Elections are central to the consolidation of democratic processes and to the empowerment of
actors in political systems. Hence, violation of electoral integrity is one of the most crucial
forms of political manipulation. Today, in most of the former member states of the Soviet
Union we observe undemocratic elections. While many studies treat electoral malpractice as
occurring in a vacuum, it can be assumed that electoral malpractice is contagious between
countries that belong to the same region. Moreover, despite elections’ significance for
democratic transition, only little systematic cross-national analyses exist, which study the
factors that facilitate the diffusion of flawed electoral processes. This paper contributes to this
research field by addressing the question of how a powerful regional hegemon affects the
diffusion of electoral malpractice over time. Drawing on data of the OSCE and the PARLINE
database, the paper analyses electoral processes in the 15 post-Soviet countries between 1990
and 2015. Thereby, the analysis will control for the effect of electoral system design on the
diffusion of undemocratic elections in the post-Soviet space. In line with the ‘authoritarian
diffusion’-argument, it draws attention to the continuing impact of post-Soviet legacy and the
influence of Russia on electoral processes in its neighbouring countries. Furthermore, it sheds light on how authoritarian learning takes place in the field of electoral systems.
We assume that the electoral practice prevailing in Russia as the regional hegemon impacts on the practices in the other non-Baltic post-Soviet states and that electoral malpractices diffuses trough emulation. Furthermore, we expect to find that elections in single-member district-systems (SMD) under plurality and majority rule are more prone to be object of malpractice than elections in systems of proportional representation (PR).
