Transparency without Consequences? The Influence of Web Cameras on Voter Turnout and United Russia's Electoral Results in 2016 Russian Federal Parliamentary Elections

This paper is devoted to the analysis of the influece that video monitoring factor had on the presense of electoral fraud during the 2016 federal parliamentary elections. We account the use of fraud-reducing technologies as the authoritarian elite's strategy of electoral process legitimation. Conducting the study, we came up with the fact that web-cameras monitoring doesn't affect the presense of electoral fraud — fraud level may remain the same, and one type of fraud may be simply replaces by another, less detectable type. Thus, applying a new technology, the autocrat does not expect the improvement of electoral integrity, but counts on the ability of the regional elites to adapt their fraud strategy in order to signal their loyalty to the regime, and the level of regional electoral fraudulence depends directly on the elites' desire and capacity to conduct this fraud.