Political Reaction in Russia and “Party Groups” in Russian Society

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This article is the republished version of:

Political Reaction in Russia and “Party Groups” in Russian Society

Notes

1. K. Rogov, “Gipoteza tret’ego tsikla,” Pro et Contra, 2010, no. 6 (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/ProetContra_50_6-22.pdf; accessed December 5, 2016).

2. The theory of the “authoritarian personality” of T. Adorno and his coauthors—T.W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.J. Levinson, and R.N. Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950)—and its development into the concept right-wing authoritarianism is certainly extremely useful for understanding the stereotypes of the post-Crimean political mobilization, but this mobilization should not be reduced to them. The use of elements of the modernization discourse in the post-Crimean propaganda campaign deserves separate study and discussion.

3. Data from the Levada Center and private indices of social attitudes were prepared and calculated by M.D. Krasilnikova. See “Obnovlennaia metodika izmereniia indeksa sotsial’nykh nastroenii (ISN),” Levada Center (www.levada.ru/indikatory/sotsialno-ekonomicheskie-indikatory/obnovlennaya-metodika-izmereniya-indeksa-sotsialnyh-nastroenij-isn/; accessed December 5, 2016); for data of the detailed index of social attitudes, see “Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskie indikatory,” Levada Center (www.levada.ru/indikatory/sotsialno-ekonomicheskie-indikatory/; accessed December 5, 2016).

4. E. Noel’-Noiman, Obshchestvennoe mnenie. Otkrytie spirali molchaniia (Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, Ves’ Mir, 1996); T. Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

5. The recent work by S. Guriev and D. Treisman is devoted to studying the factors of “approval of the government” in wide-ranging comparative materials; the authors conclude that the level of restrictions on freedom of information and freedom of the press have a significant influence on approval of the government while the level of repression does not. S. Guriev and D. Treisman, What Makes Governments Popular? Discussion Paper Series (London: Center for Economy Politics Research, 2016) (www.cepr.org/sites/default/files/news/CEPR_FreeDP_050916.pdf; accessed December 5, 2016). We believe these important results require further study.

6. The independent Rey Monitoring Center (www.rey.az) in Azerbaijan conducts infrequent polls regarding the president. According to a poll of Baku residents from October 2014, 83 percent of voters were prepared to vote for Ilham Aliev the next Sunday. The next poll in June 2015 gave Aliev 87 percent of this group’s vote, and the final poll in April 2016 gave Aliev 93 percent of this group’s vote. The fragmentary nature of the published polls speaks for itself.

7. For data about the high level of support for the government in authoritarian regimes in Asia, see AsiaBarometer; this material was the subject of a special discussion on the materials of the third and fourth waves of polls; a parallel series of polls is conducted in China by researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School. See, for example, T. Saich, The Quality of Governance in China: The Citizen’s View, Faculty Research Working Paper Series (Cambridge: Harvard Kennedy School, November 2012) (https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/9924084; accessed December 17, 2016).

8. B. Geddes and J. Zaller, “Sources of Popular Support for Authoritarian Regimes,” American Journal of Political Science, 1989, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 319–347.

9. For several experiments in this area, see V.V. Blinov, “Tipy ideologicheskikh storonnikov v sovremmenoi Rossii,” Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia: ekonomicheskie i sotsial’nye peremeny, 2010, no. 6, pp. 12–29; L.G. Byzov, “‘Neokonservativnaia volna’ v sovremennoi Rossii: faza ocherednogo tsikla ili stabil’noe sostoianie?” Mir Rossii. Sotsiologiia. Etnologiia, 2010, vol. 19, no. 1; L.G. Byzov, “Izbiratel’nyi tsikl 2011/2012 gg. Cherez prizmy tsennostnykh i ideinykh protivorechii obshchestva,” Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia: ekonomicheskie i sotsial’nye peremeny, 2013, nos. 2–3; and others.

10. See, for example, “Institutsional’noe doverie,” Levada Center, October 13, 2016 (www.levada.ru/2016/10/13/institutsionalnoe-doverie-2/; accessed December 17, 2016).

11. The focus on a series of responses over an extended period separates our experience from previous attempts of this nature (specifically those mentioned in Note 9). The quality of large-scale polls in Russia has frequently been subjected to criticism. Arrays over an extended period help mitigate this problem and demonstrate the scale of standard (insignificant) fluctuations and persistent trends. Meanwhile, we believe that these data may be susceptible to certain distortions, particularly in the post-Crimea period, connected with a deterioration in the “climate of opinions.” See K. Rogov, “‘Krymsky sindrom’: mekhanizmy avtoritarnoi mobilizatsii,” Kontrapunkt, 2015, no. 1 (www.counter-point.org/крымский-синдром/; accessed December 13, 2016).

12. Data of the Levada Center, annual averages calculated, sixty-eight measurements were taken in all from late 1999 to late 2007, and another two in January and April 2012.

13. It should be noted that the question in the 1999 and 2000 polls, where the supporters of the Western model of government was especially high, lacked the words “in the future”; on the other hand, a similar wording of a response to Question 6, which will be discussed below, stipulates a “special Russian way” (“A government with a market economy, a democratic system, observance of human rights similar to Western countries, but with its own Russian way”). In spite of these differences, the share of people who selected the “Western democratic model” in versions of the question that mentioned “type of government” was quite stable.

14. In cases where the “upper” cluster was presented as a single value (outlier), we still calculated the average of the value of the outlier and its nearest value as the indicator for the “upper cluster” in order to lower the “weight” of the sole outlier.

15. For in-depth commentary regarding the concept of a “special path” in the context of the Russian transformation, see B.V. Dubin, “‘The Special Path’ and Social Order in Contemporary Russia,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia, 2010, no. 1 (www.levada.ru/sites/default/files/vom_2010.1_103.pdf; accessed December 5, 2016).

16. This expression was first used by Ivan Krastev to describe the reversal in Putin’s domestic and foreign policies in the second half of the 2000s. I. Krastev, “Russia as the ‘Other Europe,’” Russia in Global Affairs, 2007, no. 4 (http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_9779; accessed December 5, 2016). It was later developed into an entire concept. See R. Horvath, “Putin’s ‘Preventive Counter-Revolution’: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution,” Europe-Asia Studies, 2011, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 1–25; R. Horvath, Putin’s Preventive Counter-Revolution: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution (Routledge, 2013).

17. “Predpochtitel’nye modeli ekonomicheskoi i politicheskoi sistem,” Levada Center, February 17, 2016 (www.levada.ru/2016/02/17/predpochtitelnye-modeli-ekonomicheskoj-i-politicheskoj-sistem; accessed December 17, 2016).

18. Cur’er, June 5–10, 2013; Cur’er, June 17–21, 2015.

19. See, for example, K. Rogov (ed.), Instituty i praktiki avtoritarnoi konsolidatsii. Politicheskoe razvitie Rossii. 2014–2016. (Moscow: Liberal’naia missiia, 2016).

20. For more detail, see K. Rogov, “Politicheskie tsikly postsovetskogo transita,” Pro et Contra, 2012, nos. 4–5, pp. 6–32; E. Chebankova, “Public and Private Cycles of Socio-Political Life in Putin’s Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 2010, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 121–148.