The article addresses the extent to which current developments in the political public sphere in contemporary Russia might be seen as manifestations and maybe condensations of developments in representative democracies in a more general sense. These developments concern the ways that elections and other practices of voting achieve a hegemonic significance as processes of symbolization in the political public sphere. The first section outlines the role of voting practices for the legitimation and stability of Russia’s current super-presidentialism. The second section connects these findings to a theoretical framework that capitalizes on the symbolic effects of elections and polling practices in democratic political and societal orders. Here critics of representative democracy and of majority rule, which highlight the contradictory role of majority decisions in democratic institutional and imaginary orders, will be discussed and related to the mass protests against election fraud in 2011 and 2012. The third section reconceptualizes the current problematics of the political public sphere in contemporary Russia. The overall aim is thus not to measure political-public developments in Russia against the normative yardstick of allegedly uncontested democratic development in western societies, but rather to situate Russia on a conceptual map of a generic crisis of majority rule.

中文翻译：

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民主无知：俄罗斯的政治公共领域减少到选举和民意调查

这篇文章论述了在更广泛的意义上，当代俄罗斯政治公共领域当前的发展在多大程度上可以看作是代表性民主国家发展的表现或凝结的程度。这些事态发展关系到选举和其他投票实践在政治公共领域中作为象征性过程取得霸权意义的方式。第一部分概述了投票做法对于俄罗斯当前的超级总统制的合法性和稳定的作用。第二部分将这些发现与理论框架联系起来，该理论框架利用了选举和民意测验在民主政治和社会秩序中的象征意义。在这里，对代议制民主和多数统治的批评家，本书将重点讨论多数决定在民主制度和虚构秩序中的矛盾作用，并将与2011年和2012年针对选举舞弊的大规模抗议活动有关。第三部分重新概念化了当代俄罗斯政治公共领域的当前问题。因此，总体目的不是要以所谓的西方社会毫无争议的民主发展为标准来衡量俄罗斯的政治公共发展，而是要把俄罗斯置于一般性多数统治统治的概念图上。