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Flawed electoral legislation in post-Soviet states has facilitated the conduct of undemocratic elections. This article argues that the low quality of electoral legislation in the region results in large part from a process of 'authoritarian diffusion', whereby the election laws of the post-Soviet states extensively borrow and adapt from Soviet laws and post-communist Russian laws. The authorities of most post-Soviet states have routinely disregarded recommendations by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Venice Commission to improve electoral legislation. Besides presenting evidence of 'authoritarian diffusion' across the post-Soviet area, the article highlights the enduring impact of the Soviet legacy and of Russia's relatively hegemonic position in the region.

After Ukraines 201314 Revolution of Dignity, much Western attention to Ukrainian domestic policies has been focused on the countrys Europeanization in the narrow and technical sense of the word, i.e.to its adoption of EU standards and legislation.

As part of a wider democracy promotion effort, political parties in Georgia and Ukraine, as in most other post-communist states, have received assistance from a number of non-governmental but governmentfunded western organizations for most of the post-communist period. This assistance, however, has persistently failed to contribute to making parties in the two former Soviet republics substantially more stable, democratic, and representative.

While international election observations missions often aim to present generalizable claims about the quality and integrity of an election, their findings are rarely based on a representative sample of observations, undermining the credibility of the missions. Bias in the selection of polling stations, among other things, can inflate or deflate the percentage of polling stations where observers find significant flaws. This article uses original data from Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) election observation missions to illustrate the nature of the problem of selection bias in international election observation, and show how the percentage of ‘bad’ polling stations (in the absence of selection bias) can be estimated through a weighting procedure. The article finds that, while there is a strong degree of selection bias, this does not significantly impact the overall percentage of ‘bad’ polling stations that is reported by OSCE observation missions.

Hegemonic parties in authoritarian regimes can fulfill important purposes for those regimes and thereby contribute to their survival. Along with the consolidation of authoritarian regimes, hegemonic political parties have emerged in some post-Soviet states, raising questions about the role that these parties play in the survival of the regimes. This article asks which of the purposes that are frequently ascribed to ruling authoritarian parties are fulfilled by United Russia, the Yeni Azerbaijan Party, and Nur Otan of Kazakhstan, the hegemonic parties of the three strongest consolidated authoritarian regimes with a hegemonic party in the former Soviet Union. It is argued that despite the increasing prominence of the hegemonic parties, full-fledged party-based authoritarianism has not yet been established in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. ► Hegemonic political parties have emerged in Azerbaijan, Russia, and Kazakhstan. ► We examine the purposes of these hegemonic parties for the political regimes. ► The hegemonic parties contribute to weaken the opposition. ► The hegemonic parties do not have organizational and political autonomy. ► It is too early to speak about party-based authoritarianism in post-Sovet Eurasia.

De verkiezing van Volodymir Zelenski tot president in april 2019, heeft geleid tot speculaties over een mogelijke détente in de relatie tussen Oekraïne en Rusland. Verschillende gevangenenruilen en andere diplomatieke inspanningen kunnen de indruk wekken dat Kiev en Moskou inderdaad nader tot elkaar zijn gekomen. In werkelijkheid is het conflict over de bezette gebieden van de Donbas en de Krim even onopgelost als voorheen en is van serieuze toenadering tussen de twee landen geen sprake.

The 2013-2014 Revolution has spurred a boom in civic anti-corruption initiatives across Ukraine. There is as yet little understanding of how effective these initiatives are and what explains variation in their effectiveness. Through a comprehensive study of anti-corruption activism in the regions of Ukraine, (1) this paper analyzes contextual factors that shape local anti-corruption initiatives. We conducted 242 semi-structured interviews with representatives of anti-corruption civic initiatives in 57 cities and towns, representing all the regions of Ukraine that are under the control of the Ukrainian government. We find that political will is an important factor supporting the effectiveness of anti-corruption activism, as it creates more opportunities for impact. However, we identify a substantial number of cases of anti-corruption initiatives that were effective even though local authorities had low political will to counteract corruption.

While international election observations missions often aim to presentgeneralizable claims about the quality and integrity of an election, theirfindings are rarely based on a representative sample of observations,undermining the credibility of the missions. Bias in the selection of pollingstations, among other things, can inflate or deflate the percentage of pollingstations where observers find significant flaws. This article uses original datafrom Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) electionobservation missions to illustrate the nature of the problem of selection biasin international election observation, and show how the percentage of ‘bad’polling stations (in the absence of selection bias) can be estimated through aweighting procedure. The article finds that, while there is a strong degree ofselection bias, this does not significantly impact the overall percentage of‘bad’ polling stations that is reported by OSCE observation missions.

Party politics in the former Soviet Union is fundamentally different from party politics in Western democracies in many ways. Since 1991, two crucial aspects of party politics in the less-than-democratic former Soviet republics have been the impact of authoritarian practices on party politics and the volatile nature of party politics. Starting with the observation that the creation and operation of parties in the former Soviet Union is driven by elite actors, the author seeks to better understand these two aspects of party politics by studying the incentive structures for elite actors from both within the political regimes and outside the region. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Among the small number of those who have written about the subject, there is a realization that party assistance rarely produces lasting and tangible effects. This is confirmed in the cases of Georgia and Ukraine: the state of party development in these two former Soviet republics suggests that party assistance over the course of roughly fifteen years of uninterrupted work has outright failed to achieve its primary objective of contributing to the development of a set of more stable and more democratic parties. The degree of effectiveness of party assistance is a function of the adequacy of the input of assistance plus the permissiveness of conditions on the recipient-side of assistance, ie. a combination of the international and the domestic sides to the assistance. The failure to generate desired effects in party assistance, accordingly, is explained from a combination of shortcomings in the input of assistance and domestic constraints on the reception of assistance. This thesis has not only pointed to the reasons why party assistance has been ineffective in Georgia and Ukraine; the account that is offered also carries distinct implications for other cases. The thesis has proposed a new way of viewing party assistance - as a type of norm promotion - and demonstrated that insights on party assistance can be gained by drawing from literature on norm diffusion. The thesis has besides emphasized the weight of domestic factors for the effectiveness of party assistance, and has explicated how these factors invalidate assistance. By doing so, the thesis presents the most comprehensive and theoretically informed account of the problems with political party assistance in particular cases to date. It has added substantial new insights, summarized below, for our understanding of why party assistance so often fails to deliver.