Mass mobilization is among the most dramatic and inspiring forces for political change. When ordinary citizens take to the streets in large numbers, they can undermine and even topple undemocratic ...governments, as the recent wave of peaceful uprisings in several postcommunist states has shown. However, investigation into how protests are organized can sometimes reveal that the origins and purpose of "people power" are not as they appear on the surface. In particular, protest can be used as an instrument of elite actors to advance their own interests rather than those of the masses.
Weapons of the Wealthyfocuses on the region of post-Soviet Central Asia to investigate the causes of elite-led protest. In nondemocratic states, economic and political opportunities can give rise to elites who are independent of the regime, yet vulnerable to expropriation and harassment from above. In conditions of political uncertainty, elites have an incentive to cultivate support in local communities, which elites can then wield as a "weapon" against a predatory regime. Scott Radnitz builds on his in-depth fieldwork and analysis of the spatial distribution of protests to demonstrate how Kyrgyzstan's post-independence development laid the groundwork for elite-led mobilization, whereas Uzbekistan's did not.
Elites often have the wherewithal and the motivation to trigger protests, as is borne out by Radnitz's more than one hundred interviews with those who participated in, observed, or avoided protests. Even Kyrgyzstan's 2005 "Tulip Revolution," which brought about the first peaceful change of power in Central Asia since independence, should be understood as a strategic action of elites rather than as an expression of the popular will. This interpretation helps account for the undemocratic nature of the successor government and the 2010 uprising that toppled it. It also serves as a warning for scholars to look critically at bottom-up political change.
Abstract
As conspiracy theories have become a popular form of political discourse worldwide, states have promoted conspiratorial ideas to advance their foreign policy goals. Yet, despite recent ...attention to the spread of propaganda abroad, scholars have not addressed whether and how conspiracy theories spread across borders. This study assesses this question in the post-Soviet region, by examining the relationship between exposure to Russian state propaganda and belief in conspiracy theories in two countries that border the Russian Federation. Analyzing data from an original survey of Georgia and Kazakhstan indicates that exposure to Russian propaganda through television, social media, or websites has minimal effects on respondents’ endorsement of conspiracy theories. Respondents in Kazakhstan, and especially ethnic Russians, are likely to endorse pro-Russian conspiracy claims that are frequently propagated, owing to preexisting affinities. Yet the most consistent predictor of conspiracy beliefs is alienation from the political system, which occurs independent of foreign media consumption. The findings cast doubt on the ability of states to shape the attitudes of citizens abroad through the media and shine light on the domestic political factors underlying belief in conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are playing an increasingly prominent role worldwide in both political rhetoric and popular belief. Previous research has emphasized the individual-level factors behind conspiracy ...belief but paid less attention to the role of elite framing, while focusing mostly on domestic political contexts. This study assesses the relative weight of official conspiracy claims and motivated biases in producing conspiracy beliefs, in two countries where identities other than partisanship are salient: Georgia and Kazakhstan. I report the results of a survey experiment that depicts a possible conspiracy and varies the content of official claims and relevant contextual details. The results show that motivated reasoning stemming from state-level geopolitical identities is strongly associated with higher conspiracy belief, whereas official claims have little effect on people’s perceptions of conspiracy. Respondents who exhibit higher conspiracy ideation are more likely to perceive a conspiracy but do not weight motivated biases or official claims differently from people with lower conspiratorial predispositions. The findings indicate the importance of (geopolitical) identities in shaping conspiracy beliefs and highlight some of the constraints facing elites who seek to benefit from the use of conspiracy claims.
Conspiracy theories are an increasingly popular form of political rhetoric around the globe. The use of conspiracy theories by public officials stems from long-term factors such as distrust, ...inequality, and political polarization, and is facilitated by one of the preconditions for democracy: competition. This essay explains why conspiracy theories are abundant in the politics of democracies and autocracies alike. It looks at the effects of conspiracy theories on public discourse and discusses how mainstream parties respond to conspiratorial challengers. It concludes by considering how conspiracy theories in politics might be countered.
It is well established that exposure to threats causes citizens to prioritize security considerations and accept restrictions on civil liberties. Yet most studies on which these findings are based ...come from longstanding democracies and do not distinguish among types of threat. This article argues that the effects of internal and external threats are conditional on regime type. It tests the argument via an experiment embedded in an original survey of Georgia and Kazakhstan, countries that vary in regime type but face similar levels of threat. In authoritarian Kazakhstan, there is no difference in attitudes by threat type, whereas external threats produce greater support for security than internal ones in more pluralistic Georgia. Contrary to previous research, security preferences are not mediated by the triggering of anxiety. The findings contribute to literatures on the link between threats and authoritarian preferences, the rally-round-the-flag effect, and the ways that political institutions mediate psychological processes.
In recent years, scholars have argued that protests that employ nonviolent tactics attract greater support and are therefore more likely to succeed than those that use violence. We argue that how ...protest tactics are perceived is not a purely objective determination, but can be influenced in part by observer characteristics - in particular, by partisan identity. We conducted a survey experiment on two independent samples through the MTurk platform, randomly assigning protester group identity and tactics. Results show that when controlling for assigned tactics, self-identified Republicans but not Democrats perceive higher levels of violence when a disliked group is protesting. The effect is strongest in regard to tactics that are nominally the least disruptive. The findings have implications for theories of nonviolent protest, the legitimacy of repression, and the prospects for marginal groups to influence policy in polarized societies.
How do geopolitical beliefs affect the attribution of blame for violent conflict? It is usually assumed that citizens in post-conflict societies come to adopt official nationalist discourses that ...fixate on the other side. Yet scholars of critical geopolitics recognize the importance of affect and localized interactions in shaping beliefs about the political world. This paper analyzes how geopolitical imagination shapes Azerbaijanis' attribution of blame for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, using data from a quasi-experimental study in Azerbaijan. Despite official narratives that demonize Armenia, the beliefs of Azeris in the study diverge in important ways from the official line. In particular, a disproportionate number of subjects “scaled up” culpability for the conflict and assigned a significant amount of blame to Russia. Subjects were prone to perceive Armenia as a Soviet-Russian proxy and to view Armenian behavior as subordinate to Russian interests rather than intrinsically derived. I argue that this causal accounting for the conflict reflects commonsense beliefs about how power is exercised, which were shaped by Azerbaijan's structural position vis-à-vis Russia and historical tropes that emphasize subversion, duplicitousness, and hidden agendas. The findings focus attention on how geopolitical imaginations can shape the ways contemporary events, including conflict, are interpreted. They also demonstrate the need to dig beneath the official discourse to reveal the sometimes surprising ways it is contested or subverted.
What are the origins of belief in conspiracy theories? The dominant approach to studying conspiracy theories links belief to social stresses or personality type, and does not take into account the ...situational and fluctuating nature of attitudes. In this study, a survey experiment, subjects are presented with a mock news article designed to induce conspiracy belief. Subjects are randomly assigned three manipulations hypothesized to heighten conspiracy perceptions: a prime to induce anxiety; information about the putative conspirator; and the number and identifiability of the victim(s). The results indicate that conspiratorial perceptions can emerge from both situational triggers and subtle contextual variables. Conspiracy beliefs emerge as ordinary people make judgments about the social and political world.
This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia's intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their ...national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia's interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.
