The political economy of collective memories: Evidence from Russian politics

Abstract

How do political elites exploit salient historical events to reactivate collective memories and entrench their power? We study this question using data from the Russian Federation under Putin. We document a substantial recollection campaign of the traumatic transition the Russian population experienced during the 1990s, starting with the year 2003. We combine this time discontinuity in the recollection of negative collective memories with regional-level information about traumatic experiences of the 1990s. Our results show that Russians vote more for the government, and less for the liberal political opposition, in regions that suffered more during the transition period, once memories from the period are recalled on state-controlled media. We then provide additional evidence on the mechanism and find, using a text analysis of local newspapers, that in those regions where local newspapers more intensively recall the chaotic 1990s, electoral support for the government is higher. Finally, we show that in regions in which the media is less independent from the state, this recollection campaign is more effective.

Collective Remembrance and Private Choice: German–Greek Conflict and Behavior in Times of Crisis

“…At the group level, whenever present conditions bear some resemblance to those of a shared past, even if the latter has not been individually experienced by all society members, collective memory will structure present beliefs. Indeed, studies indicate that history’s effects on behavior are contingent on characteristics of the present situation (Rozenas and Zhukov 2019) and actors like political elites or state-controlled media exploit associations between present and past events for political gain (Belmonte and Rochlitz 2019; Ochsner and Roesel 2017). We argue that memory can function as a latent variable that is activated under particular conditions—for instance, when chance events have elements in common to events in past history.…”

The Political Legacy of Entertainment TV

“…To provide a better sense of the magnitude, we first approximate coverage in each year by fitting a logistic curve through Mediaset expansion over time, as available from our own data and from the Constitutional Court (1988). 21 Integrating the logistic curve between 1980 and 1990, municipalities reached before and after 1985 were exposed on average for 7 and 4 years, respectively. Assuming that the effect increases linearly with the length of exposure, a nontrivial assumption, the effect-per-year-of-exposure 20 We implement Conley's (1999) approach in Stata using the acreg .ado file coded by Colella et al (2018), which allows for the use of population weights.…”

“…Assuming that the effect increases linearly with the length of exposure, a nontrivial assumption, the effect-per-year-of-exposure 20 We implement Conley's (1999) approach in Stata using the acreg .ado file coded by Colella et al (2018), which allows for the use of population weights. 21 The predicted coverage of Mediaset in each year is shown in online Appendix Figure A4. is 0.85/3 = 0.28 percentage points.…”

The Political Legacy of Forced Migration: Evidence from Post-WWII Germany

“…Based on research that highlights the importance of political context for activating historical legacies (Belmonte & Rochlitz, 2019; Fouka and Voth, nd; Rozenas & Zhukov, 2019), I expect that the appeal of the radical right varied over time for individuals with an expellee identity as a function of whether identity-based grievances were unresolved and politically salient. If this is true, we should expect their voting behavior to mirror such temporal variation.…”