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

The revised theory of modernization predicts that increasing emancipative values lead to democratization. In the second chapter we tried to test this link on the example of Russia and Ukraine. To see the correlation between changes in values and democracy level, we first came up with comparable indices for values and democracy. In case of values, we used the already computed indices of emancipative values and post-materialism presented in the country reports of the WVS (Waves 3, 5 and 6). But we transformed them in the way that we could make a cross-national and cross-temporal comparison. According to the theory, younger cohorts in modernizing societies are supposed to demonstrate higher level of emancipative values and post-materialism than the society in general, so we calculated separate indices for the respondents of 18-29. As for democracy level, we measured it with the Freedom House index, but also transformed it using the procedure suggested by Inglehart and Welzel.

So, we have got the data covering the dynamics of emancipative values and post-materialism in Russia and Ukraine in two consecutive but not equally long periods: from 1995 to 2006 and from 2006 to 2011. We assumed that the changes in values, evenly distributed throughout the years, influenced the level of democracy in the following and also proportionally unequal periods: from 2000 to 2010 and from 2011 to 2016. As expected, the level of democracy in 2000s and 2010s was lower in Russia than in Ukraine and, moreover, was decreasing during the whole period. Since the countries shared many common negative and positive factors of democratic transition at the initial part of transformation, which is the focus of the first section of Chapter II, we assumed that the gap in the level of democracy resulted from different level of emancipative values and post-materialism.

As usually, the reality has proven to be much more complicated than the model. First, both Russia and Ukraine experienced an increase in the values indices during our research period. In case of emancipative values, the overall growth was more significant in Russia, so by the end of the period it had outperformed Ukraine, although it lied behind in the beginning. As for post-materialism, Ukraine was at the beginning of the period and remained at the end ahead of Russia, but the parameter rose in both countries. Finally, the regime transformation trajectory was quite different during the overall research period: in Russia the dynamic of democracy index was linear and declining, while Ukraine experienced many rises and falls, but was always ahead of Russia. To sum up, no correlation between the increase in values indices and democracy level was found in Russian case and only a partial one - in Ukrainian.

The biggest part of the second chapter is devoted to the interpretation of these controversial findings. We start with analyzing the factors that might have impeded the emancipative values to “do their job” of making Russian political regime more democratic. This “job” implies two dimensions. First, people's desire for and understanding of democracy become critical-liberal. The data shows no big advancement in this dimension of Russian mass beliefs of 2006-2011, presumably because of the economic crisis and decreasing support for Western-style democracy. Second, emancipative values foster mobilization and encourage people to take political actions, such as protests. Mass protests did occur in 2011-2012. As a result, the regime underwent a partial liberalization, which speaks in favor of the congruence theory. However, the protests did not end up with a full-scale transformation, meaning that the incongruence between values and regime was present but not too high.

In general, changes in values happen faster and more intensively in younger cohorts, and the WVS data confirms this. However, this cohort effect is mitigated by the period effect: the worldview of most people in the WVS sample was formed either under the Soviet regime, when state propaganda made the shift towards self-expression values unlikely, or in the 1990s, when the socioeconomic conditions forced people to care most of all for their survival. Moreover, most decision-makers in Russian political class belong to elder cohorts and 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. So, low democratic aspirations may result from demographic structure of the society.

However, the youngest cohort that has not yet got in the sample of the WVS might be crucially different in terms of its values: today's 20-year old people grew up during the economic surge of 2000s and were never subject to communist propaganda. According to other surveys, such as the one conducted by Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Levada Center in 2019, on some issues they do demonstrate more emancipative and post-materialist views than elder cohorts. Their values and aspirations need to be further analyzed, including the new data of the WVS that is to be published soon. But basing on the theory and existing data we can already now expect, that the link between this value shift and regime transformation will be established in the near future, as the young will take more active action to pursue their rights and freedoms.

As for Ukraine, it also experienced a moderate increase in emancipative values and post-materialism, but in contrast to Russia, even this modern increase was followed by a much stronger mass mobilization and action - Orange revolution in 2004 and Euromaidan in 2014. Both waves of protests resulted in similar institutional changes, namely the shift from presidential-parliamentary to premier-presidential model. Together with other factors, such as a relatively autonomous parliament, economic fragmentation and the politicized East-West cleavage, it has fostered the development of political pluralism in Ukraine, which, in turn, was considered by many indices, including the one by FH, as rising level of democracy.

However, formal institutions that underwent changes make only a part of Ukrainian political system, while the crucial impediments for its democratization are informal practices and inter-elite alliances. They replace formal institutions and make the Ukrainian pluralism, enhanced by emancipative values, remain “feckless”. The elites, especially the economic ones, who have rotated only to a very limited extent since the 1990s, are interested in keeping the status-quo. The current system is highly ineffective for the whole population, but its reliance on informal extracting institutions and alliances allows the elites to keep their financial and administrative resources and even build up on them.

So, we indeed observe incongruence between people's demand for empowerment and regime constraints, which leads to high political mobilization and mass protests. But for now, the incongruence has not been high enough to get the country out of the institutional trap.

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Appendix

Emancipative values - Data

Source: WVS Country Reports: Russia 1995, 2006, 2011; Ukraine 1996, 2006, 2011

Whole sample

Younger cohort (18-26 y.p. in Wave 3, 18-29 y.o. in Wave 5 and 6)

Emancipative values - Calculus procedures

Formulas:

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.

Graphs:

Calculus:

Whole sample:

Younger cohort (18-26 y.p. in Wave 3, 18-29 y.o. in Wave 5 and 6):

Post-Materialist Index - Data

Source: WVS Country Reports: Russia 1995, 2006, 2011; Ukraine 1996, 2006, 2011

Whole sample:

Younger cohort (18-26 y.p. in Wave 3, 18-29 y.o. in Wave 5 and 6):

In this case, missing values were too big to ignore, in contrast to the emancipative values data. So, we had to adjust it by taking the available responses for 100%.

Post-Materialist Index - Adjusted Data

Whole sample:

Younger cohort:

Post-Materialist Index - Calculus Procedure

Formulas are the same as for the Emancipative values index

Graphs:

Calculus:

Whole sample:

Younger cohort (18-26 y.p. in Wave 3, 18-29 y.o. in Wave 5 and 6):

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