Generation, Age, and Time: The Dynamics of Political Learning during Russia's Transformation

Abstract

When the Soviet Union collapsed, most Russians had lived their entire lives in a quintessentially authoritarian culture. Having been socialized in this environment, how could citizens acquire the attitudes and behaviors necessary to support a new, more pluralistic regime? Cultural theories of political learning emphasize the primacy of childhood socialization and hold that altering initial attitudes is a decades-long process that depends on generational replacement. Institutional theories emphasize adult relearning in response to changing circumstances regardless of socialization. Lifetime learning integrates the competing perspectives. Multilevel models using New Russia Barometer data from 1992 to 2005 confirm the persistence of some generational differences in Russian political attitudes but demonstrate even larger effects resulting from adult relearning. Lifetime learning provides the most comprehensive account and suggests that Russians would quickly acquire the attitudes and behaviors appropriate to democracy-if Russian elites supply more authentic democratic institutions.H ow can citizens, socialized by authoritarian regimes in quintessentially authoritarian cultures, learn the attitudes and behaviors necessary to become loyal and effective citizens of new democratic regimes? The rapid emergence of democracies in much of postcommunist Europe has revived interest in processes of political learning and relearning. It also has rekindled debate about the strength and durability of generational differences in political socialization, the adaptability of adults to political change, and the length of time necessary for significant change to occur.Two theories dominate: cultural theories of learning emphasize the importance of early life socialization. the participants in the ECPR workshop, and the several anonymous reviewers for this journal. 1 We use the term "cultural theories" throughout to refer to a variety of loosely related, theoretical constructs that seek to explain political institutions and behavior in terms of the shared customs, values, and beliefs of a social group. While generalizing for simplicity's sake, we recognize that there are important differences among different conceptions of culture. More traditional cultural theorists (for example, Eckstein 1988; White 1979) advance a deeper, more fundamental, holistic and viscous conception of culture. More contemporary conceptions of political culture (such as Gibson, Duch, and Tedin 1992;Gibson 1996;Miller, Miller, and Reisinger 1994) adopt a much thinner, more individualist, micro-oriented, and malleable conception of culture that is largely synonymous with public opinion (see Mishler and Pollack 2003, for a fuller discussion). Our discussion of cultural theory draws primarily on the deeper, more traditional conception of culture since this is the one emphasized in most research on Russia and other authoritarian societies. Our treatment of cultural theories is, thus, consistent with Eckstein's (1988, 789) claim that "Political culture theory may pl...

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