Duma Elections 2011

This issue focuses on the December 2011 Duma elections, examining the campaign, electoral process and the results, and considers the implications for the Russian political landscape ahead of the March 2012 Presidential election. The first article analyzes the electoral campaign and how this impacted on the unexpectedly poor showing for United Russia, and what this suggests about public opinion on the Putin/Medvedev regime. The second article assesses the party system and the authorities' attempts to manipulate its nature over the last decade, and concludes that parties in Russia have lost ideological coherence and inter-party competition has been replaced by competition between interest groups within parties. And the third article examines the changes to electoral law over the last decade, and the impact this has had on Russia's political and electoral landscape.