Why Hide It?: State Legitimation and Elections in Putin's Russia

I argue that Putin continues to hold elections which are widely perceived as fraudulent because elections help serve a function to Putin: to maintain his hold on power. At the beginning of his rule, elections did so by mimicking a norm of Western liberal democracy, helping solidify the Russian Federation as a legitimate state under Putin. However, I argue that the integrity of this strategy degraded over time, and today elections in the Russian Federation are used as a strategy by Putin to maintain his hold on power by using them to frame Russia as a nation under attack and himself as her chosen defender. I will first analyze the Russian state's search for a political identity in the 2000's and the liberal democratic norm of the West in the same period. Then I will argue that Putin mimicked this norm through elections to solidify his regime in the Russian Federation. Finally, I will argue that after the first two terms of Putin's regime, elections are no longer held to legitimate the Russian state, but rather as a tool used by Putin to frame himself as the necessary leader of Russia, as a different method to maintain his hold on power.