Gerrymandering Ukraine? Electoral Consequences of Occupation

Bibliographic Data

ID12149702
AuthorsPaul D’anieri (0000-0002-4353-5107, Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume33
Issue1
Pages89-108
Publication date2018-08-09
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEast European Politics and Societies and Cultures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0888-3254 • E-ISSN: 1533-8371
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0888325418791020
OpenAlexW2887562715
LanguageEN
Citations received12

The occupation of Crimea and part of the Donbas will prevent roughly 12 percent of Ukrainian voters from participating in elections. These voters voted disproportionately for candidates and parties that supported closer ties with Russia. This article quantifies the changes to the electorate and projects the likely partisan impact. The changes decisively tip the Ukrainian electorate away from the east and south. Candidates and parties can no longer expect to build a national majority primarily in eastern and southern Ukraine, as Viktor Yanukovych did in 2010 and the Party of Regions did in 2012. Anticipating these effects, Ukraine’s government could seek to prolong these voters’ exclusion, while Russia could actually seek to end the occupation to get them re-included. The implication is that various actors could try to “gerrymander” the entire Ukrainian state, a phenomenon that previously has only been explored at the district level, within states. This raises the broader question of how electoral effects shape the many territorial disputes around the world

Annexation · Democracy · Gerrymandering · Government (linguistics · Phenomenon · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Ukrainian · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics

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