Time Matters: Adapting to Transformation

Abstract

In the time that has passed since the Soviet Union disappeared at the end of 1991, Russians have had to alter their behaviour or risk becoming marginalized in a post-transformation society. How and why have Russians adapted to political transformation? Evidence from a unique source, 14 New Russia Barometer (NRB) nationwide sample surveys from January 1992 to January 2005, shows that Russians differ from one another in whether or not they give support to the new regime – and their evaluations have fluctuated substantially since 1992. Because the same questions have been asked over a decade or more, it is possible to test not only the influence of economic, political and social influences on political support, but also the importance of the passage of time on how Russians adapt to their regime. The consolidation of support for a new regime, whether democratic or not, requires that individuals adapt by giving either positive support or resigned acceptance to it as a lesser evil without an expectation that it could be replaced by another system.

This study is the product of 15 years of research with multiple sources of funding, most recently from the British Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-0341 for a study of Testing the Durability of Regime Support in Russia. It draws on materials in a book by the same authors, Russia Transformed: Developing Popular Support for a New Regime (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The authors are indebted to Anton Oleinik and Marc Berenson for comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

Notes

Douglass C. North, ‘In Anticipation of the Marriage of Political and Economic Theory’, in James E. Alt, M. Levi and E. Ostrom (eds.), Competition and Cooperation (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), pp.314–17 (p.316).

Richard Rose, ‘Learning to Support New Regimes in Europe’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.18, No.3 (2007), pp.111–25.

Joan Robinson, ‘History versus Equilibrium’, Collected Economic Papers of Joan Robinson, Vol.5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp.48–58; Richard Rose, ‘Political Behaviour in Time and Space’, in Russell Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.283–301.

Juan J. Linz, ‘Transitions to Democracy’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol.13, No.3 (1990), pp.143–64.

David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), pp.159ff.

Richard Rose, ‘Dynamic Tendencies in the Authority of Regimes’, World Politics, Vol.21, No.4 (1969), pp.612–28.

Vladimir Shlapentokh, The Public and Private Life of the Soviet People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p.106.

Richard Rose and William Mishler, ‘Comparing Regime Support in Non-Democratic and Democratic Countries’, Democratization, Vol.9, No.2 (2002), pp.1–20.

Richard Rose, William Mishler and Neil Munro, Russia Transformed: Developing Popular Support for a New Regime (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Figure 7.1.

Timothy J. Colton, Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them in the New Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), Ch.4.

H. Peyton Young, Individual Strategy and Social Structure: An Evolutionary Theory of Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Ibid.

Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), Ch.1.

Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p.452.

Allen C. Lynch, How Russia is Not Ruled (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p.173.

William Mishler and Richard Rose, ‘Learning and Re-Learning Regime Support: The Dynamics of Post-Communist Regimes’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.41, No.1 (2002), pp.5–36.

Linz, ‘Transitions to Democracy’, p.156.

See, for example, Nikolai Berdyaev, The Russian Idea (New York: Macmillan, 1947); compare Peter J.S. Duncan, Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Holy Revolution, Communism and After (London: Routledge, 2000).

William Mishler and Richard Rose, ‘Generation, Age and Time: Patterns of Political Learning during Russia's Transformation’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol.51, No.4 (2007), pp.822–34.

Donald Kinder and D.R. Kiewiet, ‘Sociotropic Politics: The American Case’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.11, No.2 (1981), pp.129–61.

Richard Rose, ‘What Is the Demand for Price Stability in Post-Communist Countries?’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.45, No.2 (1998), pp.43–50.

Ellen Carnaghan, ‘Thinking about Democracy: Interviews with Russian Citizens’, Slavic Review, Vol.60, No.2 (2001), pp.336–66.

For more details, see Rose et al., Russia Transformed, Ch.8.

More than 40 different indicators from New Russia barometer surveys were initially tested for their potential influence in OLS regressions. The many found lacking in influence were discarded in order to focus on the most important results, including the theoretically significant null finding of social structure and household economic circumstances lacking influence on support for the present regime.

Susan C. Stokes (ed.), Public Support for Market Reforms in New Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.9ff.

Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), Ch.1.

See Rose et al., Russia Transformed, Table 9.2.

Marco R. Steenbergen and Bradford S. Jones, ‘Modelling Multilevel Data Structures’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol.46, No.1 (2002), pp.218–37; Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Anthony S. Bryk, Hierarchical Linear Modelling: Applications and Data Analysis Methods, 2nd edn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002).

Because the NRB surveys were conducted at different times of year, time is measured in months in order to ensure that it is an equal-interval measure for calculating its effect. Since NRB XIII did not have a full set of independent variables, it is omitted from the regression analyses; this does not affect the measurement of the passage of time.

To calculate the interaction effect of the passage of time, the monthly interaction coefficient must be multiplied by the number of months since the start of the Russian Federation and the product added to product of the coefficient for the independent variable and its mean value. In Table 3, the b coefficient for corruption (–1.64) measures its initial impact, when the mean level of perceived corruption was estimated at 3.50 on a four-point scale; the effect of corruption on support was thus –1.64 x 3.5 = –5.7. In each subsequent month the interaction term of–.04 is added; thus, in month two it is –1.68 and so forth. Thus, even though in month 161 the level of perceived corruption was only slightly less, 3.28, the passage of time made the effect of corruption on support much larger, –26.5 points.

William Mishler and John P. Willerton, ‘The Dynamics of Presidential Popularity in Post-Communist Russia’, Journal of Politics, Vol.65, No.1 (2003), pp.111–31.

See Rose et al., Russia Transformed, Table 9.2.

When and whether this will happen is the subject of a new CSPP research project on testing the durability of Russian regime support in response to the challenge of presidential term limits. The British ESRC is funding four additional NRB surveys in the period 2007–9. For up-to-date details, see <http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cspp>.

Mishler and Rose, ‘Generation, Age and Time’.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp.266ff.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Rose

Richard Rose, director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen, created the New Europe/New Russia Barometer in 1991 to monitor mass response to transformation across 16 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (see <http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cspp>). He is the author of more than 40 books and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

William Mishler

William Mishler, professor of political science at the University of Arizona and visiting professor at the University of Aberdeen, specializes in the sophisticated analysis of public opinion and political participation in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. For a dozen years he has been publishing analyses of New Europe Barometer data in major American journals.

Neil Munro

Neil Munro, senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, concentrates on mass response to regime change in post-Communist countries and in Asia. He has co-authored three books on Russia and New European Democracies and many journal articles. Currently he is exploring how China is interpreting the implications of reforms leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.