What's Left Behind When the Party's Over: Survey Experiments on the Effects of Partisan Cues in Putin's Russia

Abstract

We consider the question of whether Russia's greatly weakened political parties might continue to exert an influence on public opinion in twenty‐first century Russia. To do so, we carried out a series of survey‐based experiments in Moscow in the spring of 2006. We present evidence showing that partisan cues increase support for public policy proposals and make it more likely that respondents will adopt a position on an issue that mirrors their party's preferred position (“opinion taking”), as well as increase the likelihood that respondents will adopt a position on a given issue at all (“opinion giving”). We also present evidence that party cues can sway the opinions of nonpartisans, though such influence may be limited to cases when the position of a party constitutes an unusually informative or credible signal. The findings should be of interest to those concerned with Russia's post‐communist political development, those interested more broadly in the effects of partisan cues on political behavior, as well as to scholars trying to characterize the nature of “competitive authoritarian” regimes. Consideramos la cuestión de si partidos políticos fuertemente debilitados, como es el caso de los partidos rusos, podrían continuar influyendo la opinión pública en la Rusia del siglo XXI. Para responder esto llevamos a cabo una serie de investigaciones basadas en encuestas realizadas en Moscú en la primavera de 2006. Presentamos evidencia que demuestra que las pautas partidistas incrementan el apoyo del público a sus propuestas de políticas y hacen más probable que un encuestado conozca la preferencia del partido e incluso la llegue a asumir como suya (“tomando opinión”), así como que incremente la posibilidad de que ellos adopten una determinada posición sobre un determinado tópico (“dando opinión”). También presentamos evidencia que las pautas del partido pueden producir cambios de opinión, aunque dicha influencia puede estar limitada a casos donde la posición del partido constituye una señal inusualmente informativa o creíble. Los resultados serán de interés para aquellos preocupados por el desarrollo político de Rusia post‐comunista, aquellos interesados más ampliamente en los efectos de las pautas partidistas en el comportamiento político, así como para los académicos que buscan precisar las características de los regímenes “autoritarios competitivos.”

Taking Sides in Other People’s Elections: The Polarizing Effect of Foreign Intervention

“…As is becoming increasingly common in political science, we exploit the internal validity of the experimental manipulations along with the external validity of a representative sample to make causal claims about how the Lebanese population as a whole responds to foreign intervention in their elections. Although survey experiments as a method are most widespread in the framing literature in American politics (Bullock 2009; Chong and Druckman 2007; Sniderman and Grob 1996), they are beginning to appear in comparative politics (Brader and Tucker 2001, 2009; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2010) and international relations (Hiscox 2006; Tomz 2007) as more subfields diversify their methodological repertoires.…”

Expressive Versus Instrumental Partisanship in Multiparty European Systems

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Measuring Partisanship as a Social Identity in Multi-Party Systems

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