Twice in the winter of 1999-2000, citizens of the Russian Federation flocked to their neighborhood voting stations and scratched their ballots in an atmosphere of uncertainty, rancor, and fear. This ...book is a tale of these two elections -one for the 450-seat Duma, the other for President. Despite financial crisis, a national security emergency in Chechnya, and cabinet instability, Russian voters unexpectedly supported the status quo. The elected lawmakers prepared to cooperate with the executive branch, a gift that had eluded President Boris Yeltsin since he imposed a post-Soviet constitution by referendum in 1993. When Yeltsin retired six months in advance of schedule, the presidential mantle went to Vladimir Putin -a career KGB officer who fused new and old ways of doing politics. Putin was easily elected President in his own right. This book demonstrates key trends in an extinct superpower, a troubled country in whose stability, modernization, and openness to the international community the West still has a huge stake.
Under what conditions do individuals withdraw support from dominant parties in nondemocratic regimes? Employing an original panel survey, we measure the same individuals’ support for Russia's ...dominant party first at the peak of its dominance in 2008 and again shortly after it suffered a cascading defection of regime supporters in 2011–12. This allows us uniquely to explore the microfoundations of theories of regime defection cascades, generally supporting the argument that they involve complex “informational” as well as “reputational” processes. Accordingly, we find that early and eager movers in such a cascade tend to come from less socially vulnerable segments of the population, to have greater need to rely on other people for interpreting events, to believe the regime has lower levels of popular support, and to come from more heterogeneous communities. We find little role for mass media (including social media) or democratizing zeal in driving Russia's regime defection cascade.
Political scientists often consider post-Soviet Russia, as well as sundry of its Eurasian neighbors, to be governed by a "hybrid" regime that somehow marries elements of democracy and autocracy. ...Although this approach garners less than unanimous support, I argue that it is the best
starting place for inquiry. For the hybridity paradigm to be of maximum use, however, we need more of a conversation about its theoretical underpinnings and empirical manifestations. The present essay takes up these matters with reference to the Russian experience since 1991. I urge scholars
to apply a pair of criteria for what constitutes a political regime and pay more attention to what we mean by a hybrid regime and to its actual, observable components. When it comes expressly to Russia in the Putin years, I argue for the importance of the educative aspect of erecting the hybrid
system.
People vary in the way in which they approach decision-making, which impacts real-world behavior. There has been a surge of interest in moving beyond reliance on self-report measures to capture such ...individual differences. Particular emphasis has been placed on devising and applying a range of methodologies that include experimental, neuroscience, and observational paradigms. This paper provides a selective review of recent studies that illustrate the methods and yield of these approaches in terms of generating a deeper understanding of decision-making style and the notable differences that can be found across individuals.
This article begins by relating the 2010 presidential election to preceding presidential elections in Ukraine. It demonstrates that this is the first time in Ukraine’s two decades of national ...independence that strong continuity has been present across successive elections in the territorially aggregated basis of support for the same leading candidate, or between such a candidate and a political mentor. From this perspective, the 2010 election is the country’s first aligning election. The article investigates the social and economic correlates of regional voting patterns in 2010, finding that identity-based variables based on section (macro-region) and language are the strongest predictors, although economics is also of some relevance. It goes on to compare the 2010 contest in this respect with the elections of 1994, 1999, and 2004, showing that identity politics lost in salience as of the late 1990s and then resurged. The reasons for this reversal have to do with the elite’s habit of relying on identity messages to compete for high office and the penetration of the Ukrainian political space by international actors, Russia in particular.
What leads people to vote for incumbent presidents in hybrid regimes—political systems that allow at least some real opposition to compete in elections but that greatiy advantage the authorities? ...Here, the case of Russia is analyzed through survey research conducted as part of the Russian Election Studies (RES) series. The RES has queried nationally representative samples of Russia's population both before and shortly after every post-Soviet presidential election there to date, those in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. Since Vladimir Putin himself ran as head of the United Russia slate in the 2007 parliamentary election, voting in that election is also considered. The analysis reveals that Putin has consistently won votes based on personal appeal, opposition to socialism, and a guardedly pro-western foreign policy orientation, among other things. Economic considerations are also very important, though they operate in a way that is more complex than sometimes assumed. President Dmitrii Medvedev generally benefited from these same factors in his election to the presidency.
Despite the tumult associated with the national elections of 2011 and 2012, Putin's regime retains broad and deep connections with the electorate, but ominous signs of erosion portend bigger problems ...despite the coercive force and other resources at the authorities' disposal.
The unique yield of collecting observational data on human movement has received increasing attention in a number of domains, including the study of decision-making style. As such, interest has grown ...in the nuances of core methodological issues, including the best ways of assessing inter-rater reliability. In this paper we focus on one key topic - the distinction between establishing reliability for the patterning of behaviors as opposed to the computation of raw counts - and suggest that reliability for each be compared empirically rather than determined a priori. We illustrate by assessing inter-rater reliability for key outcome measures derived from movement pattern analysis (MPA), an observational methodology that records body movements as indicators of decision-making style with demonstrated predictive validity. While reliability ranged from moderate to good for raw counts of behaviors reflecting each of two Overall Factors generated within MPA (Assertion and Perspective), inter-rater reliability for patterning (proportional indicators of each factor) was significantly higher and excellent (ICC = 0.89). Furthermore, patterning, as compared to raw counts, provided better prediction of observable decision-making process assessed in the laboratory. These analyses support the utility of using an empirical approach to inform the consideration of measuring patterning versus discrete behavioral counts of behaviors when determining inter-rater reliability of observable behavior. They also speak to the substantial reliability that may be achieved via application of theoretically grounded observational systems such as MPA that reveal thinking and action motivations via visible movement patterns.
Political scientists have paid little attention to the role of leadership. This article suggests a way to think systematically about leaders' contributions in the former Soviet Union by examining ...their ability to achieve their own goals and the impact they have. The fifteen countries provide a wide range of variation on the dependent variable. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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