Party Attachment and Political ParticipationA Panel Study of Citizen Attitudes and Behavior in Russia∗

Hanna BäckDepartment of Government

Uppsala UniversityHanna.Back@statsvet.uu.se

Jan TeorellDepartment of Government, Uppsala University

Department of Political Science, Göteborg UniversityJan.Teorell@pol.gu.se

Paper prepared for presentation at the Karlstad Seminar in Studying Political Action,June 7–9 2005.

∗ Research was funded by the project ”Institutions, Political organization and DemocraticCulture: Continuity and Change in Russia”, headed by Axel Hadenius at the Department ofGovernment, Uppsala University, financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

AbstractThe prevailing view among scholars of post-Soviet societies is that parties in thesesocieties are ephemeral and impotent. Institutionalized parties have often been seen asa prerequisite for a well-functioning representative democracy, not only becauseparties channel citizen attitudes, but partisanship may also foster politicalparticipation among citizens. Scholars of Western societies have for example foundthat citizens who identify with a particular party are more likely to vote and take partin campaign activity. Is this also the case for post-Soviet societies? In this paper, weevaluate the hypothesis that party attachment positively affects political participationusing a three-wave panel survey conducted among a representative sample of theRussian population between the years 2000 and 2004. The conclusion that can bedrawn from this analysis is that party attachment does in fact foster politicalparticipation, however only in elections. People who identify with a party are morelikely to go to the polls, but they are not more prone to take part in party activity,contacting efforts, or manifestations acts, such as boycotts and signing petitions.

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IntroductionThe prevailing view among scholars of post-Soviet societies is that parties in thesesocieties are ephemeral and impotent, and that citizens are not likely to identify with suchparties (Miller & Klobucar 2000). Institutionalized parties and a high level of partisanshiphas often been seen as a key prerequisite for a well-functioning representative democracy(see e.g. Hadenius 2002). Parties not only channel citizen attitudes, but partisanship mayalso foster political participation among citizens. Scholars of Western societies have forexample found that citizens who identify with a particular party are more likely to voteand take part in campaign activity (see e.g. Verba et al 1978; Finkel & Opp 1991). Onesuggested mechanism for this positive effect of party attachment is that individuals derivea psychic gratification from the act of participation per se, by for example expressing hisor her political views, or by expressing allegiance to a favored party (Bäck et al 2004).

If parties are non-important, like previous research on post-Soviet societies suggest,does this also mean that we are likely to find low levels of political participation? In acomparative study of political participation across thirteen societies, Teorell, Torcal andMontero (2005) find that countries in Eastern Europe display he lowest levels of politicalparticipation for most modes of political participation. Russian citizens in fact have thelowest levels of participation when studying contacting, party activity, protest activity,and consumer participation, and only Switzerland displays a lower level of voting.

Even though participation levels are low in post-Soviet societies, some individuals dobecome active. The question is why? Few studies have focused on explaining politicalaction in these societies (see however Javeline 2003; Brady and Kaplan 2002; Bahry andLipsmeyer 2001; Reisinger, Miller & Hesli 1995; McAllister and White 1994). The aimof this paper is to fill this void in the literature by investigating whether party attachmentincreases an individual’s likelihood of participation. Looking at previous research andtaking into account that parties have been described as “ephemeral and impotent”, we areinclined to expect that the effect of partisanship on political participation will be weak, oreven non-existent. Russia thus represents a critical case for studying the relationshipbetween partisanship and political participation.

Previous research on party attachment and political participation has shown that theeffect of party identification seems to vary across modes of political participation. Morespecifically, party identification positively affects electoral participation, such as votingand campaign activity, but no such effect is found on other forms of political action (seee.g. Finkel & Opp 1991). In this paper we address the question of whether the effect ofpartisanship varies across participatory modes by examining four different forms ofpolitical action, namely, voting, party activity, contacting and a fourth mode, labeledmanifestations (e.g. consumer participation such as boycotts, see Micheletti et al 2003).

To evaluate our hypotheses, we draw on a nationally representative panel study of theRussian population conducted in three waves between 2000 and 2004. The mainadvantage with using this type of panel data when investigating political participation isthat we can solve the problem inherent in cross-sectional designs that predictors that arepsychological characteristics might well be effects as well as causes of participation(Bäck et al 2004). The conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis of these data is thatparty attachment does in fact positively affect political participation among Russiancitizens. More specifically, individuals who identify with a party are more likely to votein elections. However, we find no support that party attachment increases other modes ofpolitical participation after controlling for a number of other incentives.

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Theoretical ideas about party attachment and participationAs described above, the aim of this paper is to explain political participation amongRussian citizens. Why do some individuals participate whereas others do not? Rationalchoice scholars, who have long been occupied with explaining turnout, have asked thequestion, “why do individuals go to the polls when they are so unlikely to be able toaffect the outcome of the election?” This question briefly summarizes the “paradox ofparticipation”, which is based on the fact that the rewards from voting was originallyspecified as a multiplicative function of the probability that the individual will affect theelectoral outcome (P) and the benefits that are associated with the individual’s favoredparty or candidate winning the election (B). Since the probability that an individual willaffect the outcome of the election is vanishingly small and since voting typically entailssome sort of cost for the individual (C), the conclusion in the early literature on votingwas that no rational individuals should vote, since C is most often larger than P × B.

As stated by Mancur Olson (1965), the problem is that for most political activities, anindividual’s likelihood of affecting the success of collective action is extremely small.Since most public goods are available to everybody, that is, equally to those whoparticipate and to those who don’t, people should not get involved in collective action.Instead, since participation usually involves some sort of costs, individuals should abstainfrom taking part in collective action. The paradox of participation thus lies in the fact thatthe model predicts that no rational individuals should take part in political action, but inthe real world, many individuals do participate in such activities (Bäck et al 2004).

A number of solutions to this paradox have been presented in the literature. One suchsolution is based on the idea that individuals do not perceive the probability that they willaffect the outcome of collective action, often labeled their “efficacy”, as vanishinglysmall. If we drop the assumption that all individuals have perfect information, we open upfor the possibility that individuals are misinformed about their ability to affect collectiveoutcomes, such as an election. Riker and Ordeshook (1968) for example argue that it “islikely that, for many people, the subjective estimate of P is higher than is reasonable,given the objective circumstances”. Thus, by increasing the probability-part of thecalculus (P), the rewards from political activity (represented by the P × B-part) mayexceed the costs of participation (C). People may thus participate because they want toand believe that they can affect the collective outcome, and thus influence policy.

The most influential type of solution to the paradox of participation instead adds a newcomponent to the model. Riker and Ordeshook (1968: 28) argue that the calculus ofvoting is incomplete, due to the fact that this model underestimates the selective rewardsof voting, and they therefore rewrite the original calculus, adding a D-term. Among theelements in this added term are psychic gratifications, such as, “the satisfaction fromcompliance with the ethic of voting” and the “satisfaction from affirming a partisanpreference”. According to this model, the citizen will vote (participate) when P × B + D> C, that is, when the rewards from participation exceed the costs (Bäck et al 2004).

Riker and Ordeshook’s (1968: 28) idea that citizens vote because they act inaccordance with “the ethic of voting” can be interpreted as citizens complying with asocial norm. Thus, some people are motivated to vote because they believe that goodcitizens should vote. Applying the idea of social norms to other forms of politicalparticipation, some individuals may choose to sign petitions, contact politicians or beactive in parties because they believe that it is a citizen duty to participate in politicalaction (see Bäck et al 2004). Another selective incentive was introduced by Tullock(1971), who argues that the voter, the party member, or the individual participating in aprotest may find the act of participation entertaining in some sense. Thus, someindividuals participate because they derive some entertainment value from the act ofparticipation. This entertainment value may for example stem from the excitement that

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comes from waiting for an election result or from participating in illegal protest, or fromenjoying the company of others when working within a party (Bäck et al 2004).

Besides introducing the idea that social norms affect people’s likelihood to vote, Rikerand Ordeshook (1968: 28) also argue that people may go to the polls because they derivesome “satisfaction from affirming a partisan preference”. This type of selective incentivehas often been categorized as an expressive incentive. Expressive incentives include thepsychic gratification that an individual derives from the act of participation per se, by forexample by expressing allegiance to a favored party, just as a supporter of a soccer teamor baseball team derive some satisfaction from cheering for the team in front of the TV(see Bäck et al 2004; Brennan & Buchanan 1984; Brennan & Lomasky 1985).

The fact that individuals may derive some gratification from supporting a favoredparty suggests that party attachment should have a positive effect on an individual’slikelihood to take part in political action, for example, by voting for the party. Theconcept of party identification, originally specified in the American Voter (Campbell et al1960), is based on reference group theory. According to this theory, individuals definecertain aspects of the self in terms of groups in their environment, such as politicalparties, and develop psychological attachments to these groups. The groups then “providecues for structuring attitudes and behavior on matters relevant to the group” (Jacoby1988: 644). The important lesson to be drawn from this literature when aiming to explainpolitical participation is that party identification “both reflects and reinforces anindividual’s psychological involvement in politics and concern over election outcomes,thus encouraging electoral participation” (Finkel & Opp 1991: 340).

Several studies in Western Europe and in the United States have repeatedly providedsupport for this hypothesis, showing that individuals who report strong identification witha political party are more likely to vote and take part in campaign or other party activity(see e.g. Bäck et al 2004; Campbell et al 1960; Conway 1985; Dalton 1988; Finkel &Opp 1991; Verba et al 1978). However, as stated by Finkel and Opp (1991: 340), whilethe effect of party identification on electoral forms of political participation is “clear andconsistent, its impact on other forms of behavior is largely unknown”.

Finkel and Opp (1991) draw two contrasting hypotheses about party identification andparticipation in protest activity from the literature: (1) Party attachment should decreasean individual’s likelihood of protest behavior, since strong support for existing partiesreflect an individual’s general integration into the established political system. Protestbehavior would according to this idea be increased when many individuals becomedetached from the values expressed by the existing parties. (2) Party attachment shouldincrease an individual’s propensity to take part on protest activities, since some partieshave aligned themselves with protest movements, and since these parties encourageprotest in order to achieve policy goals. Finkel and Opp (1991: 342–345) reconcile theseconflicting ideas by applying a more general motivational model. They argue that,

Parties differ in the extent to which they encourage certain forms of behavior from theirfollowers [… ] if a party encourages certain types of political action, those stronglyidentifying with the party will be more likely to comply with the party’s behavioralexpectations and cues emanating from the party leadership, than those who weakly identifyor who do not identify with the respective party. Since we assume that every partyencourages its adherents to vote or campaign for it, we expect that party identifiers will bemore likely to engage in campaign behavior that nonidentifiers – the more so, the strongerthe individual’s sense of identification. However, levels of unconventional participationshould differ widely among party groups, stemming from the parties’ varying expectationsfor these types of actions.

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Finkel and Opp (1991: 344) further argue, following Hirschman (1970), that “actingagainst the expectations of the organization results in penalties or costs to the individual,most of which are internalized”. A conclusion that can be drawn from Finkel and Opp’sargument is thus that we should expect party identification to increase the likelihood ofelectoral participation and possibly other forms of participation too, assuming that theparty that the individual identifies with encourages that particular form of political action.

Party identification should thus positively affect an individual’s likelihood of takingpart in certain forms of political action. A question that should be dealt with moreextensively before testing this hypothesis is ”Why?”. What is the underlying causalmechanism that would explain a positive effect of partisanship? We argue that two mainideas about the causal mechanisms at work can be derived from the literature: (1) Partyattachment increases the likelihood of political participation, since individuals who arestrongly attached derive some expressive satisfaction from affirming a partisan preferenceby voting or taking part in some other activities. (2) Attachment to a political partyincreases an individual’s likelihood of participation since acting against the expectationsof the party would entail some sort of sanctioning costs to the individual, eitherinternalized or externally enforced by other group members. Both of these hypothesizedmechanisms fit perfectly into a rational choice account of political participation, sincethey are both based on the idea that an individual weighs the expected benefits against theexpected costs associated with certain types of behavior or non-behavior.

Another idea about partisanship and political behavior presented in the literature isthat the relationship between these two factors is in fact spurious. Finkel and Opp (1991:347) argue that individuals who identify with a party are “likely to possess preferencesfor particular public goods or policy goals, and to endorse particular means to achievethem”. If these variables both motivate participation and “explain” individuals’ level ofparty identification, it would suggest that the observed correlation between partisanshipand political participation is a spurious relationship. Thus, if there are some incentivesthat both affect the individuals’ level of party identification and their level of politicalactivity, it is necessary to control for such variables in the statistical model. Whencontrolling for a number of incentives, Finkel and Opp (1991) find that the effects ofidentification on campaign behavior and protest behavior are reduced substantially. Thissuggests that the relationship is at least partly spurious. However, if the incentives aboutfor example public goods or social norms included in the model are instead interveningvariables that are created by an individual’s partisanship, a causal mechanism explainingthe effect of party attachment on participation has been specified. Finkel and Opp’s cross-sectional data do not enable us to disentangle the order between all included variables,which makes it difficult to determine whether the effect is spurious or indirect.

To sum up, a number of explanations to political participation have been presented inthe literature. Thus, there are several reasons why individuals should take part in politicalaction. One such motivation is partisanship – individuals who identify with a politicalparty should be more likely to take part in elections, in party activity and possibly also inother forms of political participation. The reason for this may be that individuals derivesome psychic gratification from expressing their political views. Other motivations forpolitical participation for example include social norms that foster participation amongcitizens and the belief that the individual will derive some collective benefits fromactivity. Individuals may also choose to participate because they derive someentertainment value from participation. All of these hypotheses will be tested here.

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Data and method

A three-wave panel survey

We will here rely on a nationally representative three-wave panel survey of the Russianpopulation, The Russian Citizen Survey. The fieldwork was in all three panel wavescarried out as face-to-face interviews. The first wave of the panel was conducted in thefall of 2000 on a multistage stratified probability sample of 1804 residents of the RussianFederation in the ages 16 and older.1 The second wave was conducted in the fall of 2002among the respondents included in the 2000 sample. 1203 individuals participated in thissecond wave, which renders a response rate of 67 percent. The third wave was conductedin the fall of 2004; 963 individuals, or 53 percent of the original sample participated inthis third wave.2 All waves include measurements of our independent and dependentvariables.3 The measurements of the dependent variables used in our analyses aredescribed below. In the section, “Party attachment in a floating party system” we describethe operationalization of the main independent variable, that is, party attachment. Theoperationalizations of the other independent variables are described in the appendix.

Modes of participation

A number of different categorizations of the modes of political participation have beenpresented in the literature (see e.g. Barnes et al 1979; Verba et al 1978). The moststraightforward mode to measure is voting, which is typically seen as a mode by itself.Voting is here measured using a survey question. In the first (2000) and the third wave(2004), respondents were asked to state if they voted in the 1999 or 2003 Duma elections.

It is less straightforward to categorize other modes of political participation. Verba,Nie and Kim (1978) distinguished between four modes of political activity: campaignactivity, communal activity, particularized contact and voting (excluding unconventionalor illegal behavior). Milbrath and Goel’s (1977) review of the literature includesunconventional behavior and classifies activity into six modes: voting, party work,community activism, contacting officials, protest behavior and communications activities.One of the few studies of different modes of participation in Russia is the Reisinger,Miller and Hesli (1995) article on public behavior in post-Soviet states. The authors askthe respondents about six activities and conclude (on the basis of factor analysis) thatthese activities fall into three modes: contacting, unconventional activity and joining 1 Four stages of sampling was used, with urban settlements and rural administrative districts as”Primary Sampling Units” (PSUs), stratified by administrative status, size, and economic-geographical region. At the third sampling stage, households were selected through area sampling,and at the fourth stage, 2/3 of the individuals were selected from each sampled household by useof the nearest birthday method, the remaining 1/3 by gender/age/educational quota sampling.Nonresponse substitution was used, mainly through resampling but in rural areas by calls to thenearest neighbor. Due to the partial use of quota sampling and nonresponse substitution, no“response rate” in the usual sense may be exactly established, the estimated response rate,however, is 73.1 percent (for further details on sampling design and execution, see Teorell 2002).2 Principal investigators were Jan Teorell and Axel Hadenius, Department of Government,Uppsala University. Part of the questionnaire was based on the “Common Core” questionnaireapplied in the cross-national comparative project Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy, sponsoredby the European Science Foundation (see www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/cid/). Fieldworkwas carried out by The All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), in the thirdpanel wave renamed The Yuri Levada Centre for Analysis . Funding for the survey was providedby the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.3 Except for party activity (only one item was included in the 2004 wave).

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behavior. Using a larger number of items, Teorell, Torcal and Montero (2004), show thatin an analysis of 13 countries (including Russia), activities cluster into five more genericmodes: contacting, party activity, protest activity, consumer participation and voting.

As mentioned above, voting is one of the participatory modes that we will study here.Furthermore, we base our categorization of political activities on a factor analysisperformed on 14 survey items. Most of the items were included in a question stated assuch: ”There are different ways of attempting to bring about improvements or counteractdeterioration in society. During the last 12 months, have you with this in view done anyof the following?”. The more specific questions are described in the appendix. The factoranalysis performed on data from the 2000 wave of the survey is presented in table 1.

In this analysis, we find that five items load strongly on a first factor. All of theseitems concern the respondent’s party activity; whether the individual is a member of apolitical party, if he or she has participated in party activities, donated money to a party,done voluntary work for a party, or worked in a political party during the last year. Sixitems load strongly on the second factor. Five of these items concern the respondent’scontacting activity; whether the individual has contacted a political party, an organization,a civil servant, the media or a solicitor during the last year. The sixth item loadingstrongly on this factor is the question asking whether the respondent has signed a petition.This item loads even stronger on the last factor, and will therefore be categorized asbelonging to this mode. The other items that load strongly on this third factor ask whetherthe respondent has boycotted some products, deliberately bought certain products ordonated money during the last year. This mode includes both acts that can be described asconsumer participation and some sort of protest activity (signing petitions), and will herebe labeled manifestations, since all of these acts imply making one’s political preferences“manifest” to the public (see Bäck et al 2004; Petersson et al. 1998; Teorell 2003).

Based on these results, we have chosen to study three distinct modes of politicalparticipation besides voting, namely, party activity, contacting and manifestations. Theindicators of each participatory mode have been summed to a simple additive indexstandardized to range from 0 to 1. Contacting and manifestations have been measured inall three waves, whereas party activity was only measured in the first two waves.

Table 1. Principal components analysis of different modes of political participation 2000

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3Member of political party 0.73 -0.01 0.04Participated in party activities 0.88 0.10 0.09Donated money to a party 0.59 0.00 -0.08Done voluntary work for a party 0.86 0.10 0.10Worked in a political party 0.73 0.15 0.15Contacted a politician 0.20 0.65 -0.11Contacted an organization 0.11 0.67 -0.02Contacted a civil servant 0.07 0.66 0.03Contacted/appeared in the media 0.06 0.49 0.22Contacted solicitor/judicial body -0.09 0.38 0.07Signed a petition 0.02 0.38 0.40Boycotted certain products 0.10 -0.09 0.68Deliberately bought certain products -0.02 -0.01 0.76Donated money 0.09 0.31 0.51Eigenvalues 3.36 1.82 1.38Variance explained (in %) 3.01 1.97 1.58Note: Factor loadings from a principal components analysis are displayed. Eigenvalues over oneare extracted. Varimax rotation. Factor loadings equal to 0.30 or larger are boldfaced.

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The statistical model

A major problem for research on political participation is that many of the attitudes andperceptions that are assumed to explain political activity might just as well be the effectsof participation. This is problematic since most empirical studies use cross-sectional datato evaluate their hypotheses. If participation and attitudes are measured at the same time,it is difficult to discern the causal relationship between these variables. For example, anindividual’s belief in their own ability to affect collective outcomes, their perceivedefficacy, may be “amplified” though participatory acts like protest behavior, wheregroups attempt to mobilize individuals (Finkel & Muller 1998; Finkel 1987; Snow et al1986). The main variable of interest here, party identification, may of course also beaffected by participation, for example, an individual taking part in party activity is likelyto develop a stronger sense of identification with the group of people in the party.

As suggested by Finkel and Muller (1998: 40), these “difficulties can be overcome toa large extent through the analysis of panel data, in which attitudes, cognitions andbehaviors are measured over at least two periods”. Panel data offer several advantagesover cross-sectional data. First, we can measure attitudes and perceptions at one point intime and an individual’s behavior at a later point in time. This means that “the potentialsimultaneity biases that exist in cross-sectional designs are eliminated”. Anotheradvantage with using panel data is that we have the opportunity to include priorparticipation, or activity measured at t–1, as a variable in our model. This enables us tocontrol for any omitted variables that influenced participation up until t–1, including thebias that would be incurred if prior participation affected our explanatory variables(Finkel & Muller 1998: 41; also see Bäck et al 2004).4

Thus, we have here chosen to model participation as such:

ittitiit uyxy +++= −− 1,1, ββα [1]

This means that we use as predictors of participation (e.g. voting, contacting) at t, theindependent variables (e.g. party identification) measured at t–1 and the lagged dependentvariable, that is, participation measured at t–1. The interval between the three panelwaves is about two years (2000, 2002, 2004). Voting was however only measured in the2000 and the 2004 waves, which means that the lag is somewhat longer for voting.5

In the following analyses, the three waves of the panel have been pooled together intoone data set. This means that for individuals who have participated in all three waves ofthe survey, there are three observations. To control for the fact that some individuals haveonly participated in one wave, some in two waves, and some in three, we have weighedthe observations inversely proportional to the number of waves that the respondent hasparticipated in. In addition, the compensate for the oversampling of individuals living insmall households, the weights correct for household size.

For three of the modes studied here, party activity, contacting and manifestations, weuse a linear regression model to evaluate the data. For voting, which is a dichotomousoutcome variable describing if the individual voted in the last election, we use a logisticregression model (see e.g. Long 1997). Due to the complex survey design, to estimate theerror variances is not straightforward but can be accomplished by using the first-orderTaylor series approximation formula (see, e.g., Wolter 1985; Skinner et al. 1989).6

4 See Bäck et al 2004 for a more extensive discussion on including the lagged dependent variable.5 As mentioned above, party activity was only measured in the 2000 and the 2002 waves, whichmeans that there are only two waves for this mode of participation.6 For details regarding the applicability of the Taylor series approximation for the Russian CitizensSurvey, see Teorell 2002. We rely on variance estimates produced by the svyregress and svylogit

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Party attachment in a floating party system

The “floating” party structure`

As described above, the main hypothesis to be tested here is that party attachmentincreases an individual’s likelihood of political participation. The common way tomeasure party attachment is through surveys asking people about their partyidentification. As we will see, this can be done in a variety of different ways, and resultson the level of party identification among a society’s citizens is highly dependent on thequestions asked (Hadenius 2002). Before discussing these issues, we will briefly presentsome descriptive information on the Russian political system. The Russian party systemhas been described with many less flattering adjectives, such as, “chaotic”, “shapeless”,and “floating” (see e.g. Brader & Tucker 2001: 69; Rose et al 2001:420). The reason whythe system has been described using this type of vocabulary is mainly that since theelection in 1993 a vast number of political parties have moved in and out of the Duma.

Table 2. The vote distribution among the major Russian parties over four elections

1993 1995 1999 2003

Four electionsCommunist Party (KPRF) 11.6 22.3 24.3 12.6Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) 21.4 11.2 6.0 11.5Yabloko 7.3 6.9 5.9 4.3Three electionsWomen of Russia 7.6 4.6 2.0 n.a.Agrarian Party 7.4 3.8 n.a. 3.6Two electionsRussia’s Choice 14.5 3.9 n.a. n.a.Russian Unity and Concord 6.3 0.4 n.a. n.a.Cedar 0.7 1.4 n.a. n.a.Our Home Is Russia n.a. 10.1 1.2 n.a.Communist Workers for USSR n.a. 4.5 2.2 n.a.Congress of Russian Communities n.a. 4.3 0.6 n.a.Union of Right Forces (SPS) n.a. n.a. 8.5 4.0One electionDemocratic Party of Russia 5.1 n.a. n.a. n.a.Unity n.a. n.a. 23.3 n.a.Fatherland/All Russia n.a. n.a. 13.3 n.a.Unified Russia7 n.a. n.a. n.a. 37.6Rodina (Motherland) bloc n.a. n.a. n.a. 9.0Social Justice Party n.a. n.a. n.a. 3.1Party of Russia’s Rebirth n.a. n.a. n.a. 1.9People’s Party n.a. n.a. n.a. 1.2Other parties/against all/invalid 18.1 26.6 12.7 11.2Note: Table from Rose, Munro and White (2001: 424), updated for the 2003 election by theauthor, source: Keesing’s Record of World Events. Parties winning less than 1.0% of the list voteare not presented in table. commands of Stata 7.1. In one instance, in Table 5 below, we have instead relied on the Jackknifeestimator, produced by the jknife command of Stata 8.2.7 Unified Russia was formed from the parties Unity and Fatherland/All Russia.

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In table 2 we describe the vote distribution among the parties that won representation tothe Duma in the proportional elections of 1993, 1995, 1999 and 2003.8 As we can easilysee, most parties have only been represented on the list ballot in one or two elections (15parties). Of the eight parties that won representation in 1993, only three are left in theDuma after the 2003 election, the Communist party, the Liberal Democratic party andYabloko. These more “stable” features of the Russian party system together obtainedabout 40 percent of the list vote in 1993, but received less than 30 percent of the list votein 2003. The largest party in the 2003 election was instead the newly formed UnifiedRussia, which formed as a union between the “party of power” in 1999, Unity, andFatherland/All Russia. This party won almost 38 percent of the list vote.

The fact that a newly formed party can become the largest party, and the fact that mostparties have only been represented once or twice, give some indication of the instabilityof the Russian party system. Another feature that highlights the instability of thisparticular system is that a large number of parties have failed to clear the 5 percentthreshold to win any list seats. In 1993 six parties failed to clear this threshold, in 1995 39parties failed to reach 5 percent, and in 1999 20 list parties did not gain representation. In1995 almost 50 percent of the list vote went to parties that did not win any seats in theDuma. Rose, Munro and White (2001: 423) describe this election result as “one of themost disproportional results on record in modern Europe”.

Hadenius (2002) measures the stability of the party system by studying the level ofelectoral volatility, that is, the changes in party support taking place from one election toanother (Pedersen 1979). In the 1995 Duma elections, the volatility was 43 percent. In1999 it rose to 52 percent, and in 2003, the level of volatility is 62 percent. The level ofvolatility of a party system is a figure that can readily be compared across countries. Inthe United States, the volatility has long been under 10 percent and in Western Europe ithas recently risen from 10 to 15 percent. For Latin America and for the formerCommunist states of Eastern Europe, the average level of volatility has been about 25percent. Only a few countries, such as Brazil, Bulgaria and Lithuania, display levels ofvolatility that come close to the volatility of the Russian system, and in those systems thistype of high volatility is only found for some elections (Hadenius 2002: 22–24).

Rose, White and Munro’s (2001: 420) description of a “floating” party system thusseems awfully close to what we find for the Russian case:

in a floating party system […] the parties competing for popular support change from oneelection to the next, thus making accountability difficult, because voters can neitherreaffirm nor withdraw their support from the party they voted for at the previous election.

The instability of the Russian party system may thus hinder the mechanisms ofaccountability and representation that elections in most democracies constitute (seePrzeworski et al 1999). Another potential problem with the Russian party system may ofcourse be that this system is highly unlikely to foster partisanship or party attachmentamong its citizens. Since party attachment may be an important incentive for turnout andother forms of political participation, the instability of the party system may of coursealso hamper political activity among Russian citizens. Whether this is the case will befurther investigated here. Before analyzing the effects of partisanship, we will presentsome descriptive results on the party identification among Russian citizens.

8 Half of the Duma’s 450 seats are allocated through a list form of proportional representation(PR). As stated by Rose et al (2001: 421), this system ”compels politicians to form politicalorganisations to qualify for a place on the ballot”. The other half of the Duma seats are allocatedusing a single-member district election rule. We here concentrate on the list votes.

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Party attachment across three periods

Seeing that the party structure is plagued by such instability, we would expect that partyattachment among the Russian citizens is fairly low. As mentioned above, a number ofdifferent survey questions can be used to measure party identification. In the AmericanVoter, party identification was originally measured using the question “Generallyspeaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independentor what?”. Those who indicated a party preference were then asked to state whether theyconsidered themselves as strong Republicans or strong Democrats (Campbell et al 1960).

When dealing with a multiparty system like the Russian one, other types of questionshave to be used (Miller & Klobucar 2000). White, Rose and McAllister (1997) askedRussian survey respondents the question “Do you identify with any particular party ormovement”, whereas Colton (2000) asked the respondents if they considered any party tobe “my own”. Both of these questions are problematic, since it may be difficult for therespondent to determine what it means to “identify” with a party and how strongly he orshe must feel for a party to call it “my” party (see Miller & Klobucar 2000: 669). Colton(2000) found that only about 30 percent of the Russians identify with a party.

Miller and Klobucar (2000: 669) instead measure party identification by asking therespondents if there is a particular party that “expresses your views better than any otherparty?”. If the respondents answered “yes”, they were also asked how close they feel tothis party. As the authors themselves recognize, a problem with this question is that itdoes not reflect a self-definition in terms of party group as in the American Voter. Thismeasure taps into opinion representativeness rather than “identification” with a particularparty, and this may explain the high level of identification that they found among Russiancitizens – 61 percent of the Russian people identify with a party in 1997 using thismeasure (see Miller et al 2000). This is an identification level higher than what has beenfound in several European countries, using the Eurobarometer data (see Sinnott 1998).

In the survey used here, conducted in three waves in 2000, 2002 and 2004, thefollowing question was used to tap into the Russian citizens’ party identification: “Do youusually think of yourself as a supporter (storonnik) of a particular party or movement?”.Those answering “no” were then asked “Is there still some party or movement that youfeel closer to than others?”. Those answering “yes” to any of these questions were askedto state which party they had in mind, and those answering yes to the first question wereasked if they considered themselves as strong supporters of that particular party. Theresults from the three waves of the survey are presented in table 3.

Table 3. Party identifiers in Russia 2000, 2002, 2004

2000 2002 2004

Party identifiers9 40.9 (694) 40.5 (465) 44.0 (419)

Supporter of party 22.0 (374) 27.8 (319) 24.2 (230)

Strong supporter of party 15.4 (261) 20.3 (233) 18.1 (172)

Same party as previous period10 – 16.0 (183) 13.2 (126)

Total number of respondents 1698 1147 952Note: Entries are percentages. Number of respondents in parentheses.

9 Party identifiers and those who feel closer to one party are added together in this category, sincewe can assume that those who have answered that they support a party also feel close to it.10 Respondents who support or feel close to the same party across two periods are here given a 1.

11

About 40 percent of the Russian citizens in our sample say that they are a supporter of aparty or that they feel close to a party. This figure is also fairly stable across the waves,with a slight increase in the 2004 wave to 44 percent. This suggests that some people doidentify with political parties, even though such a high level of instability characterizesthe party system. The fact that only one party, the Communist party, has been present inthe Russian political system for more than 15 years could suggest that most partisansidentify with the Communist party. This is however not the case. In the 2000 wave, about45 percent of the respondents who state a party identifications are adherents of theCommunist party, whereas the other half identify with some other political party.

In table 3, we also separate out those individuals who state that they are strongsupporters of a party. The percentage of strong party supporters varies between 15 and 20percent over the entire period. Many authors suggest that the effect of party identificationon the durability of organizations and the stability of the party system should only beimportant if party identification is lasting – if it is “directed towards one and the sameparty over a substantial period” (Hadenius 2002: 25; Aldrich 1995). Few studies haveinvestigated whether the party identification that Russian citizens display is of the lastingkind (see however Brader & Tucker 2001). Since we in this study have asked aboutpeople’s party identification in three different waves of the survey, we are able to assessto some extent whether partisanship is stable or floating. In table 3, we present theproportion who stated the same party as their target of attachment over two periods. In2002, 16 percent of the respondents were stable partisans, that is, they identified with thesame party as in 2000. In 2004, the corresponding figure was 13 percent.

Another way to measure the stability of partisanship is to measure the correlationbetween party identification measured at different points in time. Table 4 presents thebivariate correlations between party identification indexes measured in all three waves.The correlation between party identification in 2000 and 2002 is 0.38 and significant atthe 0.01 level, suggesting that individuals who identify with some party at time point t–1are likely to do so also at time point t. The correlation between 2002 and 2004 is slightlylower, 0.36, and between 2000 and 2004, 0.34. All in all, these results support theconclusion that has been drawn in previous research on partisanship in Western countries,that “an individual’s location within a distribution of party identification tends to remainhighly stable over time”. Previous research has also found that “the panel correlationsbetween partisanship measured at any two points in time declines slowly as the time spanincreases” (Green & Yoon 2002: 2; Green & Palmquist 1994; Schickler & Green 1997).This result is replicated here for the Russian data.

Table 4. Pearson correlation between party identification indexes 2000, 2002, 2004

2000 2002 2004

Party identification 2000 1.00(1665)

– –

Party identification 2002 0.38***(1043)

1.0(1117)

–

Party identification 2004 0.34***(868)

0.36***(864)

1.0(926)

Note: *** Significant at the 0.01 level. The party identification scale varies between “not close toany party” (0), “not supporter, but close to some party (0.33)”, “supporter, but not strong (0.67)”,and “strong supporter” (1). Number of respondents in parentheses.

12

Characteristics of partisans

About 40 percent of the Russian citizens thus identify with a political party. Is theresomething that sets this group apart from other Russians? Several scholars haveinvestigated whether individuals who identify with a party differ from other parts of thepopulation. Studies of party identification in Russia has found that women are somewhatless likely to identify with a party and that older people and highly educated individualsare more likely to do so (see Hadenius 2002; Miller & Klobucar 2000; Miller et al 2000).

In table 5 we present the proportion of different demographic categories that identifywith some party across the three waves. The figures in this table clearly show that one agegroup is more likely to be partisan than others; the middle-aged (50–64). In 2004, 59percent of the middle-aged identify with or feel close to some party, whereas only 32percent of the young people (16–29) can be characterized as partisans. The correlationbetween age and partisanship is around 0.16–0.19 and significant at the 0.01 level.Hadenius (2002) explains this relationship with the fact that many party identifiers areadherents of the Communist party, and these people are also older. Table 5 also illustratesthat there is a slightly higher proportion of men that are partisans and that individualswith a high level of education are somewhat more likely to identify with a party thanpeople with a low or medium-level education. The correlation between gender and partyidentification is significant, whereas the correlation between education and partisanship isnot. We find no statistically significant relationship between nationality and partisanship.

Table 5. Demographic characteristics of partisans 2000, 2002, 2004

2000 2002 2004Partisan Non-par Partisan Non-par Partisan Non-par

Age16–2930–4950–6465–Pearson correlation:

34%41%56%46%

.16***

66%59%44%54%

30%40%55%48%

.21***

70%60%45%52%

32%43%59%53%

.19***

68%57%41%47%

GenderMenWomenPearson correlation:

47%41%

.08***

53%59%

49%40%

.09***

51%60%

50%45%.04

50%55%

NationalityRussianNon-RussianPearson correlation:

44%41%.01

56%59%

44%44%–.01

56%56%

47%47%–.03

53%53%

EducationLowMediumHighPearson correlation:

42%41%53%.02

58%59%47%

46%39%52%–.01

54%61%48%

46%45%54%.05

54%55%46%

Note: Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, *** the 0.01 level. Partisans are those whothink of themselves as supporters or feel close to some party. The figures represent percentages ofa given row category that are partisans and non-partisans respectively. Pearson correlations arecalculated using age and education in years, instead of the categorical variables. Confidenceintervals, and hence tests for statistical significance, are based on the Jackknife estimator,correcting for clustering only; they should thus be considered as somewhat conservative.

13

A panel analysis of political participation in RussiaWe first present the bivariate effect of party identification on all four modes. We thenpresent the effect of party identification when controlling for incentives and other factorsthat may influence activity. We also present the results from multivariate analysesincluding party identification and several other independent variables, and the laggeddependent variable, i.e. participation at t–1. All regression results are presented in table 6.

Let us begin by studying the bivariate results. When we do not control for any othervariables, the effect of party identification is positive and significant for all modes, exceptfor party activity. One problem with the analysis of party activity, which may explain thenon-significant result, is the fact that only a very small number of respondents haveparticipated in this type of political activity – about 2 percent of the sample, or 36 people.This renders analyses of this particular mode fairly unreliable. The three other modesdisplay a somewhat larger number of participants. For example, when asked in 2000,about 15 percent of the sample say that they have performed some form of contacting ormanifestations act and 76 percent say that they voted in the last Duma election.

When we include resources and the other control variables in the model, partyidentification no longer exerts a significant effect on contacting and manifestations. Thus,it is only for voting that party identification seems to have an effect – individuals whoidentify with a party are more likely to go to the polls. This effect even holds when weput the hypothesis to the more conservative test of controlling for prior participation. Wecan thus be fairly certain that even in Russia, where the party system is plagued by anextreme level of instability, party identification fosters electoral participation. This isconsistent with the notion that individuals who identify with a party are more likely toderive some expressive value from supporting their party in the election.

Besides party attachment, one other incentive also seems to induce individuals to vote,namely a sense of duty to participate, or a social norm. The effect of the social normvariable is positive and significant at the 0.01 level, which suggests that individuals whobelieve that good citizens should be active in society are also more likely to turn out at thepolls. The effect of this selective incentive may be explained by the fact that individualswho think that it is their citizen duty to vote are likely to expect to be sanctioned either byothers in the society, or by their own “demons” if they don’t vote. This sense of duty toparticipate also motivates individuals to be active in political parties. The few individualswho are active in parties thus seem to be driven by social norms.

Neither of the collective or selective incentives included in our models exert astatistically significant effect on contacting, which implies that these factors are lessimportant to take into account when we try to explain why some individuals contactofficials. Other variables, such as education, organizational activity and civic skills doeshowever seem to add to our ability to explain this particular mode, which suggests thatcontacting to a large extent is driven by the resources available to the individual.11

The acts that are here categorized as manifestations acts, such as boycotting, signingpetitions and donating money, do however seem to be driven by a selective incentive.Individuals who expect to derive some entertainment value when taking part in politicalactivity are more likely to take part in such activity. Thus, individuals may expect that therewards from participating exceed the costs, since they find such activity entertaining.

11 The effects of these variables are not displayed in the table. A table including all variables notpresented in table 6 is presented in the appendix.

14

Table 6. The effect of party ID on four modes of political participation

Voting Party activity Contacting ManifestationsParty identificationParty ID (bivariate) 1.48***

(0.35)0.01

(0.01) 0.02***

(0.01) 0.02***

(0.01)

Party ID (multivariate, nolagged dependent variable)

1.19***(0.39)

0.01(0.01)

0.00(0.01)

0.02(0.01)

Party ID (multivariate, laggeddependent variable)

1.02**(0.37)

-0.00(0.01)

0.00(0.01)

0.02(0.01)

Collective & selective incentives

Efficacy -0.45(1.10)

-0.03(0.04)

-0.00(0.05)

-0.02(0.04)

Collective benefits 0.21(0.89)

-0.02(0.02)

-0.01(0.02)

0.02(0.02)

Efficacy × collective benefits 0.92(1.71)

0.03(0.04)

0.05(0.09)

0.04(0.06)

Entertainment value -0.15(0.76)

0.01(0.01)

0.01(0.02)

0.05**(0.02)

Social norms 1.64***(0.46)

0.03**(0.01)

0.01(0.02)

0.01(0.02)

Ideological radicalism 0.04(0.46)

-0.01(0.01)

0.00(0.00)

-0.01(0.01)

Lagged dependent variable

Participation at t–1 1.62***(0.26)

0.28***(0.12)

0.29***(0.06)

0.14***(0.04)

Pseudo/Adjusted R2 0.18 0.21 0.19 0.11Number of observations 633 690 1337 1337

Note: Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, *** the 0.01 level. Entries areunstandardized logistic regression coefficients (for voting) or regression coefficients with standarderrors in parentheses; the standard errors are estimated by the first-order Taylor seriesapproximation, correcting for clustering and stratification. Observations are weighted to reflecthousehold size and panel attrition. Control variables included in all models are: sex, age,nationality, education, religion, employment, income, marital status, residence, organizationalinvolvement, and civic skills.

Thus, party attachment only exerts a significant effect on turnout. Individuals whoidentify with a party are more likely to be active in elections, but they are not more likelyto be active in parties, contact officials or take part in manifestations, such as boycotts.Voting is also to some extent driven by an individual’s sense of duty to vote. Such socialnorms also motivate individuals to be active in political parties, whereas another selectiveincentive, the entertainment value of participation, drives individuals to take part inmanifestations. Collective incentives does not exert a significant effect on any of themodes. Thus, individuals in the Russian society do not appear to participate because theywant to and believe that they can affect collective outcomes. A result that should be notedis also that past participation exert significant effects on all of the modes studied here.This implies that individuals who have been active are likely to be so again.

15

Generally speaking, we do not find many significant effects of incentives onparticipation. At this stage, we can only speculate on the reasons for this. A substantialinterpretation of the results would be that in Russia, being a semi-democratic regime, thefreedom to organize collective expressions of ones views is not fully respected by theauthorities. This should incur higher costs for participation than in more fullydemocratized regimes, which in turn could dampen the effect of more positive incentives.We are not fully convinced of this argument, however, since fear of repression shouldmainly increase the costs of public participation, such as manifestations. We findhowever weak effects of incentives on all modes of participation.

A methodological explanation might instead run along the lines that there is so littlepolitical participation in Russia even to begin with. Without some technique thatoversamples political activists (which was not used), there is simply too little variance toexplain. Whether this explanation holds water cannot be determined until other more fullyspecified models have been tested, including other potentially relevant factors promotingparticipation in Russia (also included in the survey), such as social networks andrecruitment, regime support and resistance, as well as economic adversity.

ConclusionsThe Russian party system has been described as “chaotic” or “floating” and parties in thissystem have been described as “ephemeral and impotent” (see e.g. Brader & Tucker2001; Miller & Klobucar 2000; Rose et al 2001). If we base our predictions of the futureof Russian democracy on these descriptions, we would of course be pessimistic, sinceinstitutionalized parties can be seen as a prerequisite for a well-functioning democracy.

In this paper, we have investigated whether Russian citizens identify with politicalparties despite the fact that the Russian party system can be accurately described as afloating party system, that is, a system where “the parties competing for popular supportchange from one election to the next” (Rose et al 2001: 420). The fact that only threeparties have been present in the Duma since the 1993 election, and that volatility has risento 62 percent in the last Duma election, suggests that this characterization is correct.Using a question asked in a panel survey performed over three waves in 2000, 2002 and2004, we find evidence that about 40 percent of the Russian population can be seen aspartisans, since they define themselves as supporters or close to some specific party.

Does this mean that our view of the future of the Russian system should be altered?Does partisanship come with some positive effects on the functioning of democracy? Ahypothesis that has been presented in the literature is that party attachment shouldincrease an individual’s likelihood of taking part in collective action, for example, byvoting. A reason for this is that we can expect partisans to derive a psychic gratificationfrom expressing allegiance to their favored party. In the previous literature on Westernsocieties, it has been showed that partisanship has a positive effect on an individual’slevel of electoral participation (voting and campaign activity), but that few such positiveeffects are found on other forms of political activity (see e.g. Finkel & Opp 1991).

In the panel survey used here, we are able to distinguish between four modes ofpolitical activity: voting, party activity, contacting and manifestations (e.g. boycotts,signing petitions). These four modes are used as dependent variables when evaluating thehypothesis that partisanship increases an individual’s propensity to participate. Besidesparty attachment, we also include a number of other incentives in our models, forexample, we evaluate the idea that individuals who believe that it is a citizen duty to beactive are more likely to take part in collective action. Using a three-wave panel survey,we are able to measure participation at a later point in time than our measures of theincentives that are expected to drive activity. This enables us to solve the probleminherent in most research on political participation, that is, for cross-sectional designs,

16

which is used by most scholars, it is typically impossible to determine whether anindividual’s perceptions and incentives influence participation or if the direction of thecausal relationship is the opposite.

The results found here indicate that Russians who identify with a party are more likelyto be active in elections, but they are not more likely to be active in political parties, tocontact officials or to take part in manifestations, such as boycotts. The results alsoindicate that voting and party activity among Russian citizens to some extent is driven bythe individual’s sense of duty to participate, and that Russians take part in manifestationsbecause they derive some entertainment value from the act of participation. We find nosupport in the Russian data for the hypothesis that individuals take part in collectiveaction because they want to and believe that they can affect collective outcomes.

17

AppendixThe operationalizations of the dependent variables and our main independent variable,party identification, have already been described above. We will here present theoperationalizations of our other independent variables.

Efficacy is an additive index based on two indicators: “Do people like yourself havegreater or smaller possibilities than others to make politicians take account of youropinions?”, “Do people like yourself have greater or smaller possibilities than others topresent your opinions to politicians?”.

Collective benefits is an additive index based on a battery of items attached to thequestion, “Which of the problems in our society that are mentioned on this card worriesyou most and are the most troublesome, according to your opinion?”. The more areas thatthe respondent categorizes as troublesome, the higher the value on this index.

The entertainment value of participation is measured using the question, ”In general, howinterested in politics are you: very interested [1], fairly interested [0.67)] not veryinterested [0.33], or not at all interested? [0]”.

Ideological radicalism is measured using the question, ”In political matters, people talkof ’the left’ (levye) and ’the right’ (pravye). Generally speaking, how would you placeyour views on this [0-10] scale?”. The absolute difference between a respondent’s answerand the center of the scale (5) here measures the individual’s level of radicalism.

Social norms are measured as an additive index of two items attached to the question, “Asyou know, there are different opinions as to what it takes to be a good citizen(nastoyaschchy grazhdanin). Looking at what you personally think, how important is it[on a 0 to 10 scale]:” ”to vote in elections” and ”to be active in organizations”.

Organizational involvement is an additive index based on a battery of questions aboutmembership and activity in 27 different types of voluntary associations.

Skills is an additive index based on questions where the respondents were asked howoften they do the following at work: “participate in decisions at a meeting”, “plan or chaira meeting”, “prepare or give a speech before a meeting”, and “write a text other than aprivate letter, at least a few pages in length”.

Income is measured as the log of the respondent’s personal or household income.

Education is measured as the respondent’s total number of years in school.

Sex is given a 1 if the respondent is a male and a 0 if the respondent is female.

Age is the respondent’s age in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

Nationality is a dummy where respondents that are Russian citizens are given a 1, and allother individuals are given a 0.

Employment is a dummy that measures whether the respondent is employed or not.

Marital status is a dummy that describes if the respondent is married or living with apartner.

Place of residence is measured using two dummies that describe whether the respondentlives in a rural area or not.

Religion is measured using two dummy variables, which describe if the respondent isEastern orthodox or does not belong to any religion.

18

Table 6 continued. The effect of resources and controls on political participation

Voting Party activity Contacting ManifestationsResourcesEducation 0.06

(0.05)0.00

(0.00) 0.01***

(0.00) 0.00**

(0.00)

Income (logged) 0.09(0.18)

-0.01(0.01)

-0.00(0.01)

0.01(0.01)

Organizational involvement 6.76(5.11)

-0.11(0.16)

0.39*(0.21)

0.12(0.14)

Civic skills 1.06(1.01)

0.03*(0.02)

0.07*(0.04)

0.09(0.05)

Control variables

Gender (male) -0.08(0.21)

0.01(0.01)

-0.01(0.01)

0.00(0.01)

Age 0.01(0.01)

-0.00(0.00)

0.00(0.00)

-0.00(0.00)

Nationality (Russian) 0.03(0.60)

-0.01(0.01)

-0.02(0.02)

0.00(0.02)

Religion (orthodox) 0.65(0.97)

0.03*(0.02)

0.03(0.03)

0.01(0.03)

Religion (no religion) 0.41(0.93)

0.04**(0.02)

0.02(0.03)

0.03(0.03)

Employment -0.95**(0.43)

-0.01(0.01)

-0.01(0.01)

-0.00(0.02)

Marital status(married/cohabiting)

-0.11(0.27)

-0.02**(0.01)

-0.01(0.01)

0.01(0.01)

Residence (big city) -0.28(0.31)

-0.01(0.01)

0.02(0.02)

0.01(0.02)

Residence (city or town) -0.44(0.33)

-0.00(0.01)

0.02(0.01)

0.03**(0.01)

Pseudo/Adjusted R2 0.18 0.21 0.19 0.11Number of observations 633 690 1337 1337

Note: Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, ** the 0.01 level. Entries are unstandardizedlogistic regression coefficients (for voting) or regression coefficients with standard errors inparentheses. All incentives presented in table 6 are also included in these models. We also includeprior participation in these models.

19

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