Role of political values in the process of regime transformation: a comparison of Russia and Ukraine

Figure 1 (Source: WVS Country Reports: Russia 1995, 2006, 2011; Ukraine 1996, 2006, 2011)

We tried to compare the medians and modes of those distributions, but it has proved to be inappropriate, because the intervals were too large. As a result, in case of Russia and Ukraine, the medians and modes were too close and changing too slowly, so it was impossible to track any tendency (Figure 2).

(Figure 2)

So, we have introduced our own index, which we calculated as the area above the distribution graph, where the horizontal axis shows the intervals of the Emancipative values index and the vertical axis is the proportion of people who fall into each interval (Figure 3).

(Figure 3)

(Figure 4)

Figure 4 demonstrates the calculus procedure for the first period (3^rd wave of WVS, 1995 for Russia and 1996 for Ukraine). Index 1 is an intermediate index, which is calculated as

where x_k is the level of values and y_k is the proportion of people whose level is equal to or higher than x_k.

This index is discrete, meaning that we assign a certain level of values to the whole proportion of people falling in the interval. For example, 2,7% of people in Russia in 1995 fell into the interval 0-0.1 and we assume that all of them have the level of 0.1. Or, 13,7% fell into the interval 0.1-0.2 and we assume that all of them have the level of 0.2.

Index 2 is more accurate since it implies variations of the level within one interval. For instance, if 2,7% of people in Russia in 1995 fell into the interval 0-0.1, we assume that some of this group have the level of 0, others - 0.02, 0.05 and so on. That is why Index 2 is lower and at the same time more realistic than Index 1. So, in our further analysis we will use Index 2 and will refer to it as the Index of Emancipative values (EV Index). The equation for it is

where x_k is the level of values and y_k is the proportion of people whose level is equal to or higher than x_k.

We conduct the same procedure for 2006 and 2011 data (the calculus procedure to be found in the appendix), which allows us to see the following dynamic of the index (Figure 5):

(Figure 5)

Apart from the level of emancipative values, we want to see how the dynamic of post-materialism as a whole. So, first, we also calculate the Index of Post-Materialism (PM Index) for each year, using the same algorithm as for emancipative values and then put them in one table to see the change (Figure 6):

(Figure 6)

We have two values indices measured in 1995/6, 2006 and 2011. Unfortunately, since there was no data on the 4^th wave of WVS available for our countries, the first gap between measurement moments is twice longer than the second one. So, when we see the dynamic of our indices from 1995/6 to 2006, we actually do not know, how fast the change happened and have to presume that it happened evenly throughout ten years. Since the link we want to test is directed from values to democracy, we have to measure democracy level during periods after the moments of values measurements. So, to check if a rise or a fall in these indices throughout the years leads to changes in democracy level, we will look at the following correlations: values in 1995/6-2006 and democracy level in 2000-2010; values in 2006-2011 and democracy level in 2011-2016.

For this, we took the data from the Freedom House Rankings for Political Rights (PR) and Civil Liberties (CL) in Russia and Ukraine from 1995 to 2016. The data is presented in a form of two scales - for PR and CL, and each country gets a score from 1 to 7 for both PR and CL, where 1 is the highest and 7 is the lowest level. In order to clearly see the dynamic, we slightly transformed this data, using the calculation procedure offered by Inglehart and Welzel: first, we reversed the scale, so that a lower number corresponds to a lower level of PR and CL. Then we summed up the scores for PR and CL and subtracted 2, so that the minimum level was 0 and not 2. Finally, we amounted the highest level (12) to 100% (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005a).

Index of Democracy = 100/12 * (PR + CL - 2)

As a result, we got a new set of scores for the level of democracy in Russia (R) and Ukraine (U) from 1995 to 2016 (Figure 7.1 and 7.2):

Figure 7.1

Figure 7.2

2.3 Findings

2.3.1 Emancipative values

At the first measurement moment (1995/6) the level of emancipative values in Russia was 3 percentage points (p.p.) lower than in Ukraine: 35,2% and 35,3% respectively. By 2006 they had become almost equal with Ukraine still being slightly ahead: 38,9% for Ukraine versus 37,4% for Russia. However, by the end of our researched time period (2011) Russia had outran Ukraine, but only by 0,03 p.p., making it 40,0% versus 39,7%. So, the dynamic of the EV Index in both countries has shown a rise in the level of emancipative values. In Russia it increased by almost 5 p.p., which is more significant than in Ukraine, where the growth amounted to 1,4 p.p. It is also worth noting that the growth in both countries was almost equal in both periods of time between measurement points (from 1995 to 2006 and from 2006 to 2011), although the second period was twice shorter than the first one.

2.3.2 Post-Materialism

In both Russia and Ukraine, the level of post-materialism measured by our PM Index during the whole research time period was lower than the level of emancipative values. In 1995 Ukraine enjoyed a higher level of post-materialism (19,5%) if compared to Russia (17,7%). By 2006 the gap increased by 5 p.p. solely due to the increase in the Ukrainian level: interestingly, in Russia the level of post-materialism remained exactly the same during the whole 11-year period from 1995 to 2006. After that it started to grow and by 2011 has reached 20,8%, making the total growth of 3 p.p. On the contrast, Ukraine had experienced a slight backlash of 0.3 p.p. during the period from 2006 to 2011. Still, by the end of the research time period Russia had been laying behind Ukraine, which had the level of 22,3 % by 2011. So, the level of post-materialism increased in both countries and although the PM index had different dynamics, in 2011 the gap between Russia and Ukraine remained almost equally small as in the beginning - 1,5 p.p. The growth and the gap between the countries were more significant in case of emancipative values than post-materialist ones.

2.3.3 Correlation with Democracy Level

The level of democracy was almost equal for Russia and Ukraine back in 1995. By 2000 the contrasting development tendencies had already become obvious with Russia falling behind. The gap had slightly shortened by 2011 due to a fall of the Ukrainian democracy level and the Russian one remaining the same. By 2016 the gap had increased very significantly due to shifts in the levels of both Russia and Ukraine. First, we compare the dynamics of the indices of emancipative values (EV) and post-materialism (PM) and democracy level (DL) for Russia (Figures 8.1.1 and 8.1.2):

(Figure 8.1)

1995-2006: First values measurement period 2006-2011: Second values measurement period

(Figure 8.1.2)

In Ukraine, the dynamics look quite different (Figures 8.2.1 and 8.2.2):

(Figure 8.2.1)

1996-2006: First values measurement period 2006-2011: Second values measurement period

(Figure 8.2.2)

Now let us compare the dynamics by period:

1. Changes in democracy level in 2000-2010 after changes in values in 1995/6-2006

In 1996 the index of emancipative values in Russia was 35,2% and in 2006 - 37,4%, so the increase amounted to 2,2 p.p. At the same time, the index of post-materialism did not change at all in this period and remained 17,7%. During the second half of this period and in the five next years (2000-2010) the index of democracy dropped from 33,33% to 25,0%, making it a 8,33-p.p. fall. Prior to that, it fell even more significantly from 58,33% in 1995. Thus, no correlation observed.

In Ukraine the indices of emancipative values and post-materialism in 1995 were higher than in Russia - 38,3% and 19,5% respectively, while the democracy index was the same - 58, 33%. By 2006 the index of emancipative values rose only by 0,6 p.p. - less, than in Russia. On the contrast, whereas in Russia no increase in post-materialism observed, in Ukraine it rose by 3,1 p.p. Anyway, both values indices were higher in Ukraine than in Russia and the difference was bigger in case of post-materialism index than in case of the emancipative values index. The growth of Ukrainian indices correlates with the increase in democracy index in the following period of 2000-2010. It rose from 50% in 2000 to as much as 75% in 2009, but then dropped to 66,67% in 2010. It is worth noting that from 2000 to 2004 the index was stable, before which it dropped from 58,33 in 1999. The growth started in 2004 and was most probably linked with the Orange revolution, which we will discuss in section 2.4.

2. Changes in democracy level in 2011-2016 after changes in values in 2006-2011

For Russia, the growth of the emancipative values index continued in the second period and was even bigger than in the first one: by 2011 it had reached 40,0%, having increased by 2,6 p.p. After the first period of stagnation, the post-materialism index also rose in Russia to 20,8% in 2011 - the rise of 3,1 p.p. However, this did not turn around the trajectory of democracy index, which decreased by 16,67 p.p. and reached 8,33% in 2016. The increase in both values indices was thus followed by a fall in democracy index twice bigger than in the first period. Again, no correlation.

In Ukraine the increase in the emancipative values index also continued but again did not exceed 1 p.p.: by 2011 it had risen to 39,7%, almost equaling to Russian 40%. At the same time, Ukraine experienced a slight (0.3 p.p) drop in post-materialism index, making it 22,3% - still higher than in Russia. The dynamics of democracy index in the following period was non-linear: it first dropped to 58,33% in 2011 and then increased back to 66,67% in 2014 and remained stable till 2016. So, in the end, the level did not differ from the one in 2010, and the controversial dynamics of the values indices were not followed by either fall or rise of democracy index.

3. Overall dynamic

Before proceeding to interpretation, let us have a few additional and concluding remarks. First, in both countries the index of emancipative values throughout the whole research period was higher than the index of post-materialism. It can be explained through initial differences in measurements in WVS, but also by a wider scope of covered issues in case of the post-materialism index: as we said in the theoretical chapter, it reflects people's general worldview, while the emancipative values index shows specific political values. Second, both values indices had increased in both countries. In case of emancipative values, the overall growth was more significant in Russia. That is why at the end of the second period (2011) Russia was slightly ahead Ukraine, although it lied behind in the beginning (1995/6). As for post-materialism, the dynamics were quite similar: Ukraine was in 1995 and remained in 2011 around 2 p.p. ahead of Russia and the overall increase was about 3 p.p. for both countries. Finally, the regime transformation trajectory was quite different during the overall research period. In Russian case it was linear and fell from the same level as the Ukrainian one by as much as 50 p.p. Ukraine experienced many rises and falls of the democracy index with the highest point of 75% and the lowest of 41,67%. Russian lowest point equaled 8,33% and was met right at the end of the research period (2016), making the gap with Ukraine amount almost to 60 p.p.

2.4 Interpretation and Analysis

We saw no expected correlation between values and democracy level in both research periods in Russia. Contrary to our hypothesis, decrease in democracy level temporally followed a rise in the level of post-materialism and emancipative values. Also surprisingly, Ukraine enjoyed lower levels of emancipative values, but ended up having a better democracy. Let us try to interpret these negative results.

2.4.1 Russia

2000s in Russia have been significantly more successful in terms of economic security, which, according to Inglehart and Welzel's model, may have contributed to the rise of emancipative values and post-materialism. Indeed, in our second research period (2006-2011) the increase in emancipative values index was almost the same as in the first period (1995-2006), although the second period is twice shorter. Since we assume that the change in values happen evenly throughout each period, it means that in 2006-2011 they changed twice faster than in 1995-2006, which may have resulted from massive economic growth of the 2000s.

However, values change very slow and have to be entrenched in people's mind in pre-adult and young age. In general, the model presumes that younger cohorts have higher level of emancipative values and post-materialism than the whole sample, which was actually the case in Russia during our research period. We calculated both values indices for younger cohort (respondents of 18-26 years old in Wave 3 and of 18-29 in Waves 5 and 6) and compared it to the one of the whole sample (Figure 9.1):

(Figure 9)

We indeed observe that both indices are above average in younger cohorts throughout the whole research period. In case of emancipative values, the dynamic of the younger cohort followed the same pattern as the whole sample, but the increase was slightly lower in both first and second sub-period. During the shorter second period the growth must have been faster than during the first one, assuming, again, that it happens evenly throughout years. The level of post-materialism remained the same from 1995 to 2006 in the whole sample and even decreased in younger cohort. It can be explained through the fact that Russia, as most ex-communist states, during the 1990s, experienced a mixture of controversial effects: cohort and period (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). While the society followed the universal pattern of intergenerational shift towards post-materialism and higher emancipation, this process was hindered and sometimes even reversed due to the socio-economic disaster of the 1990s, which forced people to appreciate survival more than anything else.

However, these indices cannot reflect the influence of the economic prosperity of the 2000s over the people who grew up in this period, since in 2011 they were too young to get into the sample of Wave 6 of the WVS. But according to the model, it is this cohort that should mostly represent the generational shift towards higher level of post-materialism and emancipative values. First, as we said, they were growing in conditions of existential security and relative high well-being, and second, they were never influenced by the communist state propaganda, which also cultivated survival- rather than self-expression-oriented mindset (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). This was the first cohort that experienced both those favoring factors, so we expect a more significant growth of the emancipative values to be detected in it in the next wave of the WVS, that is to be published already in July of 2020.

For now, however, we cannot see that with the help of the WVS, so let us use other data on the values of the younger cohort. The research conducted by Levada Center and Friedrich Ebert Foundation revealed that young people (the respondents of 14-29 years old were interviewed in May-June 2019) demonstrate stronger propensity towards democracy and higher criticism to state institutions than the whole population. At the same time, the majority of the respondents said they were not interested in politics, never performed any form of political activism, and almost 60% thought it would be good to have one strong leader or party who could rule the country for the common good (Friedrich Ebert Foundation & Levada, 2020). The survey also showed that young people living in Moscow have more interest in politics, more liberal values and higher criticism towards the regime, which aligns with better economic conditions Moscow enjoys in comparison to the rest of the country. In this respect, we can assume that change in mass values in Russia have not yet led to an increase in democracy level. 2019 and 2020 have become years of wider and more active political discussion and action, new faces seem to have appeared on the non-systemic political arena, which makes us expect serious transformations of the regime.

At the same time, people who grew up in the 2000s experienced not only socio-economic security and prosperity, that were supposed to increase their level of emancipative values, but also were subject to political education that was mostly oriented towards the opposite direction. Since the end of 1990s Russian elites have tried to hamper or reverse the shift from survival to self-expression values. They have constantly appealed to different sorts of existential threats: terrorism, a comeback of the 1990s, external influence and “color revolution”. This happens partly unconsciously and maybe even for a good cause, because they did experience many of those things and have a very security-oriented set of personal values. Russian establishment clearly belongs to the richest part of the society, but its pre-adult and young life, when the mindset was mostly formed, was in the Soviet Union or just after its collapse, when economic conditions could hardly generate a post-materialist worldview. Moreover, the current political class includes many members of the Soviet military and security elite, and their conservative, security-oriented mentality is still influencing Russian politics (Makarenko, Melville, 2015). It is hard to imagine these people would drastically change their own system of beliefs. We generalize the tendency for the sake of integrity of our thought, but obviously, there are many exclusions from our generalization.

This focus on security and survival does not happen only due to the Soviet past of the elites. To a large extent it is made on purpose as a justification of the “strong-hand leader” and a strict “power vertical”, which are supposed to provide stability in exchange for loyalty. Younger cohorts become a part of this game just like any other cohorts, but, according to Inglehart and Welzel's theory, the modernizing force of economic development and feeling of security should be more powerful in the process of forming their mindsets. It means that no matter how strong the artificial incorporation of the survival-oriented worldview is, new opportunities resulting from economic prosperity will lead to the rise in emancipation values anyway. This can be partially confirmed by the data on the values of “Generation Z” by Friedrich Ebert Fond and Levada that we discussed earlier.

As we mentioned in the first subsection of this chapter, in comparison to other post-communist states, both Russia and Ukraine had quite favoring structural prerequisites at the initial stage of transformation, but decisions and actions mattered more for democratization. Still some negative factors for Russian democratization were present - among others, the “resource curse”, threats of separatism and terrorism from Northern Caucasus and the role of a “great power”. Not only have these structural factors not disappeared overtime, but even strengthened, hindering democratization even more (Makarenko, Melville, 2015). Thus, as the transformation slowly continues, values are supposed to be the bridge between structures and actions. We described that there was no conflict between dominant values of Russian elites and their actions in our research period, since their values did not change much.

Our analysis shows, though, that there was such change in mass dominant values. However, no major regime transformation followed, meaning that the incongruence between mass values and regime was not high enough to cause wide action towards democracy. In fact, some form of such movement did happen in December 2011-March 2012, when non-systemic opposition protested against electoral fraud in parliamentary elections. These events changed the perception of the civil society by both itself and the state (Bunin, Makarenko, Makarkin, 2013). During his electoral presidential campaign, Putin admitted that the quality of state institutions and regime in general lied behind the desire and capability of civil society to participate in its political life. He added that Russian civil society had become far more mature, active and responsible in comparison to its condition just after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Kommersant, 2012).

Abiding by the spirit of that article, the “Bolotnaya” protests were indeed followed by a set of liberalizing reforms in Russian electoral system - the link seems to be quite in accordance with the theory of congruence. But those protests never became big enough to democratize the whole political system, and the cause for liberalization was almost abandoned after that. Besides, the liberalizing tendency during Putin's third term was accompanied (and then swept away) by a restricting one, which was ideologically justified as the conservative wave (Bunin, Makarenko, Makarkin, 2013). It included a wide set of prohibiting laws, like the Dima Yakovlev Law, law on foreign agents and criminalization of slander.

The restricting wave also implied stigmatizing modern “western” values. Instead, active propaganda of conservative Russian values was enforced, including the ones of traditional values and religion. As president Putin himself put it, citing the famous Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, “conservatism does not mean to hinder movement forward and upwards, but to prevent movement back- and downwards (Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, 2013). Weirdly, this metaphor aligns nicely with the movement of Russia on Inglehart and Welzel's cultural map. The conservative wave strengthened even more after the major foreign policy win - the reunion with Crimea in March 2014 (Makarenko, 2014). This action had quite a significant role in further authoritarian backsliding of Russia, as groups of different political orientations “rallied around the flag”.

So, in the end, by 2016 the emancipative values did not do much of their “job” of democratizing the regime. Let us go back to the theory and see how exactly a rise in emancipative values is supposed to contribute to democratization (Inlgehart & Welzel, 2011):

· Increase people's aspirations to exercise freedoms and generate a critical-liberal desire for democracy, in the sense that people with higher level of emancipative values, on the one hand, emphasize the empowering features of democracy rather than bread-and-butter and law-and-order issues. On the other hand, they normally underrate rather than overrate their country's democratic performance.

· Encourage mass actions that put power holders under pressures to substantiate democracy and trigger movements towards better democracy. For instance, to encourage nonviolent protest, even against the risk of repression.

The rise of emancipative values may not have led to changes in regime in Russia because one of those intermediate “steps” did not occur (yet?). As Inglehart and Welzel prove, the desire for democracy is almost universal nowadays. In Russia the support for democratic rule has never been lower than 50% of the population (Levada, 2015). What is important, is why people want democracy. Let us check, if the desire for democracy among Russians and their understanding of the concept had become more liberal during our research period.

Since Wave 5, the survey has had a set of questions devoted to the properties of democracy, some of them are clearly focused on empowering features (V133 The numbers of questions vary across the waves of the WVS. We use the numbers from Wave 6 (2010-2014) here and after. Corresponding numbers of the same questions in other waves can be found on the WVS webpage: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/: “People choose their leaders in free elections” and V136: “Civil rights protect people from state oppression”), others emphasize bread-and-butter (V131: “Governments tax the rich and subsidize the poor”) and law-and-order issues (V135: “The army takes over when government is incompetent”) According to the theory, over time more people would prioritize empowering features (V133, V136) as an essential property of democracy, while economic (V131) and security (V135) issues would be considered less crucial. Let us see if this is the case by comparing the proportions of respondents, who consider this property essential for a democracy (Inglehart et al., 2014). Unfortunately, we can do so only for our second measurement period because there was no such set of questions during Wave 3 of the WVS.

Russian dynamics (Figure 10.1):

(Figure 10.1)

As we can see, the properties that focus liberal aspects of democracy lose support overtime. Paradoxically, so do the economy- and security-focused properties. So, the issue of a more liberal mass understanding for democracy in 2006-2011 is quite ambiguous. However, the answers to the survey questions may be very dependent current political situation, as we described on the example of possible bias in case of 4-item post-materialism index. The significant drop in percentage of people seeing free elections as a crucial aspect of democracy may be explained by the economic crisis of 2008-09, when economic problems became far more significant. Besides, after 2007 started the rise of the “sovereign democracy” and “multipolar world” concepts, so more people believed Russia needed its own specific way of pursuing democracy: from 2005 to 2011 the proportion of those favoring West-style democracy, fell by 5 p.p. (Levada, 2015).

Encouraging political action is the second aspect of the role of emancipative values. The 6^th wave of WVS was conducted in September-October 2011, prior to the parliamentary elections in Russia in December and following mass protests. But since values change slow, we may say that those protests indeed were an articulation of the preceding rise in emancipative values. As we mentioned earlier, this demand for democracy did lead to limited liberalization of the regime, but no further drastic transformation followed.

Let us see the dynamic of protest sentiments to see, how changes in emancipative values affected people's will to act: according to the data of “Levada”, in 1998 the biggest portion of Russians (50%) thought political protests could possibly occur. This number drastically fell in 1999-2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power. The parameter remained considerably low with its peak in the middle of “Bolotnaya” protests in February 2012 - 33% (the record was first beaten by 1 p.p. in July 2018, presumably due to the pension reform, but this peak is out of our research period). So, we can conclude that during our research period the rise in emancipation values only once resulted in political protests, and its scope was not high enough to force serious regime transformation.

To sum up preliminary conclusions about Russia, we figured out that:

1. Russia slowly moves from “survival” to “self-expression” pole on the cultural map, which implies the rise of emancipative values. This process was slower in 1996-2006 than in the 2006-2011 due to the massive economic surge of 2000s. This means that the first part of Inglehart and Welzel's mechanism seems to be right in the Russian case (from economic prosperity to rise in emancipative values). On the contrary, the second one (from change in values to regime transformation) was only partially proven on the example of Russian politics of 2000-2011.

2. Emancipative values are a bridge between structures and actions and lead to regime transformation through rising mobilization of elites and masses. It happens in two dimensions: first, people's desire for and understanding of democracy becomes critical-liberal. In case of Russian mass beliefs of 2006-2011 this was not the case, presumably because of the economic crisis and decreasing support for Western-style democracy. Second, emancipative values encourage people to take such political actions as protests, which did happen in 2011-2012. They indeed caused partial liberalization of the regime but did not end up with its full-scale transformation.

3. This means that the limited liberalization was enough to temporally align mass demand for freedoms and institutional opportunities to pursue it. The incongruence between values and regime, thus, was present but not too high. This may be explained by the fact that changes in values most crucially affect mindsets of younger cohorts, which we demonstrated by comparing the values indices of the young with the ones of the whole sample. Elder cohorts also become subject to change, but slower and to a smaller extent. This concerns both masses and elites: most decision-makers in Russian political class have long-ago established survival-oriented mindsets. They promote their values both because they genuinely believe in them and because it helps them to remain in power.

4. We assume that people, who grew up during the economic surge of 2000s and who have not yet got in the sample of the WVS, have higher level of emancipative values than their parents and the link between this value shift and regime transformation can be established in the near future, as the young will take more active action to pursue their rights and freedoms. For now, we cannot prove it with the WVS, since its new wave is to be published in June 2020, but our expectations can be already partially confirmed by other data, for example the survey conducted by Friedrich Ebert Fond and Levada Center in 2019.

2.4.2 Ukraine

Ukraine values and political regime during our research period had a common path of development. We observed a slight increase in emancipative values index in both periods. Remarkable is that each of those increases was indeed followed by mass political action that, at least superficially, look like regime transformations - the so called “Orange revolution” in 2004 and the Euromaidan in 2014. Since the end of the 1990s democracy level has always been higher in Ukraine than in Russia, however, it has not been high enough to fulfill Ukrainians' demand for democracy, which led to mass protests. So, we can conclude that in case of Ukraine, emancipative values “did their job” better than in Russia, if we consider their role of encouraging political action. The congruence theory, thus, also seems to be more applicable in Ukrainian scenario.

However, none of those waves of protests actually led to a full-scale deep transformation. The Orange revolution did help Ukraine develop free and fair elections and gave it a lesson in power sharing and conflict resolution (Makarenko, Melville, 2015). Besides, the protest indeed resulted in a serious institutional change - the regime switched from presidential-parliamentary to premier-presidential, which is supposed to foster pluralism in emerging democracies (Shugart & Carey, 1992). This contributed to higher level of democracy, fixed by different indices, including the one by Freedom House, that base their rates mainly on formal practices and institutions of the country.

It is highly important, though, that informal practices, such as corruption, clientelism and nepotism started to substitute the formal ones and pull Ukraine away from democracy already in mid-1990s and continued to actively do so throughout 2000s and 2010s (Matsiyevsky, 2018). As the elites have always extracted rents from those practices, they have been interested in keeping the hybrid regime as it is, making the way out from the “institutional trap” (Polterovich, 2004) even less likely.

The Euromaidan achieved even less than the Orange revolution, although it also led to the return to a more pluralistic premier-presidential regime (after Ukraine restored the presidential-parliamentary model in 2010). But eventually, no further transformation followed this institutional change, and the country remained as corrupted and far from economic surge as before. And the new president Petro Poroshenko even enlarged his influence over most branches of power through informal ties and clientelism (Matsiyevsky, 2018).

So, while we observe an increase in emancipative values in 1996-2011 in Ukraine, we cannot say it resulted in the successful end of democratic transition. Ukraine remains in the grey zone: some researchers classify it as a hybrid regime (Matsiyevsky, 2018), others - as “flawed democracy” (The Economist Democracy Index). We established that the changes in values indeed were temporally followed by mass political action, so in this dimension the values acted as predicted by Inglehart and Welzel's model. Before proceeding to reflect on what went wrong and why mass action did not result in regime transformation, let us look at the second dimension in which emancipative values are supposed to lead to democratization.

We will check, if the desire for democracy became more liberal during the research period (Figure 10.2). We use the same scheme and questions of the WVS as for the Russian case:

(Figure 10.2)

As we see, the support for the empowering features of democracy (V133 and V136) did rise overtime, which allows us to assume, the understanding of democracy had become more liberal. But the “bread-and-butter” (V131) and “law-and-order” (V135) issues also gained in popularity, although they still lie behind the “liberal” properties of democracy. Analysis of the WVS data also shows that the perception of the existing state of democracy in Ukraine became more critical, in the sense that Ukrainians demonstrate less trust in state institutions than, for example, Russians, and, in general, are less satisfied with the way democratic rule is executed in the country (Surzhko-Harned, Turkina, 2018). However, similar criticism can be observed in many young democracies, especially in the western part of post-communist countries.

The rise in emancipative values emancipative values in 1995-2011 was followed by mass mobilization and protest. It also implied a more critical-liberal understanding of and desire for democracy. While formally we observe that the level of democracy also rose, a deeper analysis of the Ukrainian case shows that no major transformation towards democratization occurred due to the persistence of informal institutions practices. In the end, did values actually matter, and if yes, why did they not lead to democratization?

First suggestion, the increase in emancipative values was too small. Although the protests that followed the increase were massive, they may have been driven by the resentment towards the incumbents rather than by a desire for a better democracy (although these motives are hard to tell apart). So, the protesters got what they demanded, but this did not make their lives much better.

Since the dynamic of the emancipative values index is not quite active (an overall growth of 1,4 p.p.), we should also pay attention to the index of post-materialism. In contrast to the other index, its increase was quite significant in the first period (from 1996 to 2006) - 19,5% to 22,6%, while in Russia there was no growth at all. Therefore, we may assume that the massive economic growth of the 2000s in Russia led to the growth in post-materialism only by the second period (2006-2011), whereas during the first one Russian minds were still shaped by the remembers of the 1990s. In Ukraine neither the 2000s nor the 2010s were marked by such an economic surge (f.e. WB data), so during the second period the index of post-materialism even slightly decreased.

However, despite more outstanding economic performance in Russia, the level of post-materialism remained higher in Ukraine during both periods, which can be explained by other factors that must have influenced the development of values in Ukraine - closer ties with the West in “soft-power” spheres, the historical heritage of the western regions and their growing influence over the whole country (Sasse, 2002). Besides, as we mentioned, already at the initial stage of transformation, Ukraine enjoyed some democracy-favorable preconditions, which also had its role in forming a more pluralistic political culture than in Russia - economic fragmentation, autonomous parliament, East-West cleavage.

The problem is that during our research period (and after it ended) the Ukrainian pluralism remained “feckless” (Carothers, 2002) - the political process consisted mostly of inter-elite conflicts, large-scale political fragmentation, and the permanent instability of its cabinets of ministers (Gel'man, 2008). This has two implications: it prevents Ukraine from backsliding to Russian-style dominant power politics, but also keeps formal institutions so ineffective that informal ones continue to substitute them. So, the way Ukraine is governed is more incongruent with the mass demand for freedom than in the Russian case, which, together with other factors like external influence, leads to higher mass mobilization and more often mass protests. However, during our research period this incongruence and following mass action were not enough to let Ukraine get out of the institutional trap.

It is also worth noting that Ukrainian political and economic establishment inherited conservative survival-oriented worldview from the Soviet times, although to a much more limited extent than in Russia. That is why the rotation of elites that was achieved in Orange revolution and Euromaidan is important, even if the new elites cannot change the system. But it turns out that even this rotation was very limited and concerned the figure of president and a narrow group around him, while most legislators and other representatives of the regime remained the same (Matsiyevsky, 2018).

New hopes for change appeared when Vladimir Zelensky and his team came to power, because they indeed represent a younger cohort, that demonstrates higher levels of emancipative values and post-materialism (Figure 9.2):

(Figure 9.2)

This does not fall in our research period, but we can note that after more than one year of presidency the regime has still not undergone a deeper transformation and informal practices and inter-elite alliances are still persistent (Skorkin, 2020). This happens because Ukrainian decision-makers come not only and even not so much from political establishment, which did rotate a lot under Zelensky, but from the economic elites, or oligarchs, who did not disappear when the new president came and continue to extract benefits from the status-quo. Unless they quit doing so, which is unlikely, the political process in Ukraine will consist of cycles of “cartel-like deals” (Gel'man, 2008), even if positive institutional changes, such as the shift to the premier-presidential model, take place.

Our preliminary conclusions about the link between changes in values and democratization in Ukraine would be:

1. Ukraine experienced a very moderate increase in emancipative values due to low economic performance in our research period. The level of post-materialism rose a bit more significantly than emancipative values in 1996-2006, but in 2006-2011 slightly decreased. Presumably, the increase was also influenced by close ties with the West in “soft-power” spheres and the historical “European” heritage of the western regions. The increase in values indices was more prominent in younger cohorts.

2. Even this moderate increase in both periods was followed by mass mobilization and action - Orange revolution in 2004 and Euromaidan in 2014. Both resulted in a democracy-favoring institutional change - shift from presidential-parliamentary to premier-presidential model and, consequently, an increase in democracy index (more significant after 2004 than after 2014). Besides, positive changes in emancipative values were reflected in a more critical-liberal understanding of and desire for democracy among Ukrainians.

3. However, the formal growth of democracy level measured by index of Freedom House is delusive, because it is based on the performance of formal state institutions, while the informal practices and inter-elite alliances are the key impediments that keep Ukrainian regime from deeper democratization.

4. High political mobilization and mass protests demonstrate the incongruence between people's demand for empowerment and regime constraints. Despite this incongruence, no deeper transformation happens. So, emancipative values do enhance political pluralism, but it remains “feckless”. This may be caused by not enough high incongruence. Moderate increase in emancipative values and post-materialism due to low economic performance argues in favor of this explanation. Wide participation in protests, in turn, can be caused by resentment towards the incumbents rather than by a desire for a better democracy.

5. One more plausible explanation is that the changes in values do not lead the country out of the “institutional trap” because their effect is diminished by other persistent factors, such as the lack of rotation in political and economic elites, who possess major financial and administrative resources and are highly interested to keep it. This is only possible, when the political system remains the same and they can continue to rely on informal institutions and alliances.

2.5 Limitations and space for further research

Before proceeding to the conclusion, we have to mention that our work was not at all free from different kinds of limitations. First, we lacked data that could lead us further in our conclusions. We studied Inglehart and Welzel's model on the example of Russia and Ukraine in 1995-2016, but we only had data covering dominant values till 2011. The results of next wave of the WVS are set to be published in June 2020 and will include younger cohorts in the sample. Analyzing this new data would be a great opportunity to check if people who grew up in 2000s, when the economy was surging (especially in Russia, to a much more limited extent in Ukraine) and who never lived under the Soviet regime and experienced communist propaganda, have a higher level of emancipative values and post-materialism. This, in turn, would raise questions about the future of political transformation in Russia and Ukraine. In our work we had to draw such conclusions basing on the data of another survey, conducted by Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Levada Center.

Second, the very object of the theory - values - is very hard to operationalize, and we may justifiably doubt the universal character of the WVS questionnaires and indices, as well as the bidimensional map of cultural zones. Are those binary oppositions of values - secular versus traditional and survival versus self-expression - the right ones and if yes, are they enough to grasp the differences between societies? Are the indices of emancipative values and post-materialism computed correctly? Are the sets of answers for defining the level of post-materialism chosen right? In case of emancipative values, maybe the index would work better if consisted of other sub-indices? If the sub-indices are good, are they equally important? In general, does freedom and emancipation mean the same for people of different countries? Such theoretical and methodological questions are common for comparativist research. They are out of the scope of our work but imply some epistemological limitations for it.

Finally, the revised theory of modernization, as almost every universalist theory, should of course be seen as a big generalization that allows us to predict tendencies and provides us with a toolkit to analyze phenomena and processes. However, as we climb down “the abstraction ladder” from universal tendencies to specific cases, the reality proves to be more complicated and controversial. We did observe an increase in emancipative values and post-materialism in both Russia and Ukraine, which aligns with the general trend of human modernization. Nevertheless, these values dynamics were not followed by a successful end of democratic transition in either of our research cases. This does not mean, though, that the theory is wrong. First, the “happy end” may still occur in the future, because the process of values change is slow and not always linear. Second, values may indeed have an effect, predicted by the theory, but they do not act in vacuum. Instead, they interact with other factors - economy, demography, international context, policy decisions and actions and others. The effect of other factors also does not let us establish causation between values and regime, so the only link we could find was correlation.

In reality, we can rarely see the pure chain “economic prosperity - change in values - democratization”, because at some points, all those processes continue and overlap. In other words, “all good things go together” (Huntington, 1968), meaning that different aspects of modernization happen simultaneously reinforce each other. As Huntington himself proves it, this is not always the case, and even if those aspects do overlap temporally, they may hinder rather than reinforce each other.

For example, economic modernization of the 1970s-80s, although slow and limited, may have changed the values of people in Eastern Europe, which led to their mobilization and a wave of regime transformations. The chain of Inglehart and Welzel's theory seems to be complete. But then, in Russia, Ukraine and many other post-communist states, economic modernization was replaced by a period of huge socio-economic disaster of the 1990s, when people again had to care more for their survival than self-expression. At the same time, the global hysteria about liberalism and democracy was gathering momentum, prompting emancipative values. So, two opposite tendencies met. 2000-2010s for Russia, again, were the years of economic surge and conservative state propaganda. The model predicts that the modernizing force of the economic security and well-being should be more powerful, which we hope will be tested within future research.

Conclusion

We conducted research on the role of values in the process of regime transformation in Russia and Ukraine in 1995-2016. In the first chapter we described the theoretical framework for our analysis, which is based on the culturalist approach that implies that people's culture and values determine the nature of political regime. The tradition of studying the link between culture and regime goes back to the Ancient Philosophy and has been present in social sciences till nowadays. Today much research within this paradigm has been focused on how changes in values influence regime transformation. An answer to this puzzle was provided by the congruence theory, which was also of great interest for our work.

So, in the theoretical part we also traced the research traditions of studying political transformations and democratization. Then we explained, how the culturalist approach and one its most prominent derivatives - Inglehart and Welzel's revised theory of modernization - enriched the subfield of political science covering regime transformations. According to this theory, economic prosperity increases people's feeling of security and well-being, which, in turn, changes their dominant values. If children or young people do not have to struggle for their survival, they learn to appreciate other things, which the authors unite under the label of “self-expression” values. A specific subset of these values, namely emancipative ones, mean that people highly appreciate freedom of choice and equality of opportunities. If existing state institutions are incapable to fulfill these aspirations, people demand more rights and corresponding institutional changes. And that is how democratization happens.