Do elites matter in Russian foreign policy? The gap between self-perception and influence

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the findings of the Survey of Russian Elites from the perspective of Russian elites’ perceptions of their individual and group influence on Russian foreign policy. In the current Russian elite structure, state enterprise managers, executive branch officials, and military/security officers are far more influential than members of other sub-groups when it comes to foreign policy. However, the survey results show that despite being members of the elite, respondents in all sub-groups generally found their ability to influence foreign policy decisions to be quite limited. That being said, the data show that representatives of less influential elite sub-groups are more confident about their impact on the decision-making process than representatives of more influential elite sub-groups. As such, there is a gap between elite sub-groups’ perception of their influence and their actual level of individual and group influence on Russian foreign policy. The article discusses various manifestations of this gap, as well as possible causes and implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Elites
• foreign policy attitudes
• Russia’s political regime
• survey of Russian elites

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sharon Werning Rivera and William Zimmerman for their very useful comments and detailed feedback on the draft of this article. In addition, we are grateful for the feedback received through the Post-Soviet Affairs review and editorial processes. Anton Zlobin provided valuable research assistance and we appreciate his contributions to the article.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. There was no significant difference between “influential” and “non-influential” sub-groups in their assessments of institutions, which is why we present the data in aggregated form.

2. One should take into account that while preference falsification and social desirability biases are not often observed in mass surveys (Frye et al. 2017), representatives of elite groups could be much more cautious in this respect.

Additional information

Funding

Kirill Petrov’s research work was supported by The MGIMO University Institute for International Studies grant №1921-01-03.