Public policy and elections in authoritarian regimes: evidence from the policy on native languages in Russia

How might public policy changes affect electoral support for authoritarian regimes? Missing from the existing scholarship, which focuses mostly on regimes generating political budget cycles and manipulating electoral rules, is an exploration of how non-fiscal and non-electoral policies may impact in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of public policy 2023-09, Vol.43 (3), p.427-446
Main Authors: White, Allison C., Saikkonen, Inga A.-L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ability
Authoritarianism
Autocracy
Budgets
Censuses
Changes
Dictators
Election results
Fiscal policy
Incumbency
Investigations
Language instruction
Language policy
Languages
Legislation
Minority & ethnic groups
Native language
Native languages
Panel data
Policy making
Politics
Presidential elections
Public policy
Voter behavior
Voters
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:How might public policy changes affect electoral support for authoritarian regimes? Missing from the existing scholarship, which focuses mostly on regimes generating political budget cycles and manipulating electoral rules, is an exploration of how non-fiscal and non-electoral policies may impact incumbent support. We examine this issue with electoral and census data from one of the world’s most prominent authoritarian regimes – Russia – to evaluate the regime’s 2017 change to the policy governing native language instruction, which curtailed minority students’ ability to learn their native languages and faced opposition in some ethnic regions. Examining panel data on presidential elections using fixed effects models, our results reveal that the regime’s support decreased in titular minority areas in 2018. The results also indicate that some of these patterns emerged in previous national legislative elections and thus cannot be solely attributed to the policy change.
ISSN:0143-814X
1469-7815
DOI:10.1017/S0143814X23000077