Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-l4t7p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-20T19:35:46.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Who Defects? Unpacking a Defection Cascade from Russia's Dominant Party 2008–12

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

HENRY E. HALE  and
TIMOTHY J. COLTON
HENRY E. HALE*
Affiliation:
George Washington University
TIMOTHY J. COLTON*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Henry E. Hale (lead and corresponding author) is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University, 1957 E Street, NW, Suite 412, Washington, DC 20052 (hhale@gwu.edu).
Timothy J. Colton is Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge St., Knafel Building 156, Cambridge, MA 02138 (tcolton@fas.harvard.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Under what conditions do individuals withdraw support from dominant parties in nondemocratic regimes? Employing an original panel survey, we measure the same individuals’ support for Russia's dominant party first at the peak of its dominance in 2008 and again shortly after it suffered a cascading defection of regime supporters in 2011–12. This allows us uniquely to explore the microfoundations of theories of regime defection cascades, generally supporting the argument that they involve complex “informational” as well as “reputational” processes. Accordingly, we find that early and eager movers in such a cascade tend to come from less socially vulnerable segments of the population, to have greater need to rely on other people for interpreting events, to believe the regime has lower levels of popular support, and to come from more heterogeneous communities. We find little role for mass media (including social media) or democratizing zeal in driving Russia's regime defection cascade.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 111 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 322 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

The surveys on which this article is based were funded principally by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) under authority of two Title VIII grants from the U.S. government and supplemental funding by the latter. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and are not the responsibility of the U.S. government, the NCEEER, or any other person or entity. For comments on earlier drafts, the authors thank the journal's editors and anonymous reviewers, Ellen Carnaghan, Bruce Dickson, Thomas Remington, participants in the Political Economy Seminar of the Higher School of Economics and New Economic School in Moscow, and members of comparative politics workshops at Harvard University, George Washington University, and Cornell University.

References

REFERENCES

Akunin, Boris. 2012. “Interv'iu: ‘Putinskii Period Vkhodit v Final'nuiu Fazu.’” The New Times (5): 6. February 18. https://newtimes.ru/stati/others/3f3cb49855736c5f03aa6c552e7f897b-pytunskui-peruod-vhodut-v-funalnyu-fazy.html.Google Scholar
Alevy, Jonathan E., Haigh, Michael S., and List, John A.. 2007. “Information Cascades: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Financial Market Professionals.” The Journal of Finance 62 (1): 151–80.Google Scholar
Anderson, Lisa R., and Holt, Charles A.. 1997. “Information Cascades in the Laboratory.” The American Economic Review 87 (5): 847–62.Google Scholar
Anderson, Lisa R., and Holt, Charles A. 2008. “Information Cascade Experiments.” In Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, eds. Plott, Charles R. and Smith, Vernon L.. Oxford, UK: Elsevier, 335–43.Google Scholar
Banerjee, Abhijit V. 1992. “A Simple Model of Herd Behavior.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (3): 797–817.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1988. Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beissinger, Mark R. 2013. “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine's Orange Revolution.” American Political Science Review 107 (3): 574–92.Google Scholar
Bikhchandani, Sushil, Hirshleifer, David, and Welch, Ivo. 1992. “A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades.” Journal of Political Economy 100 (5): 992–1026.Google Scholar
Brownlee, Jason. 2007. Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Smith, Alastair, Siverson, Randolph M., and Morrow, James D.. 2003. The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Callander, Steven. 2007. “Bandwagons and Momentum in Sequential Voting.” The Review of Economic Studies 74 (3): 653–84.Google Scholar
Carnaghan, Ellen. 1996. “Alienation, Apathy, or Ambivalence? ‘Don't Knows’ and Democracy in Russia.” Slavic Review 55 (2): 325–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Celen, Bogachan, and Kariv, Shachar. 2004. “Distinguishing Informational Cascades from Herd Behavior in the Laboratory.” The American Economic Review 94 (3): 484–98.Google Scholar
Chamley, Christophe P. 2003. Rational Herds: Economic Models of Social Learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Colton, Timothy J. 2000. Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them in the New Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ellickson, Robert C. 2001. “The Evolution of Social Norms: A Perspective from the Legal Academy.” In Social Norms, eds. Hechter, Michael and Karl-Dieter, Opp. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 35–75.Google Scholar
Ellis, Christopher J., and Fender, John. 2011. “Information Cascades and Revolutionary Regime Transitions.” The Economic Journal 121: 763–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enikolopov, Ruben et al. 2013. “Field Experiment Estimate of Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2): 448–52.Google Scholar
Farrell, Henry. 2012. “The Consequences of the Internet for Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 15: 35–52.Google Scholar
Frye, Timothy, Reuter, Ora John, and Szakonyi, David. 2014. “Political Machines at Work: Voter Mobilization and Electoral Subversion in the Workplace.” World Politics 66 (2): 195–228.Google Scholar
Gandhi, Jennifer, and Lust-Okar, Ellen. 2009. “Elections Under Authoritarianism.” Annual Review of Political Science 12: 403–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, Barbara. 1999. “What Do We Know About Democratization After Twenty Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1): 115–44.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1978. “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior.” American Journal of Sociology 83 (6): 1420–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald, Palmquist, Bradley, and Schickler, Eric. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry E. 2003. “Explaining Machine Politics in Russia's Regions: Economy, Ethnicity, and Legacy.” Post-Soviet Affairs 19 (3): 228–63.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry E. 2006. Why Not Parties in Russia: Democracy, Federalism, and the State. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry E. 2011. “The Putin Machine Sputters: First Impressions of Russia's 2011 Duma Election.” Russian Analytical Digest 106 (21): 2–5.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry E. 2013. “Regime Change Cascades: What We Have Learned from the 1848 Revolutions to the 2011 Arab Uprisings.” Annual Review of Political Science 16 (1): 331–53.Google Scholar
Huber, Rafael E., Klucharev, Vasily, and Rieskamp, Jörg. 2015. “Neural Correlates of Informational Cascades: Brain Mechanisms of Social Influence on Belief Updating.” Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience 10 (4): 589–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Innocenti, Alessandro, Rufa, Alessandra, and Semmoloni, Jacopo. 2010. “Overconfident Behavior in Informational Cascades: An Eye-Tracking Study.” Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics 3 (2): 74–82.Google Scholar
Ivanov, Maksim, and Samokhina, Sofia. 2012. “Partiia Ukhodishchikh.” Kommersant: 2. Accessed February 8, 2017. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1924105.Google Scholar
Javeline, Debra Lynn. 2003. Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Jiang, Junyan, and Yang, Dali L.. 2016. “Lying or Believing? Measuring Preference Falsification From a Political Purge in China.” Comparative Political Studies 49 (5): 600–34.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Tomz, Michael, and Wittenberg, Jason. 2000. “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2): 347–61.Google Scholar
Kolstø, Pål, and Blakkisrud, Helge, eds. 2016. The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000-2015. 1st ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Krastev, Ivan, and Holmes, Stephen. 2012. “An Autopsy of Managed Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 23 (3): 33–45.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 1991. “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989.” World Politics 44 (1): 7–48.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 1995. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 2011. “The Politics of Revolutionary Surprise.” Project Syndicate. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-politics-of-revolutionary-surprise (November 7, 2012).Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur, and Sunstein, Cass R.. 1999. “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation.” Stanford Law Review 51: 683.Google Scholar
Lee, Young-Jin, Hosanagar, Kartik, and Tan, Yong. 2015. “Do I Follow My Friends or the Crowd? Information Cascades in Online Movie Ratings.” Management Science 61 (9): 2241–58.Google Scholar
Levitsky, Steven, and Way, Lucan A.. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lohmann, Susanne. 1994. “The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989-91.” World Politics 47 (1): 42–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz. 2006. Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Makowsky, Michael D., and Rubin, Jared. 2013. “An Agent-Based Model of Centralized Institutions, Social Network Technology, and Revolution.” PLoS One 8 (11): e80380.Google Scholar
March, Luke. 2009. “Managing Opposition in a Hybrid Regime: Just Russia and Parastatal Opposition.” Slavic Review 68 (3): 504–27.Google Scholar
McFaul, Michael. 2005. “Transitions from Communism.” Journal of Democracy 16 (4): 212–44.Google Scholar
Miller, Warren E, and Shanks, J. Merrill. 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Navalny, Aleksei. 2011. “Chto nado delat' v eti tri dnia.” Personal blog, December 1. http://navalny.livejournal.com/2011/12/01/.Google Scholar
Onuch, Olga. 2014. Mapping Mass Mobilizations: Understanding Revolutionary Moments in Argentina and Ukraine. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Patel, David Siddhartha. 2013. “Preference Falsification, Revolutionary Coordination, and the Tahrir Square Model.” Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations 4: 61–71.Google Scholar
Pearlman, Wendy. 2013. “Emotions and the Microfoundations of the Arab Uprisings.” Perspectives on Politics 11 (2): 387–409.Google Scholar
Petrov, Nikolay, Lipman, Maria, and Hale, Henry E.. 2014. “Three Dilemmas of Hybrid Regime Governance: Russia from Putin to Putin.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (1): 1–26.Google Scholar
Pfaff, Steven. 2006. Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany: The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Reuter, Ora John, and Gandhi, Jennifer. 2011. “Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties.” British Journal of Political Science 41 (01): 83–110.Google Scholar
Reuter, Ora John, and Remington, Thomas. 2009. “Dominant Party Regimes and the Commitment Problem: The Case of United Russia.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (4): 501–26.Google Scholar
Reuter, Ora John, and Szakonyi, David. 2015. “Online Social Media and Political Awareness in Authoritarian Regimes.” British Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 29–51.Google Scholar
Robertson, Graeme. 2013. “Protesting Putinism.” Problems of Post-Communism 60 (2): 11–23.Google Scholar
Rubin, Jared. 2014. “Centralized Institutions and Cascades.” Journal of Comparative Economics 42 (2): 340–57.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1960. “The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press.”Google Scholar
Shadmehr, Mehdi, and Haschke, Peter. 2016. “Youth, Revolution, and Repression.” Economic Inquiry 54 (2): 778–93.Google Scholar
Slater, Dan. 2010. Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Lones, and Sørensen, Peter. 2000. “Pathological Outcomes of Observational Learning.” Econometrica 68 (2): 371–98.Google Scholar
Smyth, Regina, and Soboleva, Irina. 2014. “Looking beyond the Economy: Pussy Riot and the Kremlin's Voting Coalition.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (4): 257–75.Google Scholar
Smyth, Regina, Wilkening, Brandon, and Lowry, Anna Urasova. 2007. “Engineering Victory: Institutional Reform, Informal Institutions, and the Formation of a Hegemonic Party Regime in the Russian Federation.” Post-Soviet Affairs 23 (2): 118–37.Google Scholar
Sperling, Valerie. 2014. Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Svolik, Milan W. 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tomz, Michael, Wittenberg, Jason, and King, Gary. 2003. CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results. Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, Harvard University. http://gking.harvard.edu.Google Scholar
Volkov, Denis. 2012. “The Protesters and the Public.” Journal of Democracy 23 (3): 55–62.Google Scholar
White, Stephen, and McAllister, Ian. 2014. “Did Russia (Nearly) Have a Facebook Revolution in 2011? Social Media's Challenge to Authoritarianism.” Politics 34 (1): 72–84.Google Scholar
Wolchik, Sharon L. 2012. “Can There Be a Color Revolution?” Journal of Democracy 23 (3): 63–70.Google Scholar
Yurchak, Alexei. 2005. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.