Protests and Voter Defections in Electoral Autocracies: Evidence From Russia

A large literature expects that as protests unfold in electoral autocracies, voters who supported the ruling regime in the past will withdraw support and shift to supporting its opponents. Yet there are only a few empirical tests of how opposition protests influence voter defections in these regimes. To gain empirical traction on this question, I draw on evidence from Russia. Tying together evidence from a protest-event dataset and a panel survey of voters conducted prior to and during the 2011-2012 protest wave, I examine how voters who supported the ruling regime in the past respond to anti-regime mobilization. Results reveal differentiation in defections. While opposition protests dampen support for the ruling regime and depress engagement, they do not necessarily translate into greater support for the regime’s challengers. Findings, which have implications for debates on defection cascades in autocracies, speak to the literatures on authoritarian endurance and the legacies of (attempted) revolutions

Endogenous Popularity: How Perceptions of Support Affect the Popularity of Authoritarian Regimes

Being popular makes it easier for dictators to govern. A growing body of scholarship therefore focuses on the factors that influence authoritarian popularity. However, it is possible that the perception of popularity itself affects incumbent approval in autocracies. We use framing experiments embedded in four surveys in Russia to examine this phenomenon. These experiments reveal that manipulating information - and thereby perceptions - about Russian President Vladimir Putin's popularity can significantly affect respondents' support for him. Additional analyses, which rely on a novel combination of framing and list experiments, indicate that these changes in support are not due to preference falsification, but are in fact genuine. This study has implications for research on support for authoritarian leaders and defection cascades in nondemocratic regimes

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

Does self-insurance, such as access to savings or assets, affect support for government? While existing research recognizes that households’ ability to privately manage income risk and economic uncertainty influences voter redistributive preferences, we know relatively little about how self-insurance affects evaluations of government in the first place. To gain traction on this question, we combine cross-sectional and panel public opinion surveys from 28 countries in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia with macro-data on economic performance. Exploiting variation in citizen responses to the Great Recession, we show that by enabling citizens to smooth consumption, self-insurance affects how they form economic perceptions. Moreover, we find that self-insurance bolsters support for incumbents. Results allow us to better understand why economic downturns may not dampen support for government, even when economic hardship is rife and access to public safety nets is limited

When the Money Stops: Fluctuations in Financial Remittances and Incumbent Approval in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia

Fluctuations in the volume and the value of financial remittances received from abroad affect the livelihood of households in developing economies across the world. Yet, political scientists have little to say about how changes in remittances, as opposed to the receipt of remittance payments alone, affect recipients’ political attitudes. Relying on a unique four-wave panel study of Kyrgyz citizens between 2010–2013 and a cross-sectional sample of 28 countries in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, we show that when people experience a decrease (increase) in remittances, they become less (more) satisfied about their household economic situation and misattribute responsibility to the incumbent at home. Our findings advance the literature on the political consequences of remittance payments and suggest that far from exclusively being an international risk-sharing mechanism for developing countries, remittances can also drive fluctuations in incumbent approval and compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world

Protest in electoral autocracies: a new dataset

A growing literature explores the causes and consequences of dramatic political protests in autocracies. Yet, we know comparatively little about other forms of protests in these regimes. The Lankina Russian Protest-Event Dataset (LAruPED) facilitates the investigation of protest in Russia, a classic example of an electoral authoritarian regime. The data, which are human-coded, identify, in wave one, protests across Russia from March 2007 until 2016. Unlike other datasets, which focus on political protests, LAruPED covers a wide range of social and economic protests and imposes no limitations on the minimum number of protesters involved in events as a prerequisite for inclusion in the dataset. We introduce LAruPED and discuss how it differs from other data. We also present examples from work that leverages the dataset to show how the data could be used to explore questions of authoritarian politics, highlighting variation in the type of suppressed protests in electoral autocracies

When the money stops: fluctuations in financial remittances and incumbent approval in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia

Fluctuations in the volume and the value of financial remittances received from abroad affect the livelihood of households in developing economies across the world. Yet, political scientists have little to say about how changes in remittances, as opposed to the receipt of remittance payments alone, affect recipients’ political attitudes. Relying on a unique four-wave panel study of Kyrgyz citizens between 2010–2013 and a cross-sectional sample of 28 countries in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, we show that when people experience a decrease (increase) in remittances, they become less (more) satisfied about their household economic situation and misattribute responsibility to the incumbent at home. Our findings advance the literature on the political consequences of remittance payments and suggest that far from exclusively being an international risk-sharing mechanism for developing countries, remittances can also drive fluctuations in incumbent approval and compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world

When the money stops: fluctuations in financial remittances and incumbent approval in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia

Fluctuations in the volume and the value of financial remittances received from abroad affect the livelihood of households in developing economies across the world. Yet, political scientists have little to say about how changes in remittances, as opposed to the receipt of remittance payments alone, affect recipients’ political attitudes. Relying on a unique four-wave panel study of Kyrgyz citizens between 2010–2013 and a cross-sectional sample of 28 countries in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, we show that when people experience a decrease (increase) in remittances, they become less (more) satisfied about their household economic situation and misattribute responsibility to the incumbent at home. Our findings advance the literature on the political consequences of remittance payments and suggest that far from exclusively being an international risk-sharing mechanism for developing countries, remittances can also drive fluctuations in incumbent approval and compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world