Putin's Russia is not democratic

To be a true democracy, it isn't enough to simply have elections for government officials. As wikipedia states, "a common feature of democracy as currently understood and practiced is competitive elections." Elections in a true democracy must be competitive. That is to say, they must be fair and they must provide opportunity for competition to the ruling power. The alternative to a competitive election is a rigged election. My opponent makes the mistake of assuming that the only way to rig an election is to physically tamper with ballots. An election is rigged whenever the election is set up so as to favor a certain person or group of people. This can be done in a number of ways besides physically altering ballots or preventing opposition from voting. Any process that sets up the election so that one person or group has unfair advantage over the another is rigging and disqualifies a state from the qualification "democratic." While my opponent may be correct that Putin has the support of the Russian populace, that does not indicate that the elections meet the criteria for a democracy. As McFaul and Petrov wrote in their article "What the Elections Tell Us," "it is hard to imagine any way in which Putin and his surrogates could have lost free and fair elections in 2003 or 2004… We can only speculate about the results of free and fair elections, however, because the actual elections in December 2003 and March 2004 took place in a context that did not offer a level playing field." Competitive elections do not take place in Russia because of the following: 1) The national media is (forcibly) controlled by the state. This media is used to control information flow to the people regarding political matters. "When Putin came to power, only three networks had the national reach to really count in politics—ORT, RTR, and NTV. . . Putin effectively acquired control of ORT, the channel with the biggest national audience… RTR was always fully state-owned, and so it was even easier to tame. Controlling the third channel, NTV, proved more difficult since its owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, decided to fight. But in the end, he too lost not only NTV but also the daily newspaper… When the fall parliamentary campaign started, the Kremlin de facto controlled all television networks with a national reach…" "Heads of local state-owned television stations continue to follow political signals from regional executives, and most regional heads of administration stood firmly behind Putin in the last electoral cycle" 2) Those in the media who speak out against Putin or support opposition are suppressed because of the political threat they pose. "Moreover, Putin has changed the atmosphere for doing journalistic work. When journalists have criticized his policies, such as the war in Chechnya or his handling the sinking of the submarine Kursk in 2000, he has called them traitors.7 His most vocal media critics have lost their jobs, have been harassed by the tax authorities or by sham lawsuits, or have been arrested. . . Freedom House downgraded Russia's media from Partly Free to Not Free. Reporters Without Borders. . ranked Russia 121st out of 139 countries assessed (just one ranking above Iran), making it one of the worst performers in the postcommunist world" 3) Issues of free press are directly related to a legitimate democracy. Government control of the media and suppression of dissent gives the ruling party a distinct and clear unfair advantage in elections. 4) Putin's government HAS directly intervened in regional election to protect Kremlin power. "Regional leaders who have resisted Putin's authority have found elections rigged against them. In the last gubernatorial elections in the Kursk, Saratov, and Rostov oblasts, as well as in the presidential races in Chechnya and Ingushetiya, the removal of the strongest contenders ensured an outcome favorable to the Kremlin. As demonstrated most vividly in St. Petersburg in 2003, Moscow also has intervened in critical regional votes to provide incentives for inconvenient incumbents to step aside and allow pro-Kremlin candidates easy victories." 5) Along with other incentives, Kremlin intervention in regional matters coerced regional politicians to switch parties or engage in active support in accord with Putin's agenda on the national stage. "This set of reforms regarding the distribution of power between Moscow and the regions had tremendous consequences for national elections in 2003 and 2004. Wielding carrots and sticks, the Kremlin eliminated the serious divisions among regional elites that had structured the main drama of the 1999 parliamentary elections. By the fall of 2003, almost all regional leaders were supporting Putin and United Russia. The regional strongmen who had created Fatherland-All Russia fours years earlier had become staunch United Russia supporters. An amazing thirty governors and presidents of republics appeared on United Russia's party list. These regional executives also wielded their local resources to support United Russia candidates in single-mandate district races. In many regions, especially in the republics, regional bosses still made sure that their candidates won these single-mandate seats. . .Pressure from the Kremlin on regional leaders to deliver a landslide victory in the single-mandate districts meant that opposition parties, including even the CPRF, had a difficult time winning seats. " 6) Putin's reforms on the involvement of economically powerful men in government gave the ruling party leverage to coerce oligarchs into loyalty to the Kremlin. "Very early in his term, Putin made clear that he wanted new rules of the game for governing the interaction between the state and Russia's plutocrats: The oligarchs could no longer treat the state as simply another tool to be used for their personal enrichment. Instead, Putin implied that the oligarchs had to get out of politics altogether… This selective and arbitrary enforcement of the law (as well as certain violations of Khodorkovsky's constitutional rights as a defendant) sent a clear message to Russia's rich about the necessity of remaining absolutely loyal to the Kremlin. Those oligarchs . . . got the message. In the 2003 parliamentary campaign, they continued to contribute significant resources to political campaigns, but only as sanctioned by the Kremlin" 7) This use of government power to secure campaign funds and prevent the funding of political rivals is a clear instance of electoral rigging. The government stacked the deck against political opponents through various policies. This is tantamount to forcing candidates out of the election- an action that is clearly tampering with elections. 8) The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that local elections FAILED to meet requirements for DEMOCRATIC elections. "Before the legislative balloting, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued [a] preliminary report on a Russian election, stressing that the run up to the State Duma elections ‘failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments for democratic elections. In addition, important safeguards in domestic legislation were not enforced by the Russian authorities. This. . . calls into question Russia's fundamental willingness to meet European and international standards for democratic elections.'" Conclusion: Putin's government played an enormous role in the 2003/2004 elections. The way Putin utilized state resources and media control to influence the election gave him an enormous unfair advantage over political adversaries. In this way, Russia fails to hold competitive elections. Rather, its elections are highly influenced by the state in a manner that clearly favors the ruling party. In other words, they are rigged. By failing to hold competitive elections, Russia fails to qualify as a democracy. Source: "What the Elections Tell Us" (Journal of Democracy Vol.15,3,2004)