TY - JOUR
T1 - Searching for a Russian national idea
T2 - Putin team efforts & public assessments
AU - Willerton, John P.Pat
N1 - Funding Information:
1President of Russia. 2007. “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly,” At http://en.kremlin. ru/events/president/transcripts/24203, accessed May 9, 2016. 2By “quadruple revolution” I mean Russia’s simultaneous experience of profound political, economic, and societal change, together with the search for a new post-Soviet national identity. By “failing state” I mean a state which is unable to uphold the commitments and provide the services set out in that country’s constitution, other legal documents, and government decisions. See John P. Willerton, Mikhail Beznosov, and Martin Carrier. 2005. “Addressing the Challenge of Russia’s ‘Failing State’: The Legacy of Gorbachev and the Promise of Putin,” Demokratizatsiya 13:2: 219-38. 3This study is grounded in the October 2014 ROMIR all-Russia survey of 1,007 respondents. This survey and resultant database are part of the NEPORUS Project, “New Politics Groups and the Russian State,” funded by the Research Council of Norway. I thank Jacob Cramer for statistical research support, and Mikhail Beznosov and Patrick McGovern for helpful suggestions.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - The crafting of a new national idea has been the most elusive of the four processes comprising Russia's quadruple revolution in the wake of the failing state of the 1990s. However, the seven policy position papers of Vladimir Putin's 2012 presidential campaign illuminate a Putin-contoured national idea of four primary components. Relying on the October 2014 ROMIR national survey results, augmented with results from other surveys, this article explores Russian public judgments that are connected with a new national idea. Russians are found to strongly support a key component of Putin's national idea, the strong state, and their views accord with the hegemonic leadership position assumed by Putin. Russians view Putin's strong state as a democracy, though their understanding of democracy and its key components varies from that of Westerners. Russians' overall mixed assessments of key policy efforts by the governing team generally fit with Putin's articulated preferences, but there are policy soft spots. Putin and his team confront a Russian public that is more supportive of their hegemonic political-institutional position and vision of a national idea than laudatory of the results of that team's policy efforts.
AB - The crafting of a new national idea has been the most elusive of the four processes comprising Russia's quadruple revolution in the wake of the failing state of the 1990s. However, the seven policy position papers of Vladimir Putin's 2012 presidential campaign illuminate a Putin-contoured national idea of four primary components. Relying on the October 2014 ROMIR national survey results, augmented with results from other surveys, this article explores Russian public judgments that are connected with a new national idea. Russians are found to strongly support a key component of Putin's national idea, the strong state, and their views accord with the hegemonic leadership position assumed by Putin. Russians view Putin's strong state as a democracy, though their understanding of democracy and its key components varies from that of Westerners. Russians' overall mixed assessments of key policy efforts by the governing team generally fit with Putin's articulated preferences, but there are policy soft spots. Putin and his team confront a Russian public that is more supportive of their hegemonic political-institutional position and vision of a national idea than laudatory of the results of that team's policy efforts.
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M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85028916036
SN - 1074-6846
VL - 25
SP - 209
EP - 234
JO - Demokratizatsiya
JF - Demokratizatsiya
IS - 3
ER -