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Abstract

About the ProgramThe Portland State University (PSU) Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program at Portland State University works with motivated and talented undergraduates who want to pursue PhDs. It introduces juniors and seniors who are first-generation and lowincome, and/or members of under-represented groups to academic research and to effective strategies for getting into and graduating from PhD programs.The McNair Scholars Program has academic-year activities and a full-time summer research internship. Scholars take academic and skills-building seminars and workshops during the year, and each scholar works closely with a faculty mentor on original research in the summer. Scholars present their research findings at the McNair Summer Symposium and at other conferences, and are encouraged to publish their papers in the McNair Journal and other scholarly publications. AbstractWhat explains support for democracy among Russian youth? Studies in political socialization conducted in the early 1990s, incorporating generational change, suggest that Russia's main obstacle to the consolidation of democracy was nostalgia for the Soviet Union. The passing of time now allows for the inclusion of the post-Soviet generational cohort, also referred to as the Putin Generation. The post-Soviet youth are a byproduct of political instability and economic turmoil with little or no direct personal experience of the Soviet period. These developments allow for new theoretical mechanisms related to government legitimacy to be included in the analysis. Drawing upon 2011 survey data conducted by the World Values Surveys, this article seeks to advance our understanding of why generational change affects attitudes toward democracy. It extends the literature in two ways: firstly, by adding a new political generation; and secondly, by incorporating government legitimacy into the analysis explaining support for democracy.