Moscow just bans any candidate that could threaten Putin's reign.
I cannot understand why they even bother to do the elections at all. It is just for show, and everybody know it. Why not just skip it completely?
The law / constitution requires that elections be held. You can't break the law without a lot of people noticing. But you can bend it sufficiently to ensure you win.
It's not about noticing, it's about magical thinking.
Voters feel as if the government has some strength if they voted for somebody or "chose not to vote".
That government feels that even if there's no intrigue at all, having a vote makes them somehow popular.
Source - live in Russia, know this shit.
Ah, I see. In my country the party in power will do whatever they can get away with to improve their chances of winning. So we have elections, but they aren't really 'fair'.
There are gradations. Most likely in your country the elections are more real than in Russia.
I'm talking about the reason that ritual even exists, and the effect it has.
Instead of imprisoning people it's more efficient to allow them to imprison themselves.
Some random Russian middle-age school teacher just goes on with their not particularly happy life because 1) they think they should limit themselves and everybody is doing that and 2) they think they've taken an obligation, as imperfect as the process may be.
Medieval monarchs had their subjects swear oaths for a reason, even though the supporting layer would be jails and gallows.
Humans are not rational beings. We do not act on universal principles. We act on instincts.
All this is intended to persuade "subjects" to control themselves and "sheriffs" (which are a crowd too, state apparatus is too big a thing to be attributed conscious goals at ruling a country) to think that their position is safe.
I was very unhappy until I realized this, in many areas of life.
They feel themselves stronger if an election was held. The populace feels itself somehow weaker and obligated to obey if an election was held.
See my other comment under this post.
To show it to Ukraine probably.
The same reason the US still likes to refer to itself as a democracy. Theater.
Moscow bars any candidate that isnt putin
Putin: "But Colorado did it first"
Something that happened or was uncovered recently anywhere in the world. It doesn't have to have global implications. Just has to be informative in some way.
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