Public Choice 111: 73–104, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 73 Russian voting and the initial economic shock of hyperinflation MIKHAIL G. FILIPPOV Political Science Department, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A.;e-mail: filippov@artsci.wustl.edu Accepted 9 October 2000 Abstract. This paper addresses the issue of economic voting in transitional democracies using data from the Russian federal elections. It argues that the shock of inflation that followed the fundamental economic reform has a lasting influence on voters. Specifically, it shows that in Russia, where inflationary policy led to hyperinflation and the widespread loss of personal savings, the magnitude of savings lost at that time continues to explain a significant portion of the variation in the regional support for the Communist party in parliamentary and presidential elections. 1. Introduction The effect of the economic conditions on the vote is generally recognized to be important, 1 with the economy influencing the vote in two ways. First, there is a long-term correspondence between fundamental economic changes and partisan alignment and realignment (Bloom and Price, 1975). For example, The American Voter indicates that the age cohorts entering the electorate in the 1930s, following the economic crash, contained about 10% more demo- cratic identifiers than the cohorts that entered the electorate in the 1920s (Campbell et al., 1960: 154). Second, the body of evidence clearly suggests that short-term macroeconomic fluctuations also affect electoral outcomes. The statistical connection between the short-term economic changes and the vote is found both at the aggregate level – across countries, regions and electoral districts – as well as through the survey research at the individual level. 2 Studies of voting behavior view economic voting as an instrumental act to either reward or punish political incumbents. Together with party identifica- tion, retrospective and prospective evaluations of government policies define individual voting decisions. Party identification representing the voter’s ini- tial bias or predisposition toward the competing parties and candidates can itself be viewed as a product of cumulative voter reactions over time (Fior- ina, 1981). According to the sociotropic voting thesis of Kinder and Kiewiet (1979), voters do not simply respond to their personal economic self-interest