Thinking about democracy: Interviews with Russian citizens

Slavic Review

Volumn 60, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 336-362

  Carnaghan, Ellen ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0242564615     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2697274     Document Type: Article

References (128)

1. James L. Gibson and Raymond M. Duch, "Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture," in Arthur H. Miller, William M. Reisinger, and Vicki L. Hesli, eds., Public Opinion and Regime Change: The New Politics of Post-Soviet Societies (Boulder, Colo., 1993);
2. James L. Gibson, "The Struggle between Order and Liberty in Contemporary Russian Political Culture," Australian Journal of Political Science 32, no. 2 (1997): 271-90;
3. James L. Gibson, "Putting Up with Fellow Russians: An Analysis of Political Tolerance in the Fledgling Russian Democracy," Political Research Quarterly 51 (March 1998): 37-68.
4. Richard Rose, "Postcommunism and the Problem of Trust," Journal of Democracy 5 (July 1994): 18-30;
5. Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin, Democratization Backwards: The Problem of Third Wave Democracies, Studies in Public Policy, no. 314 (Glasgow, 1999);
6. Stephen Whitefield and Geoffrey Evans, "Support for Democracy and Political Opposition in Russia, 1993-1995," Post-Soviet Affairs 12 (July-September 1996): 227;
7. Jeffrey W. Hahn, "Changes in Contemporary Russian Political Culture," in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y, 1995), 112-36.
8. Arthur H. Miller, Vicki L. Hesli, and William M. Reisinger, "Conceptions of Democracy among Mass and Elite in Post-Soviet Societies," British Journal of Political Science 27, no. 2 (April 1997): 157-90.
9. I. M. Kliamkin, V. V Lapkin, and V. I. Pantin, "Mezhdu avtoritarizmom i demokratiei," Polis 2, no. 26 (1995): 57-87.
10. Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., "Congruence Theory Applied: Democratization in Russia," in Harry Eckstein, Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Erik Hoffmann, and William M. Reisinger, eds., Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? Explorations in State-Society Relations (Lanham, Md., 1998), 35-68.
11. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1930);
12. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Newbury Park, Calif., 1989);
13. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York, 1956).
14. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993), 176, 183.
15. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966);
16. Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Ernest Barker (New York, 1946);
17. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, exp. ed. (1959; reprint, Baltimore, 1981).
18. In this case, "culture" and "structure" both imply that democracies are created in received conditions; democratic institutions do not much affect those conditions. On the similarity of those approaches, see William M. Reisinger, "Establishing and Strengthening Democracy," in Robert D. Grey, ed., Democratic Theory and Post-Communist Change (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1997), 52-78.
19. Putnam sees "culture" and "structure" as forming a mutually reinforcing equilibrium. See Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 180.
20. Andranik Migranian, "Dolgii put' k evropeiskomu domu," Novyi mir, no. 7 (July 1989): 166-84.
21. Vasilii Grossman, Forever Flowing, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York, 1972).
22. Edward L. Keenan, "Muscovite Political Folkways," Russian Review 45, no. 2 (April 1986): 115-81;
23. Archie Brown, "Ideology and Political Culture," in Seweryn Bialer, ed., Politics, Society, and Nationality inside Gorbachev's Russia (Boulder, Colo. 1989).
24. For a more detailed summary of results of recent survey research than space allows here, see Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., "Post-Soviet Political Culture in Russia: An Assessment of Recent Empirical Investigations," Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 2 (March 1996): 225-60,
25. and Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., and Richard Ahl, "Does the Public Matter for Democratization in Russia? What We Have Learned from 'Third Wave' Transitions and Public Opinion Surveys," in Eckstein, Fleron; Hoffmann, and Reisinger, eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 287-330.
26. Jeffrey W. Hahn, "Continuity and Change in Russian Political Culture," British Journal of Political Science 21 (October 1991): 393-41;
27. Kent L. Tedin, "Popular Support for Competitive Elections in the Soviet Union," Comparative Political Studies 27 (July 1991): 241-71;
28. James L. Gibson, Raymond M. Duch, and Kent L. Tedin, "Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union," Journal of Politics 54 (May 1992): 329-71.
29. For political efficacy, see Hahn, "Continuity and Change";
30. for the extension of rights, see Gibson and Duch, "Emerging Democratic Values";
31. and for these shortcomings reappearing in later studies, see Hahn, "Changes in Contemporary Russian Political Culture";
32. Gibson, "The Struggle between Order and Liberty";
33. Gibson, "Putting Up with Fellow Russians";
34. James L. Gibson, "A Sober Second Thought: An Experiment in Persuading Russians to Tolerate," American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 3 (July 1998): 819-50;
35. Iurii Levada, "'Chelovek sovetskii' piat' let spustia: 1989-1994 (predvaritel'nye itogi sravnitel'nogo issledovanniia)," Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: Informatsionnyi biulleten' - Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia 1 (January-February 1995): 9-14.
36. Donna Bahry, "Society Transformed? Rethinking the Social Roots of Perestroika," Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 512-54;
37. Richard Rose and Ellen Carnaghan, "Generational Effects on Attitudes to Communist Regimes: A Comparative Analysis," Post-Soviet Affairs 11, no. 1 (January-March 1995): 28-56.
38. Judith S. Kullberg and William Zimmerman, "Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Democracy," World Politics 51 (April 1999): 336.
39. See also Ada Finifter and Ellen Mickiewicz, "Redefining the Political System of the USSR: Mass Support for Political Change," American Political Science Review 186, no. 4 (December 1992): 857-74;
40. Raymond M. Duch, "Tolerating Economic Reform: Popular Support for Transition to a Free Market in the Former Soviet Union," American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (September 1993) : 590-608;
41. Arthur H. Miller, Vicki L. Hesli, and William M. Reisinger, "Reassessing Mass Support for Political and Economic Change in the Former USSR," American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (June 1994): 399-411;
42. Arthur H. Miller, William M. Reisinger, and Vicki L. Hesli, "Understanding Political Change in Post-Soviet Societies: A Further Commentary on Finifter and Mickiewicz," American Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (March 1996): 153-66;
43. Robert J. Brym, "Re-evaluating Mass Support for Political and Economic Change in Russia," Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 5 (July 1996): 751-66.
44. Stephen Whitefield and Geoffrey Evans, "The Russian Election of 1993: Public Opinion and the Transition Experience," Post-Soviet Affairs 10, no. 1 (1994): 38-60;
45. White-field and Evans, "Support for Democracy."
46. Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger, "Conceptions of Democracy";
47. Iurii Levada, "Kompleksy obshchestvennogo mneniia (stat'ia vtoraia)," Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: Informatsionnyi biulleten'-Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia 1 (January-February 1997): 7-12.
48. Kullberg and Zimmerman, "Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses," 340.
49. Kliamkin, Lapkin, and Pantin, "Mezhdu avtoritarizmom i demokratiei," 79.
50. V. N. Berezovskii, N. I. Krotov, and V. V. Grivenko, Neformal'naia Rossiia (Moscow, 1990);
51. M. Steven Fish, Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1995).
52. Laura Belin and Robert W. Orttung, The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma (Armonk, N.Y., 1997).
53. Ronald Rogowski, Rational Legitimacy: A Theory of Political Support (Princeton, 1974).
54. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York, 1961), 322.
55. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York, 1989), 52.
56. See also James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, "The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life," American Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (September 1984): 734-49.
57. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge, Eng., 1994).
58. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 23.
59. See, in particular, the debate originally published in the pages of The Journal of Democracy and republished as Juan Linz, "The Perils of Presidentialism,"
60. Donald Horowitz, "Comparing Democratic Systems,"
61. Arend Lijphart, "Constitutional Choices for New Democracies,"
62. Guy Lardeyret, "The Problem with PR,"
63. and Quentin Quade, "PR and Democratic Statecraft," all in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy, 2d ed. (Baltimore, 1996), 124-42, 143-49, 162-74, 175-80, and 181-86.
64. Adam Przeworski et al., Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge, Eng., 1995).
65. Similarly, see Jon Elster, Claus Offe, and Ulrich K. Preuss, Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (Cambridge, Eng., 1998),
66. and Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, 1986).
67. Constitution of the Russian Federation, article 111, article 117, and article 90. For the constitution, see http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/rs00000_. html (last consulted 15 February 2001).
68. Russell Bova, "Political Culture, Authority Patterns, and the Architecture of the New Russian Democracy," in Eckstein, Fleron, Hoffmann, and Reisinger, eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 189.
69. Guillermo O'Donnell, "Delegative Democracy," Journal of Democracy 5 (January 1994): 55-69.
70. Grigorii Vodolazov et al., "Demokratiia v Rossii: Samokritika i perspektivy," Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost', 1995, no. 2:42.
71. Philip Roeder, "Transitions from Communism: State-Centered Approaches," in Eckstein, Fleron, Hoffmann, and Reisinger, eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 206.
72. Benjamin Ginsburg, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (New York, 1986);
73. Michael Mann, "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results," in John A. Hall, ed., States in History (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), 109-36.
74. Jerry Hough, "The Russian Election of 1993: Public Attitudes toward Economic Reform and Democratization," Post-Soviet Affairs 10, no. 1 (1994): 12.
75. William Mishler and Richard Rose, Trust in Untrustworthy Institutions: Culture and Institutional Performance in Post-Communist Societies, Studies in Public Policy, no. 310 (Glasgow, 1998).
76. Researchers disagree on whether economic hardship reduces support for democracy. For those who argue that it does, see Whitefield and Evans, "Russian Election of 1993";
77. Kullberg and Zimmerman, "Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses."
78. For the opposite view, see Raymond M. Duch, "Economic Chaos and the Fragility of Democratic Transition in Former Communist Regimes," Journal of Politics 57 (February 1995): 121-58;
79. James L. Gibson, "A Mile Wide but an Inch Deep (?): The Structure of Democratic Commitments in the Former USSR," American Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (May 1996): 396-420;
80. Hahn, "Changes in Contemporary Russian Political Culture."
81. I am less concerned here with notions of minority rights, another common focus of opinion surveys, partly because protecting the rights of unpopular groups is not usually the job of the people as a whole; rather, it is the job of courts, constitutions, and other counter-majoritarian institutions. I leave the connection between democracy and free markets for another work because the relationship is too complicated for adequate treatment here.
82. All interviews were conducted in Russian. Most were conducted by the author; four, by a Russian colleague, Ol'ga Iastrebova. Interviews ranged in length from a minimum of about forty-five minutes to a maximum of over three hours. The interviews were taped, with the permission of the respondent. I also took copious notes, both as a backup in case the tape recorder failed and to distract the respondent from the tape recorder. The tape recorder did not seem to influence the respondents' willingness to talk. The only times respondents asked me to turn it off were when they offered me food or were interrupted by phone calls, visitors, or wayward children. The tapes were transcribed in Russian by a native speaker, except for two cases where recording difficulties made that impossible. In those cases, I rely on the notes I took during the interview. Translations are my own. Volunteers for the interviews were solicited from among my acquaintances and by a variety of local researchers: Polina Kozyreva, Mikhail Kosolapov, Nina Rostegaeva, and Natal'ia Peshkova in Moscow; Tat'iana Bogomolova in Novosibirsk; Valentina Pervova in Krasnoiarsk; Ol'ga Shcheglova in Voronezh; and Arbakhan Magomedov in Ul'ianovsk. Most interviewees were offered a small stipend, although many of them refused it in 1998. Most accepted the stipend in 2000.
83. In any case, most of the attitudinal differences between urban and rural Russians can be explained by differences in education, age, and economic situation, attributes on which there is considerable variation in my sample. See William M. Reisinger, Arthur H. Miller, and Vicki L. Hesli, "Political Norms in Rural Russia: Evidence from Public Attitudes," Europe-Asia Studies 47 (September 1995): 1025-42.
84. Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (New York, 1962)
85. Jennifer Hochschild, What's Fair? Americans'Attitudes toward Distributive Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1981).
86. For example, Nancy Ries, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika (Ithaca, 1997).
87. William Belson, Validity in Survey Research (Aldershot, Eng., 1986).
88. Ries, Russian Talk, 27-29.
89. Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics," in David Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York, 1964), 206-61.
90. Boris Grushin, "Est' li u nas obshchestvennoe mnenie?" Novoe vremia, 1988, no. 30:29-31.
91. John Zaller and Stanley Feldman, "A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences," American Journal of Political Science 36 (1992): 579-616;
92. Donna Bahry, "Comrades into Citizens? Russian Political Culture and Public Support for the Transition," Slavic Review 58, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 841-53.
93. See David J. Elkins, Manipulation and Consent: How Voters and Leaders Manage Complexity (Vancouver, 1993);
94. Michael F. Schober and Frederick G. Conrad, "Does Conversational Interviewing Reduce Survey Measurement Error?" Public Opinion Quarterly 61, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 576-602.
95. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (1762; reprint, London, 1973);
96. Charles Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Birmingham, Ala., 1984);
97. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, 1971);
98. Georg Sorenson, Democracy and Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing World (Boulder, Colo., 1993);
99. Lane, Political Ideology, 84.
100. For a summary of those arguments, see Fleron, "Congruence Theory Applied," 36. By contrast, Aleksandr Akheizer argues that mass Russian culture shows a self-destructively high tolerance for chaos; it is just Russian governments that prefer order.
101. Aleksandr Akheizer, "Dezorganizatsiia kak kategoriia obshchestvennoi nauki," Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost', 1995, no. 6:42-52.
102. Also published in Sociological Research 35 (September-October 1996): 65-81.
103. Keenan, "Muscovite Political Folkways."
104. Iurii Zarakhovich, "Viewpoint: A Russian's Lament," Time, 21 September 1998, 76.
105. For instance, Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, 1989), 28-30.
106. Rose, "Postcommunism and the Problem of Trust";
107. Rose and Shin, "Democratization Backwards," 17.
108. A word on quotations. All quotations are direct translations from the taped interviews. In translating, I attempted to recreate the original idea in conversational English, which, given the peculiarities of conversational Russian, meant changing word order and sometimes sentence structure as well. I did not attempt to capture every oral hesitation, and I have sometimes smoothed disjointed phrases into a more grammatical form. I also add words in the English translation where the precision of Russian grammar conveyed more meaning than did the exact English equivalent. Occasionally, I have turned partial responses into complete sentences, adding in enough of the question to make the response have meaning by itself. Transcripts of quotations in the original Russian can be obtained from the author.
109. By contrast, many respondents were more willing to see city dumas abolished, at least in smaller cities where it was not obvious that conflicting interests existed.
110. John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions (Cambridge, Eng., 1995);
111. John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, "Democrats or Anti-Democrats? Americans' Preferences for Governmental Processes" (paper, Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 1999).
112. Except in Voronezh, where the water supply is erratic, interviewees outside Moscow tended to have better things to say about their mayors than they did about El'tsin, but the contrast was not nearly as sharp as for Luzhkov.
113. Khioziain can mean master, manager, or host. When the respondents wanted to convey a more authoritarian relationship, they tended to use barin. This word was used regularly in reference to authorities in the abstract but not to refer to Luzhkov.
114. The person whose job is to keep sidewalks around buildings clean and clear of snow and otherwise manage public spaces.
115. Throughout the interviews, the respondents often talked about "order" as a condition where laws functioned normally and things worked. A more complete discussion of what Russians mean by "order" is the topic for another article. See also William M. Reisinger, "Survey Research and Authority Patterns in Contemporary Russia," in Eckstein, Fleron, Hoffmann, and Reisinger, eds., Can Democracy Take Root? 163-73;
116. Ries, Russian Talk, 72.
117. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, 1984).
118. John Keane, Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments of European Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy, and the Problem of Controlling Social and Political Power (London, 1988).
119. George H. Sabine, "The Two Democratic Traditions," Philosophical Review 61, no. 4 (October 1952): 451-74.
120. Keenan, "Muscovite Political Folkways."
121. Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought: From the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka (Stanford, 1979).
122. Zinaida T. Golenkova, Viktor V. Vitiuk, Iurii V. Gridchin, Alla I. Chernykh, and Larisa M. Romanenko, "Stanovlenie grazhdanskogo obshchestva i sotsial'naia stratifikatsiia," Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 1995, no. 6: 14-24.
123. Also published in Sociological Research 35 (March-April 1996): 6-22.
124. Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger, "Conceptions of Democracy."
125. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, "Democrats or Anti-Democrats?";
126. Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-On Kim, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven Nation Comparison (Cambridge, Eng., 1978), 46-62.
127. Miller, Hesli, Reisinger, "Conceptions of Democracy," 195.
128. See similar views in Sarah Ashwin, "'There's No Joy Any More': The Experience of Reform in a Kuzbass Mining Settlement," Europe-Asia Studies 47 (December 1995): 1376.