Russia and the Vulnerability of Electoral Authoritarianism?

The notion of electoral authoritarianism emerged in the post-cold war world to refer to authoritarian systems that used seemingly democratic electoral means to stabilize non-democratic systems. This was achieved through the production of massive electoral majorities for the ruling party. However an element of uncertainty remains with such elections in that the ruling party may be either defeated or suffer a significant electoral rebuff. Such events are usually seen in terms of the loss of voter support for the party, but as the Russian case shows, this may be better seen as evidence of a basic malfunction of the electoral authoritarian mechanism itself.