Translated by Martina Alessandrelli
Framing the World is an analysis column offering in-depth insights into the key dynamics of international politics. The column is organised by geographical region — Asia, the Americas, Africa & MENA, and Europe — and each week features a thematic focus comprising several coordinated articles. The aim is to provide clear and accessible perspectives on major global developments through the collaborative work of the editorial team.
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On Sunday 20 September, elections to renew the State Duma – the lower house of Parliament – came to a close in Russia. According to official accounts, these elections have once again demonstrated internal political stability: the Central Electoral Commission has in fact attributed over 57 per cent of the vote to United Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s party, ensuring it retains an overwhelming majority of the Chamber’s 450 seats. Government figures also show an official turnout of 56.66 per cent, higher than the 51.72 per cent recorded in the previous parliamentary elections. However, behind these figures, the actual data and an analysis of the electoral system paint a very different picture.
The political landscape that has emerged from the polls reflects the logic of so-called "guided democracy". Indeed, four parties making up the so-called ‘systemic opposition’ have entered Parliament: in addition to United Russia, Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party (13.84%), the Liberal Democratic Party (8.90%) and New People (7.94%) have all cleared the electoral threshold. These are political forces which, whilst maintaining distinct formal identities, support and vote in favour of all the government’s strategic measures, starting with laws supporting the war. Voices genuinely opposed to the conflict, on the other hand, have been systematically excluded from the contest: the liberal Yabloko party – the only organised force that had based its election campaign on a call for peace – was barred from standing just a few weeks before the vote. The anti-regime opposition, divided between the diaspora abroad and the underground movement within the country, wavered between calling on people to vote for any alternative to United Russia, spoiling their ballot papers, and engaging in symbolic forms of protest, such as turning up at polling stations at 12:00.
While the state apparatus mobilised civil servants to project an image of unity, independent analyses cast doubt on the accuracy of the official results. Certain statistical models applied to polling station data suggest that United Russia’s actual share of the vote was no higher than 34 per cent, compared with the 57.8% announced by Moscow. Similarly, actual turnout is thought to have stood at around 40% – far lower than the official figures. Furthermore, as has become the norm, the election was marred by various irregularities, including the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of votes just before polling stations closed, which served to bring the satellite parties into line with the quotas set by the Kremlin. Rather than a democratic exercise, the Duma elections proved to be yet another ratification ritual: Putin used the elections solely to project to the outside world the social unity essential for tackling the country’s economic and military challenges.
Susanna Fazzi
The Balkans on a knife-edge: Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina head to the polls amid nationalism, protests and the ghosts of the past.
On 9 September, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić dissolved the national parliament and called a snap general election, which is due to take place on 25 October. The election was not due to take place until December 2027, but Vučić decided to bring it forward after almost two years of anti-government demonstrations, thereby acceding to one of the protest movement’s key demands.
The election campaign in Serbia quickly turned into a battleground for democracy, marked by a mix of regime propaganda, nationalism and intense social tensions. Added to this was the death of Ratko Mladić, who died on 27 August at the age of 84 in Scheveningen prison in the Netherlands, where he was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Thousands of people attended his funeral in Belgrade on Monday 7 September, alongside ministers and public officials.
The use of state flights, the backing of the army and tributes in stadiums highlight a campaign of historical rehabilitation for political ends, carried out with indifference towards the victims and the silence of the institutions. President Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) are exploiting nationalist rhetoric and the spectre of external threats to rally the electorate ahead of the snap election. The picture paints a leadership determined to maintain control of the country not through a fair democratic contest, but by relying on patronage, media polarisation and control of the institutions.
However, support for the government is showing clear signs of cracking. During election tours in the provinces, the official narrative of being close to the people is contradicted by spontaneous protests from citizens, who are weary of broken promises and economic inequality. Leading the protests is the student movement, which has become the focal point of a civil opposition that views the upcoming election as a final, crucial battle for the survival of democracy and the rule of law in Serbia.
And against a backdrop of perpetual institutional tension and ethnic polarisation, Bosnia and Herzegovina is also set to hold general elections on 4 October 2026. Today, Bosnia is a federal state divided into two main entities and an autonomous district:
• the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH): with a Croat-Bosniak majority, which is in turn divided into 10 cantons, each with its own government and extensive local powers;
• the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Republika Srpska, RS): the Serb-dominated entity, characterised by a high degree of centralisation of power in the capital, Banja Luka;
• the Brčko District: an autonomous territory situated in the north of the country, self-governing and under the joint control of the two entities.
At the central level, executive power rests with the collegial Presidency of the Republic (a sort of "rotating triarchy"), a body comprising three members: one Bosniak and one Croat (elected by the Federation) and one Serb (elected by the Republika Srpska), who take turns as chair of the body every eight months. Overseeing the democratic transition and acting as an institutional ‘arbitrator’ is the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, an international official endowed with extraordinary executive and legislative powers, which enable him to impose laws or remove local officials hostile to the 1995 peace agreements.
In one of the world’s most complex administrative systems – where there is no real ideological polarisation between right and left, but where the competition is driven by parties representing different ethnic groups – voters will be called upon to elect not only the three members of the Presidency and the State Chamber of Representatives, but also the parliaments of the entities and the assemblies of the country’s main administrative units.
The election on 4 October will therefore be a crucial moment in determining whether Bosnia will succeed in unblocking its path towards reform and Euro-Atlantic integration, or whether it will remain trapped by its internal divisions, or worse still, whether the embers of the 1990s war – which have never truly been extinguished – will be reignited.
Giuliana Băruș
Framing The World is a project conceived and created through the collaboration of a team of associates at Mondo Internazionale.
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