least judging by] the growth in the raitings of
political television programs, but politics as a whole does not satisfy them”
because there is “a lack of adequate political proposals from plays in the
public space.”
Danilov notes that “liberals are
already asserting” that the ruling United Russia Party “’stole the elections,”
but he argues that “the situation is more complex, a reflection of the fact
that “’the party of power’ has been converted into ‘the ruling party,’” thus “separating”
at several levels “abstract power from its concrete public image in the form of
United Russia.”
While the liberal charge may be
true in some cases, Danilov continues, the decline in participation in
elections in some reflects not only negative depoliticization but such “unconventional
means” as the earlier conduct of open primaries in which “practically all elite
players took part.” Having voted then, voters did not feel the need to vote in
the final election.
As a result, the outcome of the
elections in places like Kamchatka and Sakhalin was from the ruling party’s
perspective “super successful,” and it thus “is not excluded” that they including
relatively open primaries “will become the model of future United Russian
campaigns in the regions.”
That trend, of course, entails some “new
risks,” Danilov suggests, including the rise of a public airing of “intra-elite
conflicts.” At the regional level, that
will work well, but at the federal level, it has the potential to create more
serious divisions and exacerbate the distrust many in the regions have for the
center.
The regional elections just
completed, the Liberty.ru analyst goes on to say, took place at a time of “extremely
low ratings” for both United Russia and its Leaders. Indeed, both were at historic lows. But as
every poll found, these low ratings have not been “accompanied by a growth in
the level of trust to marginalized players.”
The concept of “negative
politicization” helps explain why that is so, Danilov argues. It is very different from “positive
politicization” which exists when there are “high and stable ratings” of those
in power. Rather, it “is characterized
by a weak interest in the political process and low turnout for elections,”
exactly the pattern earlier this month.
The kind of depoliticization now
taking place in Russia “works for United Russia” because it means that “people
have forgotten the December slogans” against the regime. Further, it helps
United Russia because the branding of parties in the regions is “diffuse,” with
people “ready to change power but not to change the brand of power.”
If it is to rebuilt public support
and legitimacy, Danilov suggests, United Russia will have to recognize both its
lack of legitimacy unless there is some element of competition and the fact
that the divide between the interests of the elite and the masses “has never
looked so great in the Putin era” as it does now.
According to Danilov, “the
catastrophe of ratings” of the party of power “is explained above all by the
unsuccessful political planning” of last spring, planning which one can “conditionally”
label “the Conservative Turn” and that occurred because the Kremlin drew “incorrect
conclusions” from the March 4 presidential elections.
“Just like part of the liberal media
establishment,” the analyst continues, the United Russian leadership “decided
that ‘the Putin majority’ a) exists and has strengthened and b) that it is
conservative by nature.” Neither of
these propositions is completely true as the October 14 elections showed.
The key piece of evidence for that
conclusion, Danilov says, involves the growing divide between the victories of
the ruling party in the regions and its ratings decline in the country as a
whole. The latter reflects “the orientation of the population to local elites
under the mask of federal brands,” while the former highlights “the lack of
trust in the politics of the Center.”
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