Bryon Moraski has provided a serious and thoughtful reading of Staging Democracy. Here I respond to two points he raises and one I wish he had raised. First, while acknowledging the role of political theater in undermining trust, Moraski wonders about the applicability of the book’s contributions for consolidated democracies. One of the book’s key conclusions is that political theater does not need to be widespread (as it was in Ukraine before Zelenskyy) or the only game in town (as it is in Russia) to be consequential. The book argues that, even if a relatively small number of people are paid or prodded into protests, political rallies, or other forms of support for a political leader, the very existence of those performances can discredit the entire system in some people’s eyes. If some people are doing it because they are paid, the logic goes, maybe everyone is similarly motivated. Such ideas and logics are already in circulation in the United States, where a substantial proportion of Republican voters continue to find credible the lies of the “Stop the Steal” political influence operation. Staging Democracy discusses examples of accusations of “crisis acting” in the United States and situates them within a broader global context of political theater.
Second, Moraski describes Staging Democracy as focusing on commonalities across regime type. Although the book does analyze political theater in divergent regime settings, its research design is neither meant to parse differences nor to focus on similarities cohering around regime type. Instead, Staging Democracy means to add to our conceptual toolbox: to provide a way of thinking about politics that accounts for the dramaturgical and economic practices that regime type concepts do not usually consider.
What does a focus on political theater reveal that other concepts might not allow us to see? Ukraine provides a case in point. For decades, elections seemed to divide the country along the Dnipro River, with pro-EU parties popular in the west and support for politicians friendly to Moscow in the south and east. These electoral preferences mapped onto ethnic and linguistic identities in post-Soviet Ukraine, and over time this correlation became a causal story in scholarship and public commentary. The Kremlin took on board this interpretation, imagining that Ukrainians in the east and south supported pro-Russian politicians because they wanted to be ruled by Russia. Staging Democracy suggests a different explanation: in the east and south of Ukraine, more people voted for pro-Russian parties in part because the tools of economic pressure were ideally suited to conditions in those regions, with their large-scale agriculture and industry, dense concentrations of educational institutions and hospitals, and company towns. Russified Ukrainians in the east and south felt no less supportive of Ukrainian statehood than their compatriots to the west, but their realities often included more economic pressure to support Kremlin-leaning politicians.
Third, as Staging Democracy went to press, some communities in Ukraine where I conducted research for the book were destroyed by Russian missiles, others came under occupation, and still others became destinations for massive numbers of internally displaced people. Moraski quite reasonably read Staging Democracy retrospectively, but how do its contributions help us understand politics after Russia’s full-scale invasion? Time will tell whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s success in moving politics offstage in Ukraine will persist after victory, but the implications for Russia are evident already. Staging Democracy brings into clearer view the continuity between the conduct of Russia’s war and Kremlin governance generally: many of those who volunteered to fight in Ukraine went to pay off a debt, to obtain a car, or to qualify for a mortgage, whereas those who stayed behind framed their choices in similar terms, insisting their political silence allowed them to keep their jobs. Further, the findings of Staging Democracy suggest that sanction regimes, though slow to work, may be effective. Because political theater depends on political threats against people’s livelihoods, it functions best in middle-income contexts where people still have something to lose. In Russia, once people no longer benefit from their silence, seemingly broad public support for a war of imperial expansion may begin to look very different. Finally, an understanding of the economic and societal foundations of political support for contemporary authoritarian regimes can help us better evaluate the salience of ideology in maintaining that support. Kremlin politicians and their allies have a long history of underestimating the intelligence of both their constituents and their adversaries. Even as political performances continue in Russia, something else may be brewing backstage.
