Since the end of the Cold War, more and more countries feature political regimes that are neither liberal democracies nor closed authoritarian systems. Most research on these hybrid regimes focuses ...on how elites manipulate elections to stay in office, but in places as diverse as Bolivia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela, protest in the streets has been at least as important as elections in bringing about political change. The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes builds on previously unpublished data and extensive fieldwork in Russia to show how one high-profile hybrid regime manages political competition in the workplace and in the streets. More generally, the book develops a theory of how the nature of organizations in society, state strategies for mobilizing supporters, and elite competition shape political protest in hybrid regimes.
A fascinating, bottom-up exploration of contemporary Russian politics that sheds new light on why Putin's grip on power is more fragile then we think
What do ordinary Russians think of Putin? Who are ...his supporters? And why might their support now be faltering? Alive with the voices and experiences of ordinary Russians and elites alike, Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson craft a compellingly original account of contemporary Russian politics.
Telling the story of Putin's rule through pivotal episodes such as the aftermath of the "For Fair Elections" protests, the annexation of Crimea, and the War in Eastern Ukraine, Greene and Robertson draw on interviews, surveys, social media data, and leaked documents to reveal how hard Putin has to work to maintain broad popular support, while exposing the changing tactics that the Kremlin has used to bolster his popularity. Unearthing the ambitions, emotions, and divisions that fuel Russian politics, this book illuminates the crossroads to which Putin has led his country and shows why his rule is more fragile than it appears.
A key debate in the new literature on authoritarianism concerns the role of institutions in general and legislatures in particular. While much of the literature accepts that authoritarian ...legislatures matter, there is little agreement as to why and how. In this article, we argue that a key function of authoritarian legislatures is to help leaders reduce social protest. In contrast to existing literature, which stresses the representative function of authoritarian legislatures, we argue that legislatures reduce social protest by providing rent-seeking opportunities to key opposition elites who, in return for access to these spoils, demobilize their supporters. We test this argument using original data on the distribution of leadership positions in 83 Russian regional legislatures and two new datasets on opposition protest in Russia. Our findings suggest that legislative cooptation may extend the lifespan of authoritarian regimes by helping to reduce antiregime protest.
Elections are among the most important and least understood institutions in contemporary authoritarian regimes. Theoretically, electoral authoritarian regimes should have an informational advantage ...that makes them more robust than other types of authoritarian regimes, but much empirical evidence suggests otherwise. In this article we offer a new perspective on why this might be the case. Specifically, we consider how authoritarian elections influence a ruler’s choices in making cadre appointments. We argue that the imperative of winning authoritarian elections forces authoritarian leaders to prioritize the appointment of politically loyal cadres, who can help the regime win elections. This choice often comes at the expense of appointing officials who are competent at making good public policy and promoting economic development, factors that may contribute to long-term regime stability. We test this theory using an original dataset of gubernatorial appointments in one leading contemporary authoritarian regime, Russia.
Taking advantage of a panel survey in Ukraine before and after the Euromaidan, we analyze the relationship between ethnicity, language practice, and civic identities on the one hand and political ...attitudes on the other. We find that while ethnic identities and language practices change little on the aggregate level over the period, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of people thinking of Ukraine as their homeland. There has also been a large fall in support for a close political and economic relationship with Russia and some increase in support for joining the European Union. Nevertheless, we find that identities in general, and language practice in particular, remain powerful predictors of political attitudes and that people are more likely to shift attitudes to reflect their identities rather than modify their identities to match their politics.
Why do people become opposition activists in authoritarian regimes where dissent invites social censure and can be dangerous? We make a new contribution to answering this classic question: ...personality. For the first time outside of democratic contexts, we investigate the association between personality traits and opposition activism, arguing that some traits work universally, while others interact with political context. We propose that—as in democracies—high extraversion predicts political activism, regardless of its pro- or anti-regime orientation, and, in particular, that extraversion is critical to explain the shift from online to offline action. We also argue that—contrary to democratic contexts—low agreeableness predicts opposition activism in autocracies, because it reduces the perceived costs of non-conformity. We test these arguments based on two independent survey samples from Russia, a stable authoritarian regime. In a series of statistical tests, including two case-control designs, we find consistent support for all hypotheses.
We explore the relationship between FDI, regime type, and strikes in low- and middle-income countries. We argue that FDI produces social tensions and opportunities for protest that can result in ...higher levels of industrial conflict. However, the effect of FDI is moderated by regime type. While democracies tend to have higher levels of protest overall, they are better able than authoritarian regimes to cope with the strains arising from FDI. We cite two reasons. First, political competition forces regimes to incorporate workers, which shifts conflict from industrial relations to the political arena. Second, democracies provide workers with freedom of association rights, which facilitate institutionalized grievance resolution. We test the argument using a new dataset of labor protest in low- and middle-income countries for the period 1980—2005.
Although spatial polarization of attitudes is extremely common around the world, we understand little about the mechanisms through which polarization on divisive issues rises and falls over time. We ...develop a theory that explains how political shocks can have different effects in different regions of a country depending upon local dynamics generated by the preexisting spatial distribution of attitudes and discussion networks. Where opinions were previously divided, attitudinal diversity is likely to persist after the shock. Meanwhile, where a clear precrisis majority exists on key issues, opinions should change in the direction of the predominant view. These dynamics result in greater local homogeneity in attitudes but at the same time exacerbate geographic polarization across regions and sometimes even within regions. We illustrate our theory by developing a modified version of the adaptive voter model, an adaptive network model of opinion dynamics, to study changes in attitudes toward the European Union (EU) in Ukraine in the context of the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013 to 2014. Using individual-level panel data from surveys fielded before and after the Euromaidan Revolution, we show that EU support increased in areas with high prior public support for EU integration but declined further where initial public attitudes were opposed to the EU, thereby increasing the spatial polarization of EU attitudes in Ukraine. Our tests suggest that the predictive power of both network and regression models increases significantly when we incorporate information about the geographic location of network participants, which highlights the importance of spatially rooted social networks.
A growing literature focuses on the role of political partisanship in shaping attitudes and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We provide a different perspective, by ...developing a theory of how partisanship interacts with another important factor that shapes how people think and behave in the context of the pandemic—local norms. Using a combination of survey data and a survey experiment, we demonstrate the importance of norms in shaping both support for social distancing and reported social-distancing behavior, particularly amongst independents and Republicans. We then confirm that perceptions of norms are indeed tied to what is actually happening around people—that their partisanship does not blind them to reality. Our analysis is the first to examine how partisanship and norms interact with each other and helps to explain why partisan differences matter more in some places than in others.
Existing theories of labor protest depend on independent organizations representing workers. However, in many countries most workers are either not organized at all or are in labor unions intended ...for control, not representation. This is particularly the case in partially liberalized or hybrid regimes where, despite the introduction of electoral competition, autonomous, democratic organizations representing labor are not well developed. Yet such workers do protest. Drawing on an original new dataset from one hybrid regime, post-Communist Russia, I develop a theory of labor protest and of the institutional mechanisms used by elites to influence it. Instead of being a function of union membership or characteristics of the information environment, as the existing literature would have it, protest occurs when it is in the interest of powerful elements of the elite, or when economic conditions are truly desperate.
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