Center for Security Studies

Re-Setting the Game: The Logic and Practice of Official Support for Alexei Navalny’s Mayoral Run

Re-Setting the Game: The Logic and Practice of Official Support for Alexei Navalny’s Mayoral Run

Author(s): Julian G. Waller
Editor(s): Stephen Aris, Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic, Heiko Pleines, Hans-Henning Schröder, Aglaya Snetkov
Series: Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)
Issue: 136
Pages: 6-10
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen; Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University
Publication Year: 2013

Alexei Navalny, the main opposition candidate running in the Moscow mayoral election, paradoxically received support from his Kremlin-backed opponent several times throughout the campaign. The goals and ambitions of acting mayor and candidate Sergei Sobyanin best explain this uncharacteristic promotion of an opposition politician by the authorities. The logic of Sobyanin’s hesitant, yet persistent, support for Navalny’s candidacy seeks to tap into legitimacy as the new basis for political agency and self-promotion. Only Navalny could deliver that legitimacy, without which Sobyanin would remain in his more subordinate role as Moscow city’s apparatchik-in-chief. This reality became clear as the campaign progressed, and strongly changed the nature of its dynamic over the course of the summer. In the aftermath of the election, it remains unclear if this policy was a success.

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