The Voting Behavior of Islamic Minorities in a Fledgling Democracy : The Case of Russia
Scholars and commentators have been divided on whether Islam poses a significant obstacle to democratization and, if so, why. Most empirical studies have either relied on survey research of political attitudes (Norris and Inglehart 2002; Tessler and Gao 2005) or national-level political and socioeconomic data (Fish 2002; Bellin 2004). One relatively neglected approach to this issue is the study of Islamic minorities. As Stepan (2004) notes, there are millions of Muslims around the world who live in existing or developing democracies. In this paper we examine the role of Islam in the electoral politics of Russia. Russia is a particularly interesting and valuable case for the study of Islamic minorities for several reasons. First, it contains many different ethnic minorities some that are historically Muslim and others with different religious traditions. Second, the country’s system of ethnic federalism has promoted a degree of geographic concentration, resistance to assimilation, and regional autonomy and minority control over regional politics. We ascertain the impact that Islam may or may not have on electoral outcomes in Russia using 1995 electoral and 2002 census data disaggregated to the raion level (roughly equivalent to US precincts). In our preliminary results we find that Muslim minorities in Russia possess distinct voting patterns – greater margins of victory for winners, more ethnic voting, greater support for parties tied to the state, and less support for women