IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v31y2001i02p225-246_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Business Cycles and Russian Elections, or the Manipulations of ‘Chudar’

Author

Listed:
  • TREISMAN, DANIEL
  • GIMPELSON, VLADIMIR

Abstract

Political business cycle theories tend to focus on one policy instrument or macroeconomic lever at a time. Efforts to find empirical evidence of opportunistic business cycles have turned up rather meagre results. We suggest that these facts may be related. If ways of manipulating the economy to win votes are thought of as substitutes, with changing relative costs, one would expect rational policy makers to switch between them in different periods as costs change. We illustrate this argument with a discussion of Russia. In Russia, four nationwide votes have been held since 1993. We deduce the set of policies that a rational, behind-the-scenes strategist – the ‘Chudar’ of the title – would recommend to an incumbent who believes the voters to vote retrospectively. We show that the expectations are borne out closely in the actual macroeconomic data.

Suggested Citation

  • Treisman, Daniel & Gimpelson, Vladimir, 2001. "Political Business Cycles and Russian Elections, or the Manipulations of ‘Chudar’," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 225-246, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:31:y:2001:i:02:p:225-246_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123401000096/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rabia Nazir & Muhammad Nasir & Idrees Khawaja, 2022. "Political Budget Cycle: A Sub-National Evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 18(3), pages 343-367, November.
    2. Akhmed Akhmedov & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2004. "Opportunistic Political Cycles: Test in a Young Democracy Setting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 119(4), pages 1301-1338.
    3. Blessing Chiripanhura & Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa, 2015. "Aid, Political Business Cycles and Growth in Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(8), pages 1387-1421, November.
    4. Blessing Chiripanhura & Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa, 2015. "Aid, Political Business Cycles and Growth in Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(8), pages 1387-1421, November.
    5. Verstyuk Sergey, "undated". "Electoral cycles in Ukraine," EERC Working Paper Series 02-209e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    6. Holger Kachelein & Endrit Lami & Drini Imami, 2011. "Election-Related Cycles in Publicly Supplied Goods in Albania," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 9(1), pages 13-25.
    7. Damir Piplica, 2015. "Corruption and Political View Point of the Governments in Transition Countries EU Members," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(1), pages 73-87, January.
    8. Akhmed Akhmedov, 2006. "Human Capital and Political Business Cycles," Working Papers w0087, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
    9. Akhmedov Akhmed & Orlov Evgeniy, 2004. "Can Government Paternalism Prevent Credit Market Failure?," EERC Working Paper Series 04-02e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    10. Akhmed Akhmedov, 2006. "Human Capital and Political Business Cycles," Working Papers w0087, New Economic School (NES).
    11. Solomon Abayomi Olakojo, 2020. "A Markov‐switching analysis of Nigeria's business cycles: Are election cycles important?," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 32(1), pages 67-79, March.
    12. Akhmedov Akhmed, 2006. "Human Capital and Political Business Cycles," EERC Working Paper Series 06-02e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    13. Maria Ponomareva & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2004. "Federal tax arrears in Russia Liquidity problems, federal redistribution or regional resistance?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 12(3), pages 373-398, September.
    14. Lami, Endrit & Imami, Drini & Kächelein, Holger, 2016. "Fuelling political fiscal cycles by opportunistic privatization in transition economies: The case of Albania," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 220-231.
    15. Günther G. Schulze & Nikita Zakharov, 2018. "Corruption in Russia - Historic Legacy and Systemic Nature," CESifo Working Paper Series 6864, CESifo.
    16. Canes-Wrone, Brandice & Ponce de Leon, Christian & Thieme, Sebastian, 2022. "Electoral Cycles, Investment, and Institutional Constraints in Developing Democracies," IAST Working Papers 22-129, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    17. Damir Piplica & Ivo Speranda, 2015. "Unemployment and investments in various political environments of The transition countries EU members," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 11(1), pages 23-37.
    18. O. Fiona Yap, 2010. "Strategic Government Spending in South Korea and Taiwan: Lessons for Emergent Democracies," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(3), pages 613-634, September.
    19. Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina & Ponomareva, Maria, 2004. "Federal Tax Arrears in Russia: Liquidity Problems, Federal Redistribution or Russian Resistance?," CEPR Discussion Papers 4267, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Akhmedov Akhmed, "undated". "Human capital and political business cycles," EERC Working Paper Series 03-213e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    21. Aaskoven, Lasse, 2018. "Polity age and political budget cycles: Evidence from a Danish municipal reform," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 75-84.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:31:y:2001:i:02:p:225-246_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.