The period following founding elections, usually referred to as democratic consolidation, is distinct from the other periods of political transition. Electoral competition generates a new focus for political action, one where winning votes is the gateway to policy outcomes or power. Elections can profoundly transform the relative influence of individuals and groups as well as political resources that survived the authoritarian regime or emerged in the democratization period. Elections can also provoke the emergence of new actors or the dissolution of existing ones. As a result of these shifts, the politics of the post-election period is distinct from the previous liberalization and democratization periods.

Conventional wisdom argues that the politics of early electoral contests tends to be fierce and unpredictable, followed by a period of learning or adaptation, as individual and collective actors decode the new system and the effects of their own strategies in pursuit of political goals. We expect that these processes strengthen democratic governance. Yet, the Russian case illustrates that candidates' adaptations to electoral institutions need not generate investment in electoral infrastructure or democratic development. Russian candidates were extremely adroit at choosing strategies that protected their own interests in the electoral process, but did not lead to a successful democracy.

At the national level, the Russian case demonstrates that the outcomes of consolidation periods also can be surprising and lead to a long period of instability or an outright failure to solidify representative and accountable democracy.