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PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
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    • Past Events
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RECOMMENDED
  • Putin’s Rules of the Game: The Pitfalls of Russia’s New Constitution

    View
  • In the Caucasus, There Is a Peace Agreement but Not Peace

    View
  • Russia’s Niche Soft Power: Sources, Targets and Channels of Influence

    View
  • A Weak Link in NATO? Bulgaria, Russia, and the Lure of Espionage

    View
  • Russia’s Weak Strongman: The Perilous Bargains That Keep Putin in Power

    View
RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • Music and Politics in Contemporary Russia [Lipman Series 2021] April 12, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Gorbachev about the dynamic music scene in contemporary Russia, and how free Russian musicians are to make political statements.
  • How is the Russian Government Coping with Rising Food Prices? [Lipman Series 2021] March 15, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Anton Tabakh about rising food prices in Russia, and what they might mean for Russia's current and future stability.
  • The Communist Party of the Russian Federation: More Than Just Systemic Opposition? [Lipman Series 2021] March 5, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Felix Light and Nikolay Petrov about the contemporary Communist Party of the Russian Federation, including the divisions between its leadership and membership, its attitude toward Alexei Navalny, and why it might be more than just "systemic" opposition after all.
  • Internet Resources: Civic Communication and State Surveillance [Lipman Series 2021] February 16, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Andrei Soldatov and Tanya Lokot about the role of the internet in contemporary Russian politics, including both as a tool of the Russian opposition and as an instrument of the increasingly repressive Russian regime.
  • The Rise of Alexei Navalny's Political Stature and Mass Protest in Russia [Lipman Series 2021] February 1, 2021
    In the first PONARS Eurasia Podcast of 2021, Maria Lipman chats with Greg Yudin about the current protests taking place in Russia, and what Alexei Navalny's growing popular support means for the Putin regime.
  • Russian Social Policy in the COVID-19 Era [Lipman Series 2020] December 21, 2020
    In 2020’s final episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sarah Wilson Sokhey and Ella Paneyakh to discuss Russian social policy in the COVID-19 era, and public perception of Russia’s overall pandemic response.
  • Conscious Parenting Practices in Contemporary Russia [Lipman Series 2020] December 10, 2020
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Julia Yuzbasheva and Maria Danilova to learn more about the proliferation of "conscious parenting" practices in contemporary Russian society.
  • The Transformation of Belarussian Society [Lipman Series 2020] November 11, 2020
    In this episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Masha Lipman chats with Grigory Ioffe about the long-term and short-term factors that led up to the current protests in Belarus, and the ongoing transformation of Belarussian society.
  • Russian Lawmakers Adjust National Legislation to the Revised Constitutional Framework [Lipman Series 2020] October 26, 2020
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about ongoing changes to Russia’s national legislation based on the recently revised constitutional framework, and what these changes portend for the 2021 Duma election.
  • Russia's Regional Elections [Lipman Series 2020] September 25, 2020
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Graeme Robertson and Konstantin Gaaze about Russia’s September 13 regional elections and whether or not the Kremlin should be worried about upcoming Duma elections.
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Understanding Authoritarian Politics: Insights from ASEEES

  • November 21, 2017
  • Sarah Wilson Sokhey

Russia’s possible involvement in the recent U.S. election (and with American politicians) has renewed interest in Russian politics in the United States. Many Americans, however, are unfamiliar with how authoritarian regimes operate, or what it would be like to live in one as Tom Pepinsky has pointed out. Compounding the problem, much of the news about Russia in the United States relies on easy stereotypes and a lack of true expertise.

Here, academic research can be valuable in helping us understand the political behavior and political functioning in democratic versus authoritarian settings. For instance: What are the effects of political protest in Ukraine? When do former authoritarian parties win elections? And how do authoritarian regimes govern? Offering insight to these questions, several important findings were recently presented at the annual ASEEES conference in Chicago.

First, nationally representative surveys help us get a handle on political participation in less democratic settings. Bryn Rosenfeld, Grigore Pop-Eleches, and Graeme Robertson presented research about the protests in Ukraine that were part of the Euromaidan movement in 2013 and 2014. They draw on nationally representative panel data from before and after the Euromaidan protests and look at the effect of participating in protests on political attitudes. Unlike much of the work on this topic, they consider how participating in a protest—rather than just living in a country or place where protest has happened—influences political attitudes. They find that participating in political protest leads to a more coherent set of attitudes, and that Euromaidan participants were more ideological than those who participated in the Orange Revolution.

Second, new data on political parties lends insight into when former authoritarian parties win elections. Work on the electoral performance of authoritarian and populist parties was presented by Anna Gryzmala-Busse, the current ASEEES president, and Monika Nalepa. Their work draws on the Democratic Accountability and Linkages Project developed by a group of researchers at Duke University and their own new dataset on authoritarian parties. Their on-going research seeks to explain a paradox wherein liberal democratic parties may adopt positions similar to authoritarian parties, but the latter are more likely to have electoral success.

Finally, research suggests both similarities and differences between democratic and authoritarian policymaking. Alexander Libman and Andrei Yakovlev’s work details how a relatively new Ministry of Far East development, just created in 2012, funnels resources to regions in Russia’s Far East and does so in a way that subverts conflicting policy goals in other Russian ministries. In this way, the Russian government shares a challenge that is fairly universal: bureaucratic battles that impede policy goals. The authoritarian nature of Russian governance, however, has resulted in the creation of a new bureaucracy in a way that runs counter to a more consensual policymaking style we might expect (at least sometimes) in democracies.

Americans may have difficulty understanding how authoritarian regimes operate. A recent media battle has even led the American and Russian governments to both consider labeling media outlets from the other country as foreign agents. In the midst of poor relations, more nuanced and data-driven research about politics in the region is one way forward in promoting a better understanding beyond misleading media stereotypes.

 

Sarah Wilson Sokhey
Sarah Wilson Sokhey
Website | + posts
Assistant Professor
Affiliation

University of Colorado Boulder
Links

University of Colorado Boulder (Bio)
Expertise

Business-State Relations, Comparative Politics, Economic Reform, Pension Reform, Social Policy, Central Asia, Russia
  • Sarah Wilson Sokhey
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/sarah-wilson-sokhey/
    COVID-19 in Russia: What Russians Expected, What They Got, and What They Think About It
  • Sarah Wilson Sokhey
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/sarah-wilson-sokhey/
    Social Policy in Putin’s (Last?) Term
  • Sarah Wilson Sokhey
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/sarah-wilson-sokhey/
    The Political Economy of Pension Policy Reversal in Post-Communist Countries
  • Sarah Wilson Sokhey
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/sarah-wilson-sokhey/
    Social Policy & Regime Type
Related Topics
  • ASEEES
  • Sokhey
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