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Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Russian Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Judith S. Kullberg  and
William Zimmerman
Judith S. Kullberg
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
William Zimmerman
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

Strong showings by antireform parties in elections in Russia and other East European nations in the early and mid-1990s raised concerns about the long-term prospects for democracy in the region. Some interpret these votes as expressions of public protest over the costs of economic reform, while others argue that they reflected public skepticism of the liberalism of reformist elites. The authors present evidence from parallel elite/mass surveys conducted in Russia in 1992–93 and 1995 of a considerable gap between elite and mass worldviews. They argue that variation in ideological orientations—both between elite and mass and within the mass public—is largely a function of the postcommunist structure of economic opportunity. Analysis of the survey data provides substantial support for the effects of economic opportunity structure on individual ideological orientation and system preference. Thus, what accounts for the Russian elite's embrace of liberalism and its nonacceptance by portions of the Russian mass public is not simply economic decline but the differential impact of restructuring on long-term material prospects. The findings suggest that students of democratic change should focus more fully on the structural factors that constrain what is politically possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , April 1999 , pp. 323 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1999

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References

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33 For each statement in the 1993 elite and mass surveys and in the 1995 elite survey used to construct the economic and political system preference indicators, respondents were given four possible response categories from which to choose, ranging from “completely” and “somewhat” agree, to “somewhat” and “completely” disagree. Scores on both scales were calculated for each individual by summing response values on nonmissing items and then dividing the sum by the number of responses. The resulting scales range from -2 to 2, with positive values indicating adherence to liberalism and negative values indicating an illiberal orientation. In the 1995 mass survey, respondents had a fifth choice, between agree and disagree—”I hesitate to say” (koleblius'). Since examination of 1995 response patterns led to the conclusion that koleblius' is the expression of an ambivalent position and not identical to “don't know” or “refuse to answer,” we coded it as 0, midway between -2 and 2. In order to make the 1993 and 1995 scales roughly comparable, we adjusted the response categories of the 1993 elite and mass survey and the 1995 elite survey, setting strongly agree and disagree positions at 2 and -2, but the somewhat disagree and somewhat agree responses at -.666 and .666. This coding scheme retained equal intervals between all responses, but weakened the somewhat agree and somewhat disagree responses to compensate for the absence of a true middle response position on these measures. This decision was made in recognition of the fact that without such middle option, truly ambivalent respondents were forced to take a position.

34 Placement of respondents into the ideological categories was done in the following manner: those persons whose aggregate scores on the political and economic liberalism scales were above 0 were coded as liberal democrats; those whose political liberalism score was below 0 and economic liberalism score was above 0 were treated as market authoritarians; those whose political liberalism score was above 0 and whose economic liberalism score was below 0 were labeled social democrats; those whose scores on both scales were below 0 were categorized as socialist authoritarians. We categorized respondents with 0 scores on either scale as “ambivalent,” and those for whom scale scores could not be calculated because of nonresponses to the scale items as “unmobilized.”

35 The gap between elite and mass orientations reported here is real. The obvious objection is that the elite sample is unrepresentative of the Moscow elite stratum as a whole and that the chasm seen between elite and mass respondents is thus more a reflection of the particular character of the sample than of any genuine distance between the elite and the mass public. There are two possible responses to this objection, one methodological, the other empirical. First, the sheer size of the elite sample allows us to make plausible inferences about the distribution of ideological orientation within the Moscow elite. Second, a study conducted in 1991 found a comparable proportion of market democrats among Moscow elites. See Kullberg, Judith, “The Ideological Roots of Elite Political Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 46 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A more recent study of elite values, with a sample drawn from the Russian government and the state Duma found a similar proportion of democrats among elites, but a larger proportion of social, rather than market, democrats. See Rivera, Sharon Werning, “Communists as Democrats: Elite Political Culture in Post-Communist Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1998)Google Scholar. The difference between Werning Rivera's findings and those presented here is a function of her sample—a larger proportion of her respondents were drawn from the communist-dominated Duma—and her use of different criteria to distinguish between market and social democrats.

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39 Heightened exposure to elite-influenced mass communications has probably also reinforced the liberalism of the urban population.

40 As can be observed in the tables, different response categories were used for place of work in the two surveys- For example, in 1995 individuals working in judicial administration were placed with members of the armed forces and militia in the category of “security services and judicial administration,” whereas such respondents in 1993 were categorized as being employed in the state administration. Differences in categorization almost certainly account for the discrepancy between the 1993 and 1995 economic liberalism means of workers in “state administration.”

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43 Reports of personal possessions can be used to indicate both whether an individual has the basic resources necessary to engage in economic activity and how much capital he or she would be able to invest in economic activity. In the 1993 survey respondents were asked to report whether they had any of the following possessions: telephone, color television, VCR, dacha, personal automobile. The variable incorporated into the regression analysis is a simple count of these possessions. As a further indicator of perceived economic opportunity structure, we included responses to the following question: “Imagine that you had an idea to open a new enterprise, which, if successful, would strongly increase your income. Would you want to begin such a business?” Response options were a simple yes or no.

44 The measures of national and regional economic conditions were questions regarding the general condition of the Russian national economy (with response categories from “excellent” to “very bad” shape), change in the state of the economy over the last twelve months, and change in the state of the economy over the last twelve months in the area in which the respondent resided (possible responses to the latter two items ranged from “improved a lot” to “worsened a lot.” The measure of sociotropic evaluation was constructed by summing responses across the three items. The measure of change in family finances was “How has your family's material situation changed over this past twelve months?”

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51 See William Zimmerman, “Foreign Policy, Political System Preference, and the Russian Presidential Election of 1996” (Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, November 1996).

52 In the 1995 parliamentary elections 64.7 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Turnout in the first and second rounds of the 1996 presidential election was 69.8 percent and 69.9 percent.

53 Scholars at the University of Iowa have also documented considerable Russian elite support for democratic principles and institutions. See Miller, Arthur, Hesli, Vicki L., and Reisinger, William, “Conceptions of Democracy among Mass and Elite in Post-Soviet Societies,” British Journal of Political Science 27 (April 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 For discussions of the concept and indicators of consolidation, see Mainwaring, Scott, O'Donnell, Guillermo, and Valenzuela, J. Samuel, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Linz, Juan J. and Stepan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

55 Gramsci (fn. 18), 105.

56 See O'Donnell, Guillermo and Schmitter, Philippe C., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Palma, Giuseppe Di, To Craft Democracy: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

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62 A recent example of this tendency was Yeltsin's reaction to a miners' strike in Siberia. Commenting on the protest, Yeltsin accused the miners, who struck because of unpaid wages amounting to 172 million rubles ($27.8 million), of having not yet learned “to work in a market economy”; “Yeltsin Urged Investigation of Miners' Protests,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (May 25,1998).

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