Tag: Parliamentary elections

“Extraordinary” Ordinary Elections in Armenia

Posted on June 1, 2026 | Policy Brief

On June 7, Armenia holds parliamentary elections following a competitive and aggressive campaign. The central battleground is twofold: the fragile peace deal with Azerbaijan, and Armenia’s geopolitical dilemma — alignment with Russia or movement towards Europe. Parties have raised the stakes to an existential level, warning that voting for the wrong side risks the country’s very survival — leaving little room for more conventional policy debates. While polls are favorable for the incumbent, nearly a third of voters remain undecided or silent, and their choice will determine everything.

Electoral Scene

On June 7, 2026, Armenia will elect its 9th parliament. Voters will be choosing from a list of 19 parties or alliances (blocks), among which the incumbent party and a fragmented opposition represented by a few relatively large players.

Elections are primarily dominated by issues related to national security, the peace process with Azerbaijan, and the country’s geopolitical orientation between Europe and Russia (Broers, 2026).

Observers and experts report a high degree of polarization and aggressive rhetoric used during the campaign (Hovhannisyan & Meister, 2026).

If one would like to characterize the elections with one word, that would be “Threat”. The main message the parties are trying to convey to voters is that the cost of making the wrong choice (essentially, not choosing them) is catastrophic, bordering on the country’s existence. As a consequence, there is very little discussion on policy platforms.

The main intrigue of the elections is a relatively high share of undecided voters and those who do not reveal their preferences during the polls. Will they participate and who would they vote for – this is the main question of these elections.

Electoral System

Armenia is a parliamentary democracy in which the National Assembly is elected by proportional representation, with seats allocated among parties and alliances that pass the legal threshold (4% for parties and 8% for blocks/alliances of parties). Since the constitutional changes of 2015 shifted executive power toward the Parliament, the prime minister is elected by the National Assembly, while the President is chosen indirectly and has a largely ceremonial role. Seats allocated to a party are distributed by calculating the proportion of the votes given to that party with respect to all votes of the parties that overcome the threshold.  If no party reaches 50+ percent of the seats, coalition talks are opened. First, the party with the relative majority of votes gets the opportunity to form a coalition that would ensure 50+ votes, and in case this does not work out, other parties above the threshold are allowed to form a coalition. If this fails, the second round of elections will be held.

The electoral law requires each third position in the electoral list of the party to be allocated to a woman. According to the analysis of party lists, 38 percent of all candidates across 19 parties are women, and the average age of candidates is 46. Overall, the lists include more than 2,100 candidates, and reserved seats for ethnic minorities are allocated through a separate list of 22 candidates. Specifically, four seats in the Parliament are reserved for ethnic minorities – Russians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and Kurds.

Figure 1. Age and gender in the forthcoming 2026 Parliamentary elections’ candidate lists

Source: Central Electoral Commission, authors calculations. Note: CC – Civil Contract (ruling party), Hayastan – Hayastan Alliance, SA – Strong Armenia, PA- Prosperous Armenia, WU – Wings of Unity. See Section Main Players for details.

Main Players

While 19 parties are registered for the elections, the real competition, as one would expect, takes place among only a few of them.

Civil Contract, in power since 2018 under the leadership of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, is the favorite of the race. The party positions itself as reformist, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy. Its main propositions are continuing institutional reforms, pursuing peace negotiations with Azerbaijan, and gradually deepening cooperation with the EU and Western partners.

Strong Armenia is a newly established opposition force led by major entrepreneur and investor Samvel Karapetyan. The party prioritizes business-oriented governance, national security, and closer strategic ties with Russia. It emphasizes traditional national institutions, such as the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Hayastan Alliance is led by former president Robert Kocharyan. Its core proposition is that Armenia requires more experienced and security-focused leadership, closer strategic coordination with Russia, and a tougher negotiating posture in regional affairs.

Prosperous Armenia is a business-oriented political party that emphasizes economic growth, social support programs, and improvements in living standards. Its main propositions include job creation, infrastructure development, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and maintaining a pragmatic and balanced foreign policy approach.

Wings of Unity, led by former Ombudsman Armen Tatoyan, positions itself around national security, rule of law, protection of national interests, and institutional resilience. The movement emphasizes strengthening Armenia’s security architecture, defending human rights and state sovereignty, and restoring public trust in governance and national institutions.

While not among the main players, there is an interesting “experiment” embedded in these elections. Among the parties competing, there is a party called “Against all”. A ballot option that existed years ago is now featured as a party with essentially only one program point: change the electoral law, unwind the Parliament, and call for new elections.

Core Issues

It is difficult to judge who sets the main agenda, but the central debated issues are quite clear.

One of the central topics of the elections is “peace building” with Azerbaijan. In its program, Prime Minister Pashinyan states: ” On June 7, go vote and stand for peace by supporting the Civil Contract party”. While the incumbent views its actions as protecting a fragile peace through international legitimacy, the contestants view the same actions as eroding national sovereignty and traditional foundations.

A consequential discussion is what the role of external actors is and the extent to which they influence the country’s policy agenda. The closer the election date, the harsher the rhetoric. “Electing Tsarukyan (the leader of Prosperous Armenia party) is equivalent to electing Aleksandr Lukashenko (the President of Belarus),” announced Prime Minister Pashinyan during the meeting with his supporters (May 13, 2026). “Electing Pashinyan is the same as electing Aliyev (the President of Azerbaijan),” announced the former President and one of the opposition leaders, Robert Kocharyan, during a similar event (May 19, 2026).

During his visit to Armenia within the framework of the 8th Summit of the European Political Community (EPC) on May 4th, French President Macron said: “Armenia has indeed made the choice… to break free from this constraint and turn towards Europe” (Brezar, 2026). On May 9th, after the traditional parade in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, during a press conference, highlighted that Armenia needs to make up its mind about European Integration as soon as possible to avoid consequences observed in Ukraine (Civilnet, May 11, 2026).

And this leads to the second core issue: Armenia’s alignment in the confrontation between Russia and Europe. Essentially, both the EU and Russia implicitly or explicitly push Armenia to make a choice, and irrespective of their intentions, this becomes one of the central issues around which the electoral competition is constructed.

For the first time, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is not among the important ones in Armenia. As an important background, these are the first elections since the exodus of Armenians from the region in September of 2023. Roughly 35 thousand out of a total of more than 100 thousand refugees will be eligible to vote as a consequence of applying and getting Armenian citizenship (News.am, March 20, 2026 ). With 2.5 million eligible voters, the refugees will hardly have any effect on these elections.

What Do Programs Contain?

Heated mutual allegations and strong language regarding the core issues make the headlines of these elections. But the parties also compete on more specific promises. The cornerstone of the opposition party Strong Armenia’s program is the creation of 300 thousand jobs within 6 years from now (Party programs are available at https://www.elections.am/Elections/Parliamentary). The incumbent party’s promise is somewhat less ambitious – 25 thousand jobs annually. These elections are not lacking in creative ideas either. To mention a few: Wings of Unity proposes abandoning VAT and moving to sales tax, Prosperous Armenia promises to double the minimum wage and triple GDP in five years. In different framings, free education, free housing for families with more than 3 children, subsidized agriculture, and lower taxes for small businesses are included in the programs of various parties.

Interestingly, none of the major parties (maybe with the exception of Hayastan Alliance) advocates for a certain choice between deeper integration with the West (be that the EU or the  US) or Russia. At least on paper, the parties find it possible to continue maintaining balance and developing relations with all stakeholders in the region.

The External Squeeze

Major regional and international commitments of the Republic provide a rich playfield for both the current government and the opposition. On August 8, 2025, Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev joined the US President Donald Trump in Washington to pre-sign the peace treaty. A major element of the summit was the announcement of a proposed regional transit and infrastructure initiative called the TRIPP project (“Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”). On the margins of the same meeting in Washington, Armenia and the US also agreed to cooperate on nuclear energy production in Armenia. All these steps, coupled with an ongoing visa liberalization process and deeper engagement with EU partners, resulted in voiced concerns by Russia. In fact, Russia went beyond voicing concerns. On May 22nd, Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s federal agency responsible for consumer protection and enforcement of food and product safety regulations) temporarily suspended the import and turnover of all batches of Jermuk mineral water in Russia (ARKA (a), May 22, 2026). Two days earlier, Rosselkhoznadzor (Russia’s federal agency responsible for phytosanitary control and oversight of animal and plant imports) announced that starting from May 22, the import of Armenian flowers to Russia will be temporarily restricted. Both are important export items for Armenia (ARKA (b), May 22, 2026).

The Kremlin’s approach is rational – make sure that in the process of possible future EU integration, the costs of leaving the Eurasian Economic Union kick in much earlier than the benefits from deeper cooperation with the EU. Whether this is a signal to any winner of the elections or an indirect way to influence outcomes is an open question.

The fact that the leader of the new opposition party, Samvel Karapetyan, has made his fortune in Russia complicates the landscape even more.

What Do Polls Say?

The results of the most recent polls at the time of this brief’s writing are summarized in Figure 2.

Figure 2. April-May poll results of the main competing parties

Source: IRI – International Republican Institute (May, 2026); EVN Report (April, 2026); GIA (May, 2026), Gallup International Association. (not to be confused with Gallup).

While all these polls claim to be nationally representative and to provide results within conventional error margins, the differences among them are significant. Also, in the 2021 elections, the winning party received more than 50% of the total votes, while pre-election polls had put it at roughly half that share (IRI, May 2021). One likely source contributing to this difference was the involvement of originally undecided voters. In 2021, according to the same source, 17% of poll respondents planned to abstain with certainty or with a high likelihood. If many of them eventually decided to come and vote for the incumbent, that could have tilted the scales.

In the current elections, the situation repeats. The share of undecided voters according to various polls is quite large as well (Figure 3). What if the undecided voters make up their minds and participate?

Figure 3. Undecided voters and possible abstainers

Source: IRI – International Republican Institute (May, 2026); EVN Report (April, 2026); GIA (May, 2026), Gallup International Association. (not to be confused with Gallup). “Will not vote” refers to those who are certain about that choice.

We have implemented a simple simulation to understand the role undecided voters can play. To do that, we have assumed a scenario in which the incumbent’s support is taken from the least optimistic poll, and the opposition’s support is slightly boosted (see note below Figure 4).

Figure 4. Simulation of the effect of undecided votes on outcomes, assuming they vote.

Source: Author’s calculations. Scenario assumptions: Share of undecided votes – 20%. Support in population assumption: Civil Contract (CC – incumbent) – 25%, Strong Armenia (SA) – 15%, Hayastan Block – 8%, Prosperous Armenia – slightly less than 4%. Shares going to the opposition are split between the two parties in respective proportions. The votes of respondents refusing to answer (around 20%) were split among all parties in proportion to their existing (stated) support. It is assumed that no other parties pass the threshold.

Essentially, the results indicate that even if all undecided votes are mobilized, the opposition must capture more than half of them to bring the elections to the 2nd round.

Conclusion

An objective that the parties seem to have accomplished quite well was to convince the devoted voters that their defeat would result in an apocalyptic outcome. As a result, we witness aggressive campaigns, high polarization, and a lack of policy discussion. Whether this will encourage or discourage voters to participate, we will learn on June 7th.

At the moment, neither the EU nor Armenia has expressed readiness to consider granting Armenia candidate-country status, nor has Armenia announced the intention to exit the Eurasian Economic Union. Past experience suggests that these are long processes, taking years if not decades to unravel, and multiple pivots can occur in these directions over the coming years, irrespective of the election outcome.

Yet even if the vote does not ultimately determine where the country is heading, it remains decisive for who will steer it — and that hinges on a single unknown: a bloc of voters who refuse to be counted. The ruling party leads in the polls, but its margin may depend on them. For the opposition merely to reach a second round, it would need not just to mobilize undecided voters but to win more than half of them – yet, the evidence points to most of them not voting at all, as in 2021. Armenia has never gone to a second round, and the numbers make a first-round result the most probable outcome. What June 7th will really reveal, then, is whether a campaign fought almost entirely on fear pulled anyone off the sidelines, or pushed them further away.

References

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this brief are the author’s personal views and in no way reflect the views of the American University of Armenia, or those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Accountability in Russia

Posted on December, 2012 | Policy Brief

20121229 Accountability in Russia Image 02

This policy brief summarizes two recent research papers that are related to obstacles to political accountability in modern Russia and potential ways to overcome these obstacles. The first paper provides a rigorous assessment of the extent of electoral fraud in Moscow city during the parliamentary elections held on December 4, 2011. Using random assignment of independent observers, we estimate the actual share of votes for the incumbent United Russia party to be at least 11 percentage points lower than the official count (35.6 percent instead of 46.5 percent). A less rigorous, but more realistic estimate is 21 percentage points. These results suggest that electoral accountability in Russia is limited. The second paper demonstrates that even in an environment with low electoral accountability and limited freedom of media, alternative accountability mechanisms may emerge. In particular, anti-corruption campaigns in social media may affect the valuation of state-controlled companies, so that market forces put a disciplining effect on the managers of SOEs. We study consequences of blog postings of a popular Russian anti-corruption blogger and shareholder activist Alexei Navalny on the stock prices of state-controlled companies. In an event-study analysis, we find a negative effect of company-related blog postings on both daily abnormal returns and within-day 5-minute returns. We use the incidence of distributed denial-of-services (DDoS) attacks to show that the effect is not driven by the endogenous timing of blog postings. We also show that there are long-term effects of certain types of posts on stock returns, trading volume, and volatility. Overall, our evidence implies that blog postings about corruption in state-controlled companies have a negative causal impact on stock performance of these companies.

To study the extent of electoral fraud we employ data from a large-scale field experiment that allows us to estimate the amount of electoral fraud in the city of Moscow during Russian parliamentary elections in December 2011. In particular, we exploit randomized assignment of independent observers to polling stations. Prior to the parliamentary elections the independent NGO Citizen Observer (Grajdanin-nabludatel) trained more than 500 volunteer observers in the city of Moscow. The observers were sent to 156 randomly selected polling stations. The polling stations were selected using a systematic sampling technique. In particular, polling stations were divided by electoral districts. Within each district, polling stations were sorted according to their official number assigned by Central Election Committee. Every 25th polling station within electoral district starting from the 1st was assigned for observation, resulting in a sample of 185 polling stations. The Citizen Observer’s network recruited enough observers to cover 156 of the 185 polling stations, which corresponds to 4.9 percent of the 3,164 ordinary polling stations in Moscow.[1] To make sure that this procedure does not lead to a biased sample because of some hidden periodicities we check that in the previous parliamentary elections in 2007 polling stations selected using a similar procedure were not different from other polling stations.

Comparison of the share of votes received by different parties and the turnout between polling stations with independent observers from Citizen Observer (treatment group) and without observers (control group) is presented in Figure 1. The results indicate that the presence of observers led to a decrease in the share of votes for United Russia of 10.8 percentage points and the turnout at the polling stations with observers was lower by 6.5 percentage points.

Figure 1. Vote Shares in 2011

 petrova_fig1

 

Notes: The figure is reproduced from Enikolopov, Ruben, Vasily Korovkin, Maria Petrova, Konstantin Sonin, and Alexei Zakharov (forthcoming) “Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections in December 2011: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The above results are likely to provide a lower bound on the extent of the electoral fraud, since the presence of observers at the polling stations did not fully prevent fraud. To provide more information on the extent of the fraud, we divide all treatment stations into three groups: those in which observers reported no serious violations (75 polling stations), those in which serious violations were reported, but the observers received the final protocol (43 polling stations), and those in which all observers were not able to get the official protocol of the vote count (38 polling stations),  which happened if the observers were dismissed from the polling station or the heads of electoral commissions illegally refused to give a signed copy of the protocol.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of vote shares for United Russia at polling stations from these three groups. For observations in the control group the distribution seems to be bimodal with two peaks – one around 25 percent of votes and another one around 55 percent of votes. The distribution for the precincts with observers also has two peaks, with the first one around 25 percent of votes. Note, however, that the second mode of this distribution, around 50 percent of votes, is noticeably smaller as compared with the control group. Moreover, for the polling stations in the treatment group in which observers reported no serious violations the distribution becomes unimodal with the peak around 25 percent of votes for United Russia. Thus, the results are consistent with the following hypothesis: the distribution of vote shares for United Russia in the control group is simply a mixture of two distributions that correspond to polling stations without large electoral fraud (for which the distribution is centered around 25 percent of votes) and polling stations with substantial electoral fraud (for which the distribution is centered around 55 percent of votes). Note also that a similar pattern is observed for the distribution of turnout across three groups of precincts, but not for the distribution of vote shares for other parties.

Figure 2. Distribution of votes for United Russia

 petrova_fig2

Notes: The figure is reproduced from Enikolopov, Ruben, Vasily Korovkin, Maria Petrova, Konstantin Sonin, and Alexei Zakharov (forthcoming) “Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections in December 2011: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To assess the overall influence of the electoral fraud in Moscow on the outcome of Russian parliamentary elections, we also estimate the total number of votes that United Russia received due to electoral fraud. As both vote share of a ruling party and turnout were affected by electoral fraud, we look at the number of votes for each party as a share of registered voters in precincts with and without observers. Based on these numbers, our conservative estimate of the number of votes, which United Russia received at the ordinary precincts in Moscow due to electoral fraud, is equal to 635,000. This is a lower bound for the size of electoral fraud as it assumes that the presence of observers fully prevented any fraud, and at least anecdotal evidence suggests that it is not always the case. If we use results from the polling stations in which observers report no serious violations as an alternative estimate, the number of stolen votes increases up to 1,090,000.

The results presented above indicate that because of electoral fraud, voting does not constitute an efficient mechanism to replace those in power, and, therefore, electoral accountability in Russia does not work to discipline politicians in the office.  Other means to hold politicians and public officials accountable are also limited, since traditional media is often censored and politics is generally not competitive. We ask the question whether in such environment there is any alternative ways to hold public officials accountable, and, in particular, if new media, such as blogs, can make a difference. Specifically, we study whether blog postings of a popular Russian blogger, shareholder activist, and, subsequently, one of the leaders of emerging opposition to President Putin’s regime, Alexei Navalny, have had an impact on stock performance of the companies whose wrongdoings he uncovered and made public.

First, we show that daily abnormal returns of the companies Navalny wrote about were significantly lower after Navalny’s posts about them. The results hold if we control for mentions of these companies in other types of media (business newspapers, online newspapers, and blogs) and for company-year and year-month fixed effects. In addition to looking at daily abnormal returns, we show similar results for 5-minute abnormal returns even controlling for trading-day fixed effects (see Figure 3). The magnitude of this effect is quite sizable with a daily decline of 0.5 p.p. after an average blog posting, and a daily decline of 0.9 p.p. after an important blog posting.

Figure 3. 5-minute Abnormal Returns and Navalny’s Blog Postings, Non-Trading Time (Evenings and Weekends) Excluded
petrova_fig3
 
 

We also provide evidence that the impact of blogging on stock performance is causal. Although the results described above are consistent with the negative impact of blogging, they could be explained, e.g., by selective exposure. To identify the causal effect of blog postings we use an external variable, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on a blog service, as a source of exogenous variation. During the period under study (between January 2008 and August 2011), these DDoS attacks, allegedly, were not specifically targeting the Navalny’s blog, but they affected the accessibility of the whole blog platform, and the Navalny’s blog was also affected. As a result, DDoS attacks either prevented Navalny from writing a post or prevented his readers from reading his blog, but there was no obvious reason why they might influence fundamental determinants of stock prices of the companies Navalny wrote about.

In a reduced form model, we find significant positive effect of DDoS attacks on daily abnormal returns of the companies Navalny wrote about. This effect is stronger for the companies Navalny was more focused on (the latter result holds even with DDoS attack fixed effects). Quantitatively, the effect of DDoS attack is similar to the absence of the post or to the presence of the post with no information about the company in question. We also show that though DDoS effect is increasing in Navalny’s attention to the companies he was writing about, it is not increasing in the amount of general news attention to these companies.

Finally, in addition to the short-term effects we just described, we look at the longer-term one-month effects of blog postings. We find that although there were no long-term effects of the ordinary postings, there were negative and significant long-term effects of the most important postings, as proxied by at least 5 mentions of a company in the post. In addition, during the month after a blog posting, there was a larger volatility of stock returns and a larger trading volume. It appears that the number of transactions, controlling for trading volume, was significantly larger in both the short-term and longer-term perspective. Smaller average transactions are consistent with more individual, in contrast to institutional trading, which suggest that short-run effects of blog posting are driven by attention effects, rather than provision of new information. Overall, all our results are consistent with a negative causal impact of blog postings on stock performance of state-controlled companies, and imply that potentially there is a disciplining effect on the behavior of public officials who manage these companies. Thus, our results suggest that posting in online social networks can affect the stock performance of state-controlled companies, and, as a result, can become an unusual alternative mechanism to putting additional checks on the behavior of government officials even if political competition remains limited, and traditional media remain controlled.

The report is based on two papers: Enikolopov, Ruben, Vasily Korovkin, Maria Petrova, Konstantin Sonin, and Alexei Zakharov (2012) “Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections in December 2011: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (52); Enikolopov, Ruben, with Maria Petrova and Konstantin Sonin “Do Bloggers Have any Real Influence? Event Study of Blog Postings by a Russian Activist Shareholder and Blog Service DDoS Attacks,” CEPR Working Paper.

[1] The sample excludes 210 precincts that had a special status, as they were located in hospitals, military units, or pre-trial detention facilities. These polling stations were excluded from the analysis since sending observers there was not always possible, and it was not clear if these polling stations were sufficiently similar to each other to use randomization. The number of votes cast at these polling stations, however, stood at only 1.8 percent of total votes in Moscow.