Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:37:40.728Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Russian Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Judith S. Kullberg
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
William Zimmerman
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Get access

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
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Whitefield, Stephen and Evans, Geoffrey, “The Russian Election of 1993: Public Opinion and the Transition Experience,” Post-Soviet Affairs 10 (January-March 1994)Google Scholar; and Przeworski, Adam, “Economic Reform in Poland and the East European Experience,” in Bresser-Pereira, Carlos and Przeworski, Adam, eds., Economic Reforms in New Democracies: A Social Democratic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

2 Hough, Jerry F., “The Russian Election of 1993: Public Attitudes toward Economic Reform and Democratization,” Post-Soviet Affairs 10 (January-March 1994)Google Scholar.

3 See Spiewak, Pawel, “Kto rzadzi w Polsce?” in Grabowska, Moroslawa and Sulek, Antoi, eds., Polska 1989–92: fragmenty pejzazu (Warsaw: IFIS PAN, 1993)Google Scholar; Szacki, Jerzy, Liberalism after Communism (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Michnik, Adam et al. , “The Return of the Left in Central Europe?” Constellations 2 (April 1995)Google Scholar; and Vaclav Havel (address to a joint session of the Czech Parliament, Prague, December 9,1997.

4 Any interpretation of the 1996 presidential election must acknowledge the effect of the electoral rules and the uneven playing field on the outcome. Electoral support for Yeltsin was intensified by the use of a two-round system that forced voters to choose in a second round between the two candidates with the strongest showing in the first round. Thus, in the first round in June, Yeltsin received only 35.3 percent of the vote versus 32 percent for the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennadi Ziuganov, but received 53.8 percent of the vote to Ziuganov's 40.3 percent in the second round in July. Yeltsin's success in drawing votes from those who had cast ballots for other candidates in the first round was facilitated by a pro-Yeltsin, anticommunist media blitz in late June and early July.

5 Colton, Timothy J., “Economics and Voting in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 12 (October-December 1996)Google Scholar.

6 Lindblom, Charles, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977)Google Scholar.

7 Offe, Claus, Richter, Emanuel, and Adler, Pierre, “Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe,” Social Research 58 no. 4 (1991)Google Scholar; and Nelson, Joan M., ed., Intricate Links: Democratization and Market Reforms in Latin America and Eastern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1994)Google Scholar.

8 Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, Joan, “Linkages between Politics and Economics,” in Diamond, Larry and Plattner, Marc F., eds., Economic Reform and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Gati, Charles, “If Not Democracy, What? Leaders, Laggards and Losers in the Postcommunist World,” in Mandelbaum, Michael, ed., Postcommunism: Four Perspectives (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996)Google Scholar.

9 Przeworski (fn. 8), 177–78.

10 Gibson, James L. and Duch, Raymond M., “Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet Political Culture,” in Miller, Arthur H., Reisinger, William M., and Hesli, Vicki L., eds., Public Opinion and Regime Change: The New Politics of Post-Soviet Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

11 Haggard, Stephan and Webb, Steven B., “What Do We Know about the Political Economy of Reform,” World Bank Observer 8 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stokes, Susan C., “Public Opinion and Market Reforms: The Limits of Economic Voting,” Comparative Political Studies 29 (October 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 McDonough, Peter, “Identities, Ideologies, and Interests: Democratization and the Culture of Mass Politics in Spain and Eastern Europe,” Journal of Politics 57 (August 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Przeworski (fn. 2).

13 North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 191Google Scholar.

14 Our concept of economic position is inspired by Weber, who saw an individual's “chance in the market” or “market situation” as the “decisive moment” shaping his or her “fate.” Weber argued that the key determinant of the market situation of individuals or groups is possession of property, because property provides power in the market. The market situation of individuals and groups lacking property depends upon the value of their labor and how much control they are able to exercise over the disposition of the products of their labor. See Weber, Max, Economy and Society (1914; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 927-28Google Scholar.

15 For various perspectives on the contribution of specific social strata or classes to the development of representative democracy, see Lipset, Seymour Martin, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy,” American Political Science Review 53 (March 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, Barrington, Social Origins ofDictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. On the role of the working class in democratic development, see Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Stephens, Evelyne Huber, and Stephens, John D., Capitalist Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Tilly, Charles, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

16 Dahl, Robert, Pluralist Democracy in the United States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967)Google Scholar.

17 Shklar, Judith N., Political Theory and Ideology (New York: Macmillan, 1966)Google Scholar; and Sartori, Giovanni, “Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems,” American Political Science Review 63 (June 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 North (fn. 13), 48–54; Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971)Google Scholar; Marx, Karl, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1986)Google Scholar.

19 Disadvantaged and aggrieved individuals may also use an ideology's tenets ofjustice to stimulate and justify collective action to correct perceived inequity. See Apter, David, ed., Ideology and Discontent (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 1; and Tarrow, Sidney, Power in Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 2223Google Scholar.

20 This is so, particularly insofar as the regime's ideology justifies authority relations and sustains its legitimacy. For a theoretical examination of the relationship between regime and societal patterns of authority and the importance of congruence between them, see Eckstein, Harry, Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability and Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and idem, “Congruence Theory Explained,” in Eckstein, Harry et al. , eds., Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998)Google Scholar.

21 Havel, Václav et al. , The Power of the Powerless (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1985)Google Scholar. The validity of Havel's incisive and eloquent examination of the causes and consequences of socialist dualism is confirmed by the thousands of autobiographical and firsthand accounts of life under communism, which almost invariably contain some discussion of the ways in which everyday life, experience, and perception were affected by the discordance between socialist ideology and socialist reality.

22 See Osipov, G. V., Levashov, V. K., and Lokosov, V. V., Rossiia u kriticheskoi cherty: vozrozhdenie ili katastrofa (Moscow: Respublika, 1997)Google Scholar; Linda Racioppi and Katherine O'Sullivan See, “Organizing Women before and after the Fall,” Signs 20 (Summer 1995)Google Scholar; Verdery, Katherine, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 3; and Grapard, Ulla, “Theoretical Issues of Gender in the Transition from Socialist Regimes,” Journal ofEconomic Issues 31 (September 1997)Google Scholar.

23 Institut sotsial'no-politicheskikh issledovannii Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, Reformirovanie Rossii: Mify i real'nost (Moscow: Akademia, 1994), 89208Google Scholar; Hedlund, Stefan and Sundstrom, Niclas, “The Russian Economy after Systemic Change,” Europe Asia-Studies 48 (September 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See Hellman, Joel S., “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” World Politics 50 (January 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 In 1986 the average wage of the top decile of income earners was 2.5 times greater than that of the bottom decile; by 1996 the average income of the top decile was twenty times greater than that of the bottom decile. Flakierski, Henryk, Income Inequalities in the Former Soviet Union and Its Republics (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), 1617Google Scholar; and Nikolai Shmelyov, Literaturnaia gazeta (December 4, 1996), 3.

26 Piasheva, Larisa, “Proigrannyi shans: zametki rynochnogo romantika,” Znamia 9 (1994)Google Scholar; Kryshtanovskaia, Olga and White, Stephen, “From Soviet Nomenklatura to Russian Elite,” Europe-Asia Studies 48 (July 1996)Google Scholar; Blasi, Joseph R., Kroumova, Maya, and Kruse, Douglas, Kremlin Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR/Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Solnick, Stephen, Stealing the State: Controland Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

27 The Economist Intelligence Unit (January 27,1997).

28 For explanations of the weaknesses of nonstate organizations, see Crowley, Stephen, “Barriers to Collective Action: Steelworkers and Mutual Dependence in the Former Soviet Union,” World Politics 46 (July 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fish, Stephen, Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the Neiv Russian Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

29 Staniszkis, Jadwiga, “‘Political Capitalism’ in Poland,” East European Politics and Societies 5 (Winter 1991)Google Scholar; and idem, The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe: The Polish Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 164Google Scholar.

30 Lindblom (fn. 6).

31 Needless to say, each cell encompasses considerable regime variation. For example, the Japanese and American political economies are quite different, but we would classify both as liberal or market democracies. Similarly, Pinochet's Chile was quite distinct from the “soft authoritarian” regimes of East Asia, but it falls along with them into the “market authoritarian” category. For an earlier use of this typology, see Zimmerman, William, “Markets, Democracy and Russian Foreign Policy,” Post-Soviet Affairs 10 (April-June 1994)Google Scholar.

32 Pennock, See J. Roland, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

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.

36 On similar findings from Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Romanian surveys, see McIntosh, Mary E. et al. , “Publics Meet Market Democracy in Central and East Europe, 1991–1993,” Slavic Review 53 (Summer 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Graham, Thomas W., “The Politics of Failure: Strategic Nuclear Arms Control, Public Opinion, and Domestic Politics in the United States, 1945–1980” (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1989), 57Google Scholar.

38 As in the Soviet period, the overwhelming majority of both elites and masses continue to favor state ownership of all heavy industry. See Millar, James, ed., Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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.”

41 O'Brien, David J. et al. , Services and Quality of Life in Rural Villages in the Former Soviet Union (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998)Google Scholar, esp. 243–47.

42 Examples include Inkeles, Alex, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Reisinger, William et al. , “Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania: Sources and Implications for Democracy,” BritishJournal ofPolitical Science 24 (April 1994)Google Scholar.

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?”

45 Lewis-Beck, Michael, Economics ami Elections: The Major Western Democracies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 See fn. 33.

47 Protassenko, Tatiana, “Dynamics of the Standard of Living in St. Petersburg during Five Years of Economic Reform,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21 no. 3 (1997), 446CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Shevardnadze is describing his meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1980s. Shevardnadze, , The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: Free Press, 1991), 26Google Scholar.

49 Higley, John, Kullberg, Judith, and Pakulski, Jan, “The Persistence of Postcommunist Elites Journal of Democracy 7 (April 1996)Google Scholar.

50 Kullberg, Judith, “The Origins of the Gorbachev Revolution: Industrialization, Social Structural Change and Soviet Elite Value Transformation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1992)Google Scholar.

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.

57 Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert R., The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and idem, “The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions,” Comparative Politics 29 (April 1997)Google Scholar; Diamond, Larry, “Democracy and Economic Reform: Tensions, Compatibilities, and Strategies for Reconciliation,” in Lazear, Edward P., ed., Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia (Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

58 For a similar argument, see Bollen, Kennth A. and Jackman, Robert, “Income Inequality and Democratization Revisited: Comment on Muller,” American Sociological Review 60 (December 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Zaller, John, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 In a recent article, Zaller also appears to be reconsidering the causal connections between elite and mass views. Zaller, John, “Monica Lewinsky's Contribution to Political Science,” PS 31 no. 2 (1998)Google Scholar.

61 Przeworski (fn. 1).

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).

63 Diamond, Larry, “Three Paradoxes of Democracy,” in Diamond, Larry and Plattner, Marc F., eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.