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After collapse and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia faced typical problems of state-building and nation-building. Nations are assumed as political communities of Modernity. They are constructed in the process of nation-building and are based on nationalism, defined as worldview which perceives social reality through the prism of dividing the world into nations-states. Nation-building is a discursive process where state's activities predefine the type of nationalism being rooted. Using as a starting point 'civic versus ethnic nationalism' dichotomy, the article develops a transformed version of this typology, which is based on two dimensions: model of national membership (openness/closeness) and model of interaction among members (universalism/hierarchical particularism). The analysis of Annual Addresses of the Russian Presidents demonstrates that the Kremlin certainly produces open model of national membership. The key feature of 'Russianness' in the Kremlin discourse is commitment to the Russian culture where anyone can be recognized as 'Russian' as long as he/she shares the Russian cultural values. At the same time, the openness is combined with neglect of 'civicism'. In contrast to 'civicism', which is based on rational notions of equal rights and responsibilities and universalistic patterns of behavior, the Kremlin image of Russian nation focuses on rather sacral idea of 'the Russian way', great historical mission as the destination of Russia. Openness of nationalism entails permanent expansion of the nation 'outside itself' in order to 'absorb' those groups who are able to accept Russian culture. Since the acceptance requires definite period of time, at any point of time Russian nation includes both 'core of the nation' and 'aspirants' that are in hierarchical order. Consequently, from the point of the second dimension, Russian nationalism falls into the category of hierarchical particularism.

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Grounded in the main theoretical approaches to the study of electoral volatility, this article examines cross-regional variations in the levels of volatility for UR in Duma elections over the period 2003-2016 which are juxtaposed with the level of volatility for the Kremlin's candidates in presidential elections. The main finding is that "regime-type" or more precisely "authoritarianism" is the key explanatory variable. Stronger authoritarian rulers are able to control regional elites and ensure the best results for UR by exerting administrative pressure on the voters. This reduces the level of volatility in support for UR. At the same time, economic and institutional explanations have a partial significance. Here, Duma elections differ from presidential elections which demonstrate a much lower degree of volatility and insignificance of economic factors.

Although the spread of direct mayoral elections was weakened during the 2000s, they have survived in many municipalities until the present time. In the context of Russia’s ‘power vertical’, regional authorities are strongly involved in local elections. As a rule, they have their own candidates and provide them with support during election campaigns. It is not surprising that most often the candidates of governors are incumbents. At the same time, there are many cases when a governor prefers not to support an incumbent. Based on data from Perm Krai, this article examines some competing explanations for the strategy employed by the Governor in mayoral elections. The analysis demonstrates that an incumbent’s ability to provide the party of power with the best elections results is the most important factor determining the support of the governor. The second significant factor is the resources of the candidate. The policy implementation qualities of an incumbent are also taken into account but they are the least important. These results are in line with the general logic of an ‘electoral authoritarian regime’ that requires the building of ‘electoral vertical’.

In the context of electoral authoritarianism, political mobilization is likely to be a more reasonable explanation of cross-regional variations in voting for the party of power than the diversity of the regions’ policy preferences. In the Russian Federation, the political machines which coordinate various activities aimed at mobilizing people to vote for United Russia demonstrate different degrees of effectiveness. This article examines the structural factors that facilitate machine politics focusing on ethnic networks. Although strong ethnic networks are more likely to arise if the members of an ethnic group live close to each other, and at the same time separately from other ethnic groups, so far researchers have neglected to consider the localization of ethnic groups within the territory of an administrative unit as a factor. In order to fill the gap, we have created an original geo-referenced dataset of the localization of non-Russian ethnic groups within every region of the Russian Federation, and developed special GIS (geographic information systems) techniques and tools to measure them in relation to the Russian population. This has made it possible to include the localization of ethnic groups as a variable in the study of cross-regional differences in voting for United Russia. Our analysis finds that the effect of non-Russians’ share of the population on voting for UR increases significantly if non-Russian groups are at least partially geographically segregated from Russians within a region.

The main task of authoritarian elections is to guarantee the survival of the regime. Achieving this goal, authoritarian rulers rely on authoritarian electoral mobilization that is employed by political machines, targeted mostly on poor and dependent voters. At the same time, since electoral autocracies permit opposition parties, those voters, who avoid mobilization, are able to make a choice between the government and the opposition. If they are dissatisfied by their personal or social conditions, they are liable to engage in 'performance voting' and give their support to the opposition. In this article, we examine how the two logics of 'mobilized voting' and 'performance voting' relate to each other. The study is based on a large-N analysis of local level variations in the electoral support of Russia's three systemic opposition parties in 2016 Duma elections, and a unique dataset comprised of electoral and social-economic data, from local (municipal) units.