The Calculus of Non-Protest in Russia: Redistributive Expectations from Political Reforms

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Notes

¹ See ‘Levada–tsentr o nastroeniyakh rossiyan’, available at: http://anpravo.ru/index.php/mnu-news/mnu-obshestvo/121-levada-tsentr-o-nastroeniyakh-rossiyan, accessed 11 December 2014.

² While other important considerations lie in informational, organisational, and collective action problems of protests or opposition movements across Russia as well as the specifics of non-democratic politics at the sub-national level, we do not address these, instead referring the reader to the existing work on the subject (Gel'man & Ross 2010). Our focus is on the configuration of economic incentives to support democratic political reforms.

³ See photo-reports of the protests, available at: http://7x7-journal.ru/post/22745?pic = 19, accessed 11 December 2014.

⁴ According to the Levada Centre, in February 2014 37% of Russians supported the opinion that the country is moving in the wrong direction, available at: http://www.levada.ru/26-02-2014/fevralskie-reitingi-odobreniya-i-doveriya, accessed 11 December 2014.

⁵ Indeed, the literature posits that the legitimacy of Putin's regime is not deeply rooted among the masses (Gel'man 2010). Carnaghan attributes the regime survival to the inability of the bulk of the Russian population to conceive of acceptable substitutes (Carnaghan 2007, p. 250).

⁶ In particular, the Median Voter Theorem predicts that this should occur when the median voter's income is below the mean income and the median voter is in the coalition which could benefit from redistributing from the wealthy minority.

⁷ Muller (1995) finds that high levels of inequality are incompatible with the development of a stable democracy.

⁸ See, ‘Zastoi ili postupatel'noe razvitie? Chto zhdet Rossiyu?’, available at: http://finam.fm/archive-view/5935/, accessed 11 December 2014.

⁹ In 2012, the nationwide average income was R22,954 per month, but in Moscow it was R48,343. Less dramatic, but also significant, was the discrepancy in median incomes—R16,935 nationally in contrast to R31,365 in Moscow. See, ‘Chubais snova pokazyvaet realizm’, available at: http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/434779.html, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹⁰ See, ‘Srednii, mediannyi i modal'nyi uroven denezhnykh dokhodov naseleniya v tselom po Rossii i po sub'ektam Rossiiskoi Federatsii za 2013 god’, available at: http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/population/bednost/tabl/1-2-6.htm, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹¹ See ‘Otnoshenie rossiyan k Moskve i moskvicham’, available at: http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/mos/dd063923, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹² See, ‘Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik—2013’, available at: http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b13_13/Main.htm, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹³ The average wages of those working for the state are 35% lower than those working for private companies. See, ‘Trud i zanyatost’ v Rossii’, available at: http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/publications/catalog/doc_1139916801766, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹⁴ ‘Grazhdane sokhranili lyubov’ k poryadku’, VTsIOM, March 2014, available at: http://kommersant.ru/doc/2444016, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹⁵ See, ‘Pochemu puti Rossii i Evropy razminulis’, available at: http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/tectonic/1213835-echo/, accessed 11 December 2014. This essay was written before the Crimean events.

¹⁶ See, ‘Srednii klass vros v gosudarstvo, bogachei volnuet ikh bezopasnost’, available at: http://ttolk.ru/?p = 9147, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹⁷ For more details see, ‘Opros na mitinge 4 fevralya 2012’, available at: http://www.levada.ru/13-02-2012/opros-na-mitinge-4-fevralya, accessed 11 December 2014.

¹⁸ The necessity of the preparatory phase has been postulated in the classical study of democratic transformations by Rustow (1970).