Economic Change and Public Support for Democracy in China and Russia

An earlier version of the essay was presented at the ECPR meetings, University of Glasgow, 3–6 September 2014, in the panel ‘Rising Powers: Social Inequality and Political Stability’. Our thanks to workshop participants and a special thanks to two anonymous reviewers from this journal for their very constructive and helpful comments on an earlier version of the essay.

Abstract

There has been an extensive debate about the relationship between economic development and democratisation. One view is that economic development is a pre-requisite for democracy. Another view is that the emergence of democracy is largely random, and economic prosperity is important only for ensuring democracy’s survival in the event of a crisis. This essay contributes to this debate by using public opinion surveys collected over an extended period to examine patterns of economic change and public support for democracy in China and Russia. The results show that education and, to a lesser extent, social mobility and economic attitudes, play an important role in promoting pro-democracy attitudes in both countries. The results have implications for democratisation, with an increasingly large tertiary-educated middle class acting as a potential driver for democratisation in China, and for the return of a free, fair and competitive democracy in Russia.

For half a century, the relationship between economic change and democracy has spawned a vigorous scholarly debate. On the one hand, theories of modernisation dating back to the 1960s have predicted that the more economically developed the country, the greater the likelihood that it will be a democracy. Economic prosperity is therefore an essential pre-requisite for democracy (Lipset 1959).¹ An opposing view is that democracy emerges for largely random reasons, and the observed link between democracy and economic development is due to more prosperous societies being better able to cope with the inevitable crises that threaten the fledgling state (Przeworski et al. 2000; Boix & Stokes 2003; Epstein et al. 2006; Kennedy 2010; Boix 2011). In this view, the apparent link between economic development and democracy observed by modernisation theorists is largely spurious.

Using this debate as a point of departure, this essay examines the relationship between economic change and public support for democracy in China and Russia. Both countries are important case studies to test the relationship between public support for democracy and economic change. China remains an authoritarian state, but has adopted elements of a market economy, or what has been termed a ‘socialist market economy’. This change has involved, among other things, abandoning collective farming and granting property rights. Perhaps most momentously, the constitution was amended in 2004 to enshrine the principle that ‘private property obtained legally is inviolable’ (Dalton & Shin 2006, p. 2); private enterprises now account for around three quarters of China’s GDP. The question arises as to what extent the transition to a market economy, bringing with it property rights, income differences and changes in working conditions, has generated a demand for democracy among the mass public.

In contrast to China, democracy was formally established in Russia with the collapse of communism in 1990 and reasonably free, competitive elections were held throughout the 1990s. However, with the 2000 election of Vladimir Putin as president, Russia has moved increasingly away from the liberal democratic model espoused in the West, to become what some have termed a ‘managed democracy’ (White & McAllister 2008) or a ‘sovereign democracy’ (Rose & Mishler 2010). Since the early 2000s, there have been severe restrictions on democracy and on the right to stand for elections. In 2004, Freedom House downgraded Russia from ‘partly free’ to ‘not free’, where it has remained since.² How does economic change relate to public demands for democracy when Russia appears to be moving away from democracy?

China and Russia, as major powers in their own right, have followed different paths in the post-communist world (Pursiainen 2012). Using World Values opinion surveys conducted between 1990 and 2012, this essay examines the role of socioeconomic factors in promoting a popular demand for democracy in these two countries. The first section examines the debates underlying the relationship between economic change and democracy, while the second section outlines public support for democracy and its measurement. The third section deals with the major changes that have taken place over the time period among the main independent variables of interest, while the fourth section tests the main hypotheses linked to these variables using a multivariate model. Finally, the conclusion addresses the findings in the context of the main theories that seek to explain the relationship between economic change and democracy.

Economic change and public support for democracy

Until the late 1990s, the traditional interpretation of the relationship between economic change and the public support for democracy was that economic development facilitated democratisation. This is what is sometimes called the ‘endogenous’ view of democracy, and goes back at least as far as Barrington Moore (1966)³ and Seymour Martin Lipset (1959) on the topic. Moore’s central thesis was that when the middle class was strong enough to challenge the old feudal structures, democracy would emerge. The creation of a middle class, in turn, requires economic prosperity. Major critiques of Moore, such as that by Skocpol (1973, 1979) have challenged Moore’s interpretation of the role of the state in the process of democratisation, but not the importance of economic development itself.

Samuel Huntington continued this approach to argue that economic development facilitates democratisation. However, he added the important caveat that it is not an essential pre-requisite: ‘an overall correlation exists yet no level or pattern of economic development is in itself either necessary or sufficient to bring about democratization’ (Huntington 1991, p. 59). However, Huntington’s results were biased by including the oil-rich countries of the Middle East, where democracy has yet to take root.⁴ Huntington went on to argue that economic development is likely to be more important in the consolidation of third wave, or post-1974, democracy, since there are larger external threats and pressures which can undermine democracy and cause a return to authoritarian rule.

In contrast to Huntington, Przeworski and his collaborators saw the process by which democracy emerges as largely random, but that the chances of a democracy surviving are greatly enhanced if the country is economically developed (Przeworski et al. 2000). While Przeworski et al. observed that most poor countries tend to be authoritarian and most rich countries democratic, they questioned the causality that lies behind the process, and saw the relationship as essentially one of co-variation. The question, then, is whether authoritarian countries become more prosperous during the transition to democracy, or whether prosperity is itself a prior condition for the transition. Their results tend to suggest the former, and present only weak support for the endogenous view of democracy.

The debate about the relationship between democracy and economic development has spawned a large number of further studies, particularly following the publication of Przeworski et al. (2000). Often using much longer time series and including a wider range of variables, many of these studies have supported the view that economic development is not a necessary condition for democracy. Barro (1997), for example, found that various changes associated with economic development, such as the growth of education and the rule of law, will foster democracy. Colaresi and Thompson (2003) further refined the relationship by showing that such factors as an external threat, trade openness and the level of conflict can all affect the probability of democracy taking root. In their view, these external agencies are at least as important as internal factors in supporting both the development and maintenance of democratic norms. Boix confirmed the importance of external agencies and showed that the relationship between income and democracy is mediated by the international political context ‘and the ways that the great powers shape the resources of the political factions in small countries’ (Boix 2011, p. 827).

The studies which have been deployed on both sides of this debate have been almost exclusively based on aggregate data. This has the advantage of facilitating extended longitudinal analyses, often going back, for example by Boix (2011), as far as the early 1800s. These panel studies permit considerable scope for identifying the causal processes underlying democratisation, and what sustains it during periods of stress. An alternative approach is to focus not on aggregate data, but on public opinion. Inglehart and Welzel (2005) relied on public opinion data (in addition to aggregate data) to argue that mass public support for democratic institutions is important, together with a broader set of civic values which sustains mass support for democracy. This follows a tradition of research which began with Almond and Verba (1963), when democratic stability was linked to achieving a balance between passive and active mass participation in public life.

This essay examines longitudinal support for democracy and its relationship to economic change in China and Russia, but does so using public opinion surveys. This approach has the advantage of providing an extended perspective on democracy among the mass publics of the two countries, something that is rarely available in public opinion studies. However, the disadvantage is that we cannot infer causality from the relationships that emerge since the surveys are cross-sectional, not panel surveys which re-interview the same respondents. The approach also has the advantage of asking the respondents about their views of a hypothetical rather than an actual form of government, since China is an authoritarian state and Russia has moved away from democracy under Putin. The next section examines how public opinion towards democracy is measured and presents the results for China and Russia.

Public views of governance

Democracy is usually defined as a diffuse set of values and beliefs about governance. These beliefs may include, among other things, accountability and responsiveness, the rule of law, and property rights in addition to the more common definition of competitive elections that are viewed by the public as being free and fair (Diamond 1999; Beetham 2004). One frequently used definition is by Linz and Stepan, who argue that democracy can only be said to be entrenched in a country when it is regarded as ‘the only game in town’ (Linz & Stepan 1996, p. 5). In other words, democracy is a multidimensional phenomenon that covers both political institutions and the popular values that underpin those institutions.

The World Values Study has asked a standard battery of four items designed to ascertain popular commitment to democracy, starting with wave 3 in the mid-1990s (Inglehart & Welzel 2003; Dalton 2006).⁵ The questions are designed to measure anti-democratic attitudes as well as pro-democratic ones. Three of the questions ask about governance by a strong leader, the army and by experts, respectively, while the fourth asks a direct question about democracy. Preliminary analysis revealed only modest correlations between the first three items (which were correlated with one another) and the direct question about democracy. For that reason, only the question concerning democracy is used here.⁶

The results in Table 1 show two patterns. First, support for democracy is relatively high in both countries, notably in China where more than seven in every ten of the respondents in 2012 thought that democracy was ‘very good’ or ‘fairly good’. This is a remarkably high level of support for a system of government that does not exist in the country, and where free, fair and competitive elections are not held; the results are in line with other surveys (Wang 2007). There is a similarly high level of support for democracy in Russia, numbering two in every three respondents in 2011. The increase in support for democracy appears to have taken place between the 1999 and 2006 surveys.⁷ This may well reflect the economic turmoil of the 1990s, as the economy adapted to the free market and consumer prices soared, with accompanying levels of popular dissatisfaction.

TABLE 1 Preferences for Democracy as the Best Form of Governance

	China			Russia
	2001	2007	2012	1995	1999	2006	2011
Very good	16	21	27	5	6	20	21
Fairly good	57	36	44	40	41	45	46
Fairly bad	3	3	6	24	22	13	13
Very bad	0	1	1	9	6	4	5
Don’t know	24	39	22	22	25	17	15
Total	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
(N)	(1,000)	(2,015)	(2,300)	(2,040)	(2,500)	(2,033)	(2,500)

Note: ‘Here is a list of various types of political systems. For each one, would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this country? … Having a democratic political system.’ Question wording varies slightly between countries. ‘Don’t know’ responses include those who did not answer the question.

Sources: World Values Study, 1981–2008 combined file, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016; European Values Survey, 1999, available at: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, accessed 24 November 2016; World Values Study, 2010–2012, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016.

To the extent that there has been any change in opinions towards democracy, it is in the direction of stronger support; in China the increase in those saying ‘very good’ over the period of the surveys has been 11 percentage points, and in Russia 16 percentage points. The level of opposition to democracy is higher in Russia than in China, and in 1995, just a few years after the collapse of communism, one third of the respondents considered democracy to be ‘fairly bad’ or ‘very bad’. Similar numbers are recorded in the 1999 survey, but by 2011 just one in five of the respondents thought democracy was a bad political system.

The second pattern that is observable across the two countries is the large proportion who gave either a ‘don’t know’ response to the question about democracy or who did not answer. The proportion saying ‘don’t know’ peaked in China in 2007 at 39%, but still stood at more than one in five in 2012. The figure has been gradually declining in Russia, but it still numbered 15% of the respondents in 2011. This compares with substantially fewer ‘don’t know’ responses in the established democracies. For example, in the United States the figure was 4% in 2006 and 3% in 2011; in Britain it was 9% in 2005. Closer scrutiny of the countries with higher proportions of ‘don’t know’ responses to the democracy question shows that the proportions are higher in authoritarian regimes or emerging democracies compared to established democracies.⁸

One explanation for the higher proportion of ‘don’t know’ responses in authoritarian regimes or emerging democracies is the lack of public knowledge about the topic: what could be called ‘genuine don’t know’ responses. Another explanation could be that some respondents are concerned about revealing their support for democracy and are fearful of incurring repercussions from the regime. If the ‘don’t know’ respondents are motivated by lack of knowledge of the topic, then this should have few consequences for the analyses, since they will be randomly distributed across the survey population (Francis & Busch 1975). On the other hand, if a ‘don’t know’ response is motivated by fear of revealing one’s views, then this will bias the results.

In order to test these competing hypotheses, an analysis was conducted predicting ‘don’t know’ responses from valid responses from a range of socioeconomic background variables. These results were then compared with responses supporting or opposing democracy and excluding the ‘don’t know’ responses. The results indicated that socioeconomic background operated in a different way across the two models, with women, the less educated and those in manual occupations being more likely to offer a ‘don’t know’ response, while the opposite was the case in the equation predicting support for democracy. The results were consistent across all of the survey years. This confirms the hypothesis that ‘don’t know’ responses to the democracy question in China and Russia are the result of lack of knowledge rather than a fear of revealing an opinion that may be frowned upon by the state.

Public support for democracy remains remarkably high in China and Russia, and has been increasing over the period of the surveys. The relatively large group of undecided respondents is motivated more by lack of knowledge of the topic than by concerns about revealing a view. This means that we can include them in our analyses, and coding them to an intermediate category effectively treats them as a constant.⁹ Having identified and verified the dependent variable, the next section defines the independent variables, and derives a set of hypotheses which are then tested in the section following, using a multivariate analysis.

Identifying the hypotheses

There is general agreement that any link between economic change and public support for democracy is unlikely to be a direct one; rather, the linkage is most likely to be mediated by one or more intervening variables. Thus, civil society serves to condition the values which shape the public’s views of democracy. This approach goes back at least as far as de Tocqueville (2002) in the first half of the nineteenth century, and has its modern expression in theories of political culture which emphasise the importance of popular beliefs rather than institutional rules (Inglehart & Welzel 2005). The intervening variables examined here are at least partly determined by the questions that have been asked consistently in the World Values Surveys, and cover religion, education, occupation and economic attitudes.¹⁰ Each group of variables provides a perspective on civil society, and in the ways that it can mediate economic change and views of democracy.¹¹

Religion

Religion has often played an important indirect role in economic development, by serving to enhance the depth and quality of civil society. By providing a forum for moral debate and discussion, organised religion can build the basis for civil society development on which economic prosperity depends (Wuthnow 2004). Religion in China was formally prohibited during the Mao years; post-Mao governments have permitted some degree of religious observance, but have imposed various degrees of legal restriction on religious behaviour. The maintenance of the distinction between religious belief and religious behaviour has enabled the regime to project an image of tolerance in order to enhance legitimacy (Potter 2003).

Measuring religion in China presents several difficulties. First, many respondents often find it difficult to admit an affiliation or religious behaviour because of the state’s general intolerance of religion. This is likely to be more prevalent in the 1990s when the Communist Party felt particularly threatened by the expansion of Christianity. Second, religious behaviour, such as church attendance, does not translate well to China since it implies a Christian religion (Anchar 2011, p. 141). Estimates of religiosity in China derived from surveys therefore have been treated with some caution. The frequency of attending a formal religious ceremony in China since 1990 (the equivalent of church attendance) shows an increase, from a low base. In 1990 just 6% reported attending a religious ceremony at least once per year; by 2012 that had increased to 13% (see Figure 1). The proportions who report that they are religious persons follow closely the estimates for religious behaviour (Yang 2012).¹²

FIGURE 1. Religious Behaviour and Self-Image, 1990–2012.

Note: Estimates are the proportion attending church at least once per year, and the proportion who claimed to be a religious person.
Sources: World Values Study, 1981–2008 combined file, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016; European Values Survey, 1999, available at: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, accessed 24 November 2016; World Values Study, 2010–2012, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016.

The churches in Russia experienced fewer restrictions during the communist era than in China, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s (Marsh 2011). Since the collapse of communism, religion in Russia has experienced a major renaissance, with formal government endorsement and vigorous political approval for religious institutions and behaviour (Fagan 2013). The surveys show that those attending church have increased significantly, from four in ten in 1990, to over six out of every ten in 2011 (see Figure 1). Those reporting that they were a religious person has also increased in line with church attendance. In both countries religion has increased substantially as a factor in civil society, but it is much more pervasive in Russia due to political approval and endorsement.

Education

China and Russia have both regarded the expansion of mass education as a crucial tool in their economic transformations. From the early 1990s onwards, China has experienced a rapid expansion in higher education, with gross enrolment jumping from 9.8% in 1998 to 24.2% in 2009, making Chinese higher education easily the largest in the world (Wang & Liu 2011). This increase is reflected in the survey estimates,¹³ which show that in 2012 around 12% of the respondents had a tertiary education, compared to just one third of that figure in 2001.¹⁴ Starting from a much higher base—nearly one in four Russians reported that they had a tertiary education in 1990—Russian higher education has also expanded, and by 2011 almost one in three had a tertiary education. At the same time, in both countries the proportions with little or no education have declined substantially (see Figure 2).

FIGURE 2. Levels of Education, 1990–2012.

Notes: Secondary includes vocational, incomplete secondary, completed secondary; tertiary is incomplete university, completed university. For Russia in 1990 only, none/elementary is completed education at age 16 or less; secondary/vocational is completed education at age 17 or 18; tertiary is completed at 19, 20 or more. Data are unavailable for China prior to 2001.
Sources: World Values Study, 1981–2008 combined file, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016; European Values Survey, 1999, available at: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, accessed 24 November 2016; World Values Study, 2010–2012, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016.

The implications of this expansion are threefold. First, it has provided the basis for economic development, and indeed in China this was the stated objective of the post-1999 changes in higher education policy, particularly in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The growing proportion of skilled workers in the labour force has underpinned China’s rapid economic growth (Knight & Ding 2012). Second, education enhances a country’s store of human capital, with long term benefits for the society as a whole. Third, the expansion of higher education in particular produces a bureaucratic elite with broadly liberal values and outlooks which should in theory be more receptive to political reform (Wolf 2002).

Occupation

Countries experiencing rapid economic development rely on an expanding skilled workforce. As the workforce expands, so does their relative prosperity and their demands for economic security and greater political influence. Not least, occupational mobility creates a middle class which is less dependent on the state (Diamond 2008). Measuring occupation, and socioeconomic status in particular, raises particular difficulties when using the World Values Study. Occupation is measured in the surveys but there are difficulties in matching codes, particularly in China. One important measure is the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture, and as economic development accelerates, this proportion declines. However, this is not available in the most recent wave of the WVS.¹⁵ Income is also an important measure, but has a high incidence of missing values, making any reliance on it for analysis problematic. Finally, a middle class identity is a major indicator of economic prosperity. This is available in the post-1990 surveys, except for Russia in 2006 (see Table 2).

TABLE 2 Objective and Subjective Social Class, 1990–2012

	(Percent)
	Employed	Non-manual worker	Middle class image
China
1990	85	18	na
2001	78	13	54
2007	71	15	44
2012	63	20	44
(Change)	(–22)	(+2)	(–10)
Russia
1990	69	31	na
1995	58	39	38
1999	55	41	na
2006	56	36	na
2011	62	32	44
(Change)	(–7)	(+2)	(+6)

Note: In 2011/2012, ‘non-manual worker’ is estimated from a ten-point manual/non-manual skills scale, with non-manual workers defined as those scoring seven or more on the scale.

Sources: World Values Study, 1981–2008 combined file, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016; European Values Survey, 1999, available at: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, accessed 24 November 2016; World Values Study, 2010–2012, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016.

Both Russia and China show a decline over the period in the proportion of the population who are in full-time or part-time employment, or who are unemployed. In China the decline in the employment rate is a substantial 22 percentage points, from 85% in 1990 to 63% in 2012. This reflects the increasingly market-oriented focus of many Chinese businesses, and an economic imperative to employ only those workers that they actually require. In Russia the decline in employment is much smaller, at seven percentage points. In both countries, the proportion of non-manual employees in the population has not changed significantly, in the most recent surveys numbering about one in five of the population in China and one in three in Russia. Finally, although the data are incomplete, around four in ten or more of the population in each of the two countries regard themselves as middle class.

Economic attitudes

Greater familiarity with a market-based economy over an extended period should have a significant influence on economic attitudes. Russia experienced a profound shift in the economy in the first few years after the collapse of communism, away from state subsidisation and towards a free market. This shock resulted in changes to economic attitudes (Gibson 1996), although it has been argued that the economic transformation was perhaps not as great as first thought (Whitefield 2002). In China, economic change has been more rapid in recent years, even in the absence of major political reform. What is often called the second phase of market reform (Naughton 2007), beginning in the early 1990s, has produced unprecedented economic growth.

The World Values Study has consistently asked three questions about different aspects of the transition from a command to a market-based economy. The three questions measure, respectively, attitudes towards income differences, personal responsibility, and views about competition and work. In a market-based economy, it would be expected that income differences would be supported in order to provide a greater incentive to work, that people would take more responsibility for providing for themselves rather than relying on the state, and that competition would stimulate people to work harder. In each case, the questions are scored from one to ten. Table 3 shows the mean scores on these three questions in China and Russia from the 1990s onwards.

TABLE 3 Economic Attitudes, 1990–2012

	(Mean score, 1–10)
	Favours income differences	People more responsible	Competition is good
China
1990	7.9	5.9	8.4
2001	6.3	5.8	8.3
2007	5.8	5.4	7.5
2012	4.5	4.7	7.3
(Change)	(–3.4)	(–1.2)	(–1.1)
Russia
1990	7.0	5.8	7.7
1995	6.5	3.9	7.1
1999	7.1	4.2	5.8
2006	6.4	3.4	6.9
2011	3.4	3.1	6.6
(Change)	(–3.6)	(–2.7)	(–1.1)

Note: ‘Here is a list of various issues. How would you place your views on this scale, where 1 means you agree completely with the statement on the left and 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right? If your views fall somewhere in between, you can choose any number in between. Incomes should be made more equal. … We need larger income differences as incentives for individual effort. The government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for. … People should take more responsibility to provide for themselves. Competition is good, it stimulates people to work hard and develop new ideas. … Competition is harmful. It brings out the worst in people.’ Question wording varies slightly between countries. See text for details of scale construction.

Sources: World Values Study, 1981–2008 combined file, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016; European Values Survey, 1999, available at: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, accessed 24 November 2016; World Values Study, 2010–2012, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016.

Across both countries, and for all three questions, public opinion has consistently moved away from support for market-based economic opinions—in some cases decisively. In Russia, for example, support for income differences as an incentive to individual effort has more than halved between 1990 and 2011, from a mean of 7.0 to 3.4. There has been a similar, though not as large, decline in the same views in China. Substantial declines are also evident in views about whether individuals or the state should be responsible for providing for individual needs; the decline in Russia is more than twice the same decline in China. Views about the role of competition also register a decline over the period of the surveys, although they are not as large as the same figures for the other two indicators.

How do we interpret these substantial and consistent shifts away from market-based economic attitudes, at a time when both countries have been experiencing economic transformations emphasising market-based reforms? One observation is that both countries were substantially similar in their economic views in 1990, which suggests that the underlying factors shaping opinion change have been very similar. One interpretation is that in 1990, at the threshold of a major economic transformation, market values and mechanisms appeared more likely to deliver economic prosperity compared to those of a command economy. As the reality of economic change took hold, and in the case of Russia the radical economic reforms introduced by the Yel’tsin government produced a precipitous decline in GDP and living standards, economic attitudes shifted away from favouring the market. We test this and the earlier hypotheses in the multivariate analyses in the next section.

Testing the hypotheses

The descriptive patterns presented in the previous section display two societies with rapidly changing socioeconomic characteristics and attitudes. Both China and Russia have become more religious, better educated and less market-oriented in popular views. At the same time, there has been a modest increase in non-manual employment, while Russians have considered themselves to be more middle class (there has been a decline in China, but from a high level). Our hypotheses are that each of these four areas—religion, education, occupation and economic attitudes—will have particular consequences for public support for democracy. If any of the hypotheses are supported, then we would expect that increases in the proportions with the attribute in question would generate greater support for democracy, net of other things.

In order to test the four main hypotheses, multivariate equations were estimated for each country, separately for each survey year. An alternative approach would have been to merge the country surveys into a single dataset and conduct a combined analysis. However, preliminary analyses suggested that there were significant interactions between the independent variables in particular survey years, and in order to take these interactions into account as fully as possible, it was decided to estimate the equations separately. The estimates in Table 4 show partial regression coefficients and standard errors predicting support for democracy, using the scale defined in Table 1. In order to simplify interpretation only estimates that are statistically significant at p<0.05 or better are shown.

TABLE 4 Predicting Support for Democracy in China and Russia

	Partial regression coefficients (standard errors)
	China			Russia
	2001	2007	2012	1995	1999	2006	2011
Controls
Gender	0.15 (0.03)	0.08 (0.03)	0.07 (0.03)			0.11 (0.04)
Age (deciles)					–0.04 (0.01)	–0.02 (0.01)
Religion
Church attendance			–0.08 (0.04)
Religious person		0.16 (0.04)	0.11 (0.05)
Education (none, elementary)
Secondary	0.12 (0.04)	0.19 (0.04)					0.24 (0.11)
Tertiary		0.18 (0.08)	0.20 (0.06)	0.18 (0.07)	0.30 (0.07)	0.18 (0.06)	0.26 (0.12)
Occupation
Employed				0.09 (0.04)
Non-manual worker	0.10 (0.05)	0.11 (0.05)			0.14 (0.04)		0.12 (0.04)
Middle class image	0.09 (0.04)	0.07 (0.03)	0.09 (0.03)	0.14 (0.04)			0.10 (0.03)
Economic Attitudes
Favours income differences				0.02 (0.01)
People more responsible			0.02 (0.01)	0.03 (0.01)	0.04 (0.01)		0.02 (0.01)
Competition is good	0.02 (0.01)	0.02 (0.01)		0.02 (0.01)	0.04 (0.01)	0.02 (0.01)	0.03 (0.01)
Constant	2.74	2.49	2.93	1.98	2.07	2.89	2.43
Adj R-squared	0.07	0.06	0.03	0.08	0.12	0.02	0.03

Note: Partial regression coefficient and (in parentheses) standard errors predicting support for democracy. See text and tables for definitions of variables. Only associations statistically significant at p<0.05 or better are shown.

Sources: World Values Study, 1981–2008 combined file, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016; European Values Survey, 1999, available at: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, accessed 24 November 2016; World Values Study, 2010–2012, available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 24 November 2016.

The results show a variety of patterns. By far the most consistent and important influence on support for democracy is education, and more particularly tertiary education. In both countries, possession of a university education is significantly more likely to promote pro-democracy attitudes, compared to those with no education or just elementary education. The magnitude of the effect is similar across both countries and across the survey years. In several surveys, secondary education is also a significant predictor of pro-democracy attitudes, relative to those with no or elementary education. The effect of secondary education is particularly important in China in the 2000s, largely because China possesses such a large proportion with minimal education. These results underpin the general finding that a university education exercises a liberal political influence, by encouraging social interaction and raising the benefits of civic and political participation (Glaeser et al. 2007).

Occupation, defined in terms of non-manual occupation and a middle class self-image, is the second strongest predictor of pro-democracy attitudes. In both countries, upward social mobility and having a clear sense of being middle class strengthens the belief that democracy is the best form of government, net of other things. Once again, the magnitude of the effects is similar across the survey years and between the two countries, suggesting that the underlying social processes involved in the economic transformation to a market economy will necessarily generate more support for democracy. This supports modernisation theory which has long argued that economic development will give rise to a middle class which will aspire to democracy in order to defend and further their economic interests.¹⁶

The other factors in Table 4 are of lesser importance and in many cases their effects are inconsistent. Economic attitudes are important in several of the surveys, but in both China and Russia the magnitude of the effect changes overtime. A belief in the benefits of competition is important in all but one of the surveys, while a belief in personal responsibility has a positive effect in three of the six surveys, and appears to be more important in Russia than in China. Religion also has relatively little influence on attitudes to democracy, emerging as significant only in China in 2007 and 2012.

These findings confirm the importance of the structural changes that accompany the transition from a command to a market economy in shaping attitudes to democracy. Thus the predominant effects are associated with changes to the skills base of the country, and to objective economic positions within the society. In contrast, subjective beliefs are of lesser importance. Perhaps surprisingly in view of its emphasis within the literature, there is little effect for religion, at least as defined by church attendance and self-assessed religiosity.

Conclusion

The link between economic development and democracy is well established in the scholarly literature, yet the processes that underlie this relationship remain contested. Of particular interest in the debate is the causality that is involved in democratisation; while economic prosperity is not a prior condition for democracy, it is clearly associated with it. Przeworski et al. (2000) and others have argued that a substantial part of the relationship between economic development and democracy is spurious, and results from the tendency for authoritarian regimes to become more prosperous as they transition to democracy. Economically developed regimes are also able to handle the transition to democracy more effectively so exhibit greater longevity. Other debates have concerned the role of education in democratisation, as well as the complexity of civil society as indicated by such factors as religiosity.¹⁷

This essay has sought to clarify the processes underlying democratisation by examining the individual factors that are associated with public support for democracy in China and Russia. Focusing attention on the individual citizen, in contrast to much of the literature which utilises aggregate country indicators, allows us to examine a wider range of factors than would otherwise be the case. Using the World Values Surveys conducted in each of the two countries since 1990, we have been able to examine the importance of four factors on democratisation: religion, education, occupation and economic attitudes. By far the most important and consistent predictor in both countries is education, underpinning the role of an educated middle class in combating authoritarianism. Occupation is also important, showing the significance of upward social mobility, itself predicated on the expansion of educational opportunities. In general, subjective attitudes are of lesser importance.

The central role of education supports a wide range of other research which shows a strong relationship with support for democracy (Benavot 1996). In particular, the results confirm the importance of elite education—measured by university attendance—and the lesser impact of mass education—measured by secondary education. The latter produces a skilled workforce that has the ability to generate longer-term economic prosperity. However, it is elite education that produces a group who are knowledgeable, critical and who have a commitment to civil and political liberty; in principle it is this group who should be democracy’s standard bearers (Schofer & Meyer 2005). In Russia, the size of this group has grown by one third since 1990, while in China it has tripled. This suggests longer-term implications for democratisation in both countries, but especially in China.

At one level, China and Russia have followed different trajectories of change in the post-communist era. Post-1989 China has delivered spectacular economic growth based on market liberalisation, while at the same time cementing the power of the Communist Party. In Russia, the hopes of the Yel’tsin years for the creation of a consolidated liberal democracy were dashed with the post-2000 authoritarian tendencies of the Putin regime (Pursiainen & Pei 2012). At another level, public support in both countries for democracy is high, although in China it is subordinate to continued economic growth, and in Russia many associate the democratic reforms of the 1990s with the economic turmoil and plunging living standards that accompanied them. Nevertheless, the socioeconomic drivers for political reform are in place, and in both countries these drivers may lead to political demands that eventually become irresistible.

Notes

An earlier version of the essay was presented at the ECPR meetings, University of Glasgow, 3–6 September 2014, in the panel ‘Rising Powers: Social Inequality and Political Stability’. Our thanks to workshop participants and a special thanks to two anonymous reviewers from this journal for their very constructive and helpful comments on an earlier version of the essay.

¹ See also Jackman (1973), Burkhart and Lewis-Beck (1994).

² See, ‘Freedom in the World 2014’, Freedom House, available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2014, accessed 10 December 2015.

³ See also Kennedy (2010).

⁴ The inclusion of other countries also biases the results. For example, Singapore is included but is what Diamond calls ‘the richest authoritarian state in the history of the world’ (Diamond 2008, p. 26).

⁵ See, http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed 10 December 2015.

⁶ For discussions about how Russian and Chinese survey respondents interpret questions about democracy, see Fish (2007), Wang (2007, 2008), Carnaghan (2011).

⁷ Surveys available at: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk, accessed 24 November 2016.

⁸ The analysis was conducted by correlating years of democracy with the proportion of ‘don’t know’ responses, for each of the survey years.

⁹ Support for democracy is coded 4=very good, 3=fairly good, 2.5=don’t know, 2=fairly bad, 1=very bad.

¹⁰ Earlier analyses also included several items that were common to all of the surveys: political attitudes (political interest, support for post-materialism) and personal empowerment (life satisfaction, control of life and financial situation). These were excluded in the final analyses.

¹¹ Some of the measures (such as higher education) are available as aggregate indicators. However, for consistency with the analysis of the survey data reported in Table 4, the essay relies on the survey estimates to show the broad patterns.

¹² The correlations between religious behaviour and religious self-image in China vary between 0.57 and 0.59 for the survey years. In Russia the correlations are slightly lower, 0.37 in 1990; 0.47 in 2006 and 0.49 in 2011.

¹³ Aggregate statistics are available on levels of education across time, but for consistency with the presentation of other results (and because they are included in the multivariate analysis reported in Table 4) survey estimates are reported here.

¹⁴ Estimates are not available for 1990, as the question was asked in a different way in wave 2 of the WVS.

¹⁵ Once again, the proportion of the workforce employed in agriculture is available in aggregate data, but since we do not have a survey estimate which can be used in the analyses reported in Table 4, it is excluded.

¹⁶ This argument goes back to the work of Lipset (1959) and Dahl (1971), among others.

¹⁷ For a review, see Burnell and Calvert (2004).