CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Bor, Alexander |
|---|---|
| Title | Trust and Heterogeneity in Putin's Russia - Testing the "New Middle Class"-Hypothesis |
| Summary | This thesis contributes to our knowledge about the social backgrounds of the new Russian protest movements, which emerged somewhat unexpectedly after the 2011 Duma elections. The hypothesis of an emerging “new middle class” of critical citizens with high democratic standards as a main social force behind the movements receives particular attention. It is argued that political trust reflects fundamental attitudes towards the authorities, hence it is used as a dependent variable. This quantitative study is primarily based on a statistical analysis of a large N dataset from the European Social Survey’s representative sample of Russian citizens, collected in early 2011. It finds that there is good reason to be sceptical about the “new middle class”-hypothesis, as there is only very weak and patchy empirical evidence for its existence. This thesis suggests that Russian society is still overwhelmed with people whose primary desire is high performance. Even though a latent class of people with no relationship between political trust and satisfaction with economy is identified, they are not the members of the anti-Putin opposition, quite the contrary they are a group of people generally inclined to support the incumbent government. These findings have important implications for contemporary Russian politics, both for the authorities and the opposition. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/bor_alexander.pdf |
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