Ellen Carnaghan Out of Order, Russian Political Values in an Imperfect World (2007)

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.Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative ConclusionsAbout Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 7 14; GeorgSorenson, Democracy and Democratization (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 13.58.Competition in democratic systems is often understood as competition between politicalparties.Unfortunately, I did not ask all respondents whether it was necessary to have a choiceof parties in elections.Nonetheless, they did think that the ability to express their choice waswhat made elections meaningful, even if they did not explicitly identify that choice as a choicebetween parties.02.Carnaghan Ch5-Ch7 1/17/07 12:15 PM Page 123Views of Markets 123thought there was too much freedom in Russia at the time of the inter-view.Since the general tendency of the Russian respondents was to thinkthey were not free enough, worries that there was too much freedomseemed to indicate uneasiness with the whole idea of individual liberty andits social costs.As a more overarching measure of support for democracy, Ialso included my assessment of the depth of understanding reflected inanswers that respondents gave when asked to define democracy.My logichere was that, to really support democracy, it is necessary to know what it is.Overall, in their responses to these questions, my Russian respondentsmostly showed considerable support for democratic values.Nearly all theRussians thought that government officials should be attentive to people sopinions and that it was important to vote.For my respondents, these werenot controversial points.There was more variation on the perceived need forrepresentative bodies, the comfort level with the amount of freedom democ-racy delivered, and the depth of articulated understanding of democracy.The nature of that variation will be described as the chapter progresses.Based on their answers to these questions, I divided the respondents intofour groups of varying support for democracy.People with low support fordemocracy had little good to say about democratic institutions and held anumber of values or ideas that openly conflicted with the way democraticinstitutions work and the purposes they are supposed to serve.People withmixed support for democracy exhibited contradictory ideas: they were posi-tive about some aspects of democracy, but hostile toward others.Someunwittingly demonstrated opinions at odds with what democrats tend tobelieve.Compared with the mixed group, people with moderate supportfor democracy were mostly positive about democracy, but sometimes theysimply did not have much to say.They did not show evidence of muchsophistication or depth in their thinking.Their understanding of howdemocracy functions often stopped short of a complete picture, but theyliked democracy as far as they understood it.In their definitions of democ-racy, for instance, they tended to fall back on standard formulations, such as rule by the people, without much indication of what the stock phrasemight mean in practice.People with high support for democracy showedextensive understanding of democratic processes, and their support wasunmixed with reservations or contradictory attitudes.In this chapter, peoplewith moderate support for democracy are combined with the high sup-port group, since the two groups were similar on relevant issues.Table 5.1 shows demographic characteristics of the Russian respondentsin the various categories of support for democracy.The oldest respondents02.Carnaghan Ch5-Ch7 1/17/07 12:15 PM Page 124124 Out of Orderwere most likely to show mixed support for democracy; more highly edu-cated respondents tended to show greater support.There were not espe-cially strong gender or regional differences.Too much attention should notbe paid to the number of people in each category, since the answers ofpeople in adjacent categories are not highly different from one another.Nonetheless, it is interesting that so few of the respondents end up in thelow-ranking group.However, combining the low and mixed supportgroups, more than half the sample exhibited imperfections of one degreeor another in their support for democracy.While these results are similarto those of mass surveys, my intention in presenting this information andthe information in subsequent tables is to provide more information aboutmy sample, not to imply that the distribution in my sample is identical tothe distribution in the population at large.I hope that information aboutthe sample as a whole will help readers see that I am not focusing on thecomments of a few unrepresentative respondents.I tried to devise a similar measure of support for democracy to groupthe American respondents.For a number of reasons, it did not work.Forone thing, only half the American sample had been asked the questionabout freedom, and that was the question on which answers tended tovary most for the Russians.On the other questions, there was not enoughvariation to divide the Americans into clearly different categories.Further,to the degree that some Americans ranked lower in their support fordemocracy than others, it seemed to be an artifact of the tendency for theoldest and least educated respondents to do the worst job answering thequestions.Consequently, in the subsequent discussion I do not categorizethe American respondents by their support for democracy.Table 5.1 also provides information on levels of support for marketsamong Russians in the various democratic categories.To gauge supportfor market reform, I used the respondents answers to a question askinghow they felt about the economic changes that had occurred in Russiaover the past few years.More specific elements of support for markets areexamined later in this chapter; this question captures overarching supportor hostility to economic reforms.59 There is a tendency for people whofavor the market reforms that occurred in Russia during the 1990s to also59.Similarly holistic measures are used in standardized surveys.See, for instance,Stephen White, Richard Rose, and Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes (Chatham, NJ: ChathamHouse, 1997), 287.For more information on the measure of support for market reform usedin this chapter, see Appendix C.Americans were not asked a similar question and, conse-quently, are not categorized according to their support for markets.Table 5.1 Characteristics of the Russian respondents, by their support for democracyLow support for Mixed support for Moderate support for High support fordemocracy democracy democracy democracyTotal: 6 respondents Total: 26 respondents Total: 16 respondents Total: 12 respondents3 female, 3 male 16 female, 10 male 9 female, 7 male 4 female, 8 male1 under 30, 2 over 60 5 under 30, 8 over 60 6 under 30, 2 over 60 2 under 30, 3 over 604 Muscovites, 2 from 6 Muscovites, 5 from 6 Muscovites, 3 from 3 Muscovites, 1 fromMoscow Oblast Moscow Oblast, 5 Moscow Oblast, 1 Moscow Oblast, 2from Siberia from Siberia from Siberia1 with higher 7 with higher 11 with higher 9 with highereducation education education educationSupport for markets: 5 Support for markets: Support for markets: 4 Support for markets: 4low, 1 mixed 10 low, 11 mixed, 5 high low, 4 mixed, 8 high low, 4 mixed, 4 highAleksei, Evgenii, Anna P., Boris B., Aleksandra Andrei Viktorovich,Inna, Tatiana Elena, Grigorii, Irina Antonovna, Alla, Arkadii, Dima,Mikhailovna, Valya, L., Ivan I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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