Explaining support for Vladimir Putin: culture versus performance

• Autores: Roman Nikolaev
• Localización: SCS Journal, ISSN-e 2225-2215, Vol. 1, Nº. 2, 2012, págs. 60-80
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The leader of the 'new' Russia, Vladimir Putin, has had high popularity since the day he was elected as a president for the first time. Using the New Russia Barometer dataset, the paper tries to explain support for Putin for one of the years of the peak of his presidency (2004). In order to understand the support, I employ two competing theories - performance (in economic and political spheres) and political culture - which were suggested by the existing literature. The analysis, surprisingly, does not lead to significant results for performance in economic sphere, but political culture and performance in politics matter. As a result, I show that Putin embodies a figure of a strong leader that assures Russian population of stability (one of the features that Russians value a lot). At the same time the citizens pay attention to the accountability in the political arena - successes in political performance lead to the increase in support of Putin.