When Candidate Exclusion Is Viewed as Unfair: Survey Experimental Evidence from Russian Elections.
submitted for review
When information about opposition candidates’ popularity is available, their exclusion from authoritarian elections—even under seemingly plausible pretexts—is likely to raise strong suspicions of manipulation among a substantial number of moderate regime supporters, though not among most loyal pro-government voters. However, a portion of the latter group may still develop at least some uncertainty about the fairness of excluding viable candidates. The study was conducted shortly before the 2021 Duma elections.
Detecting Clone Candidates: An Approach Using Electoral and Biographical Data (w/ Ekaterina Paustyan).
Thousands of clone candidates—individuals posing as real politicians to siphon votes from them—have been fielded in elections in Ukraine, Russia, India, and other countries. Drawing on publicly available electoral and biographical data, this study introduces a method for identifying clones without over-relying on often unavailable and error-prone media reports. The resulting dataset comprises nearly 350 clone candidates, identified from over 10,000 individuals who participated in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections during 2000s and 2010s.
Explaining Clone Candidates’ Electoral Performance: Evidence from Ukraine (w/ Ekaterina Paustyan).
In Ukraine’s parliamentary elections, clone candidates have tended to siphon more votes from their targets—real politicians whom they impersonate—in more rural electoral districts and when listed above them on the ballot. These findings suggest that more educated voters with better access to quality media, who are more likely to reside in urban areas, are more likely to demonstrate greater resilience to electoral manipulation. This study utilizes biographical as well as district- and precinct-level data (more than 15,000 data points).
What Drives Pro-Government Mass Mobilization in Autocracies (w/ Kristin Eichhorn).
Pro-government rallies are a common feature of many autocratic regimes, often organized during electoral periods and in response to pro-democracy protests. Drawing on cross-country data from 1990 to 2020, this study examines how authorities in non-democratic regimes mobilize public sector employees, university students, and individuals working in state-controlled sectors of the economy for such demonstrations.
Ukraine-Related Disinformation in Belarusian Pro-Government Telegram Channels (w/ Alesia Rudnik).
Drawing on qualitative content analysis, this article investigates how Belarusian pro-government sources on Telegram disseminate disinformation related to Ukraine. Despite Belarus’s alignment with Russia, the overall frequency of such posts is found to be relatively low. Nevertheless, the majority of the disinformation originates from Russian sources, and the use of fabricated images and videos falsely attributed to reputable Western media outlets is relatively widespread.