Dec. 1, 2025, 11:43 a.m.
Editor's Note
Dear colleagues and friends,
The fourteenth (second in 2025) issue of our journal includes four papers, a virtual roundtable discussion and a book review.
The issue opens with an article by Andrey Lazarev, which applies Scott Mainwaring’s methodology to analyze the institutionalization of the Russian party system. Using data from nationwide elections held between 1991 and 2024, and taking into account (well-argued, though not always obvious) assumptions about the continuity of political parties and candidates, the author calculates several indicators that describe Russia’s party system, including at different stages of its development. These indicators are compared with Mainwaring’s corresponding calculations for Latin American countries and the United States, and turn out to be close to the mean values. Discussing these results, the author also raises a question: does a high level of formal institutionalization always imply that parties exert meaningful influence and play a significant political role?
Arkadii Lyubarev's article analyzes the use of a mixed, non-compensatory electoral system with a dominant plurality component in regional and municipal elections in Russia. The author shows that under such a system, the leading party wins a share of seats that is larger (often significantly) than its share of the vote. This model often results in a "manufactured majority" – that is, when a party secures a majority of seats with the support of less than half of the electorate.
The paper by Andrei Buzin examines the 2025 gubernatorial elections, giving particular attention to the role of three-day voting and remote e-voting.
Andrey Podlazov and Vadim Makarov use two different approaches – statistical and forensic – to make a convincing case for the presence of fraud in the 2024 election to the council of deputies in the settlement of Vlasikha, Moscow Oblast.
The journal’s traditional virtual round table discussion deals with the electoral threshold, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the problem of determining its optimal level.
The issue concludes with a review of the "Atlas of Electoral Geography in Russia, 1991–2024."
We hope the new issue will further secure the journal’s status in academic circles and the pool of topics and authors will continue to expand.