Dense Networks, Ethnic Minorities, and Electoral Mobilization in Contemporary Russia

ABSTRACT Dense networks are supposed to allow political machines to solve the “commitment problem” that is typical for electoral mobilization. Highlighting the effect of dense networks, we study the features of local communities that facilitate their emergence: countryside, small size of a settlement, and “segregated” type of ethnic groups’ localization in relation to each other. On the ground of the 2016 Duma elections, an original dataset based on local-level data and GIS techniques, we examine these attributes of local units in the combination with ethnic structure, and find moderator-type effects that indirectly prove the importance of dense networks in electoral mobilization.