The Popularity Costs of Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Russia

Abstract

While a large literature recognizes that economic crises threaten the stability of electoral autocracies, we know relatively little about how citizens form economic perceptions and how they attribute blame for worsening conditions in these regimes. To gain traction on these questions, I exploit subnational variation in economic performance across Russia's regions during a recent downturn, combining regionally representative surveys of more than 67,000 voting‐age respondents with data on growth and unemployment. Contrary to conventional wisdom that citizens are passive consumers of propaganda, I show that they extract objective economic information from personal experience and local conditions. Moreover, I find that they give greater weight to this information where regional party dominance makes economic performance a clearer indicator of the ruling party's competence and when they believe the media are biased. These results suggest limits on illiberal regimes' ability to exploit informational asymmetries to bolster popular support during economic downturns.

The Political Consequences of Self-Insurance: Evidence from Central-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia

“…Results presented in Table E2 and Figure E1 in the Appendix suggest that self-insurance effects on approval differ very little across more or less liberal democracies. This finding suggests that in line with an economic voting mechanism, self-insurance encourages economic optimism and ameliorates approval across political systems and is in line existing literature documenting economic voting effects in democracies and autocracies (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2008;Rosenfeld 2018;Chaisty and Whitefield 2012). Finally, we test for self-insurance effects on turnout.…”

“…This proposition is in line with studies on economic voting. As existing research shows, in developed and developing economies, voters often rely on their pocketbooks to infer how the government, or the incumbent, are performing (Campello and Zucco 2015;Rosenfeld 2018;Duch and Stevenson 2008;Healy and Malhotra 2012;Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2009;Tilley et al 2018). Finally, the argument is in line with recent scholarship on patrimonial voting, which argues that the possession of high-or lowrisk assets affects support for right and left-wing parties respectively Lewis-Beck and Nadeau 2011;Persson and Martinsson 2016).…”

“…Second, we estimate self-insurance effects on assessments of the economy and government performance. Finally, to shed light on the full mechanism that links self-insurance to economic evaluations and from there to government approval, we employ a causal mediation framework (Becher and Donnelly 2013;Imai et al 2010a, b;Rosenfeld 2018). This approach allows us to explore how much of the total effect of self-insurance on political assessments is mediated by economic evaluations.…”

Russia, Post-Soviet Integration, and the EAEU: The Balance between Domination and Cooperation

“…It lifted Putin's approval ratings from around 65 percent before the annexation to above 80 percent thereafter. However, "rally around the flag" effects in public opinion are usually short lived (Rosenfeld 2018). Facing a stagnating economy and likely increasing international isolation, the Kremlin had to continue strengthening domestic consolidation around Putin by building the image of Russia as a "great power."…”

When the party’s over: political blame attribution under an electoral authoritarian regime

“…State television has consistently praised Vladimir Putin for the peaceful and 'procedurally legitimate' (i.e., referendum-based) return of Crimea, while distancing the president from economic troubles and barely mentioning the economic recession in the news. The only TV channel that repeatedly addresses various aspects of domestic and international economy is RBC, which only attracts a narrow (if knowledgeable) share of viewers (Rosenfeld 2018).…”