Support for democracy under authoritarianism: post-communist political learning in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of generational and lifecycle effects in generating support for democracy in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It applies theories of political learning and socialisation to the post-Soviet space to address the puzzle of how people in authoritarian regimes acquire supportive attitudes towards democracy. The study therefore tests the assumption of political socialisation theories that being socialised into higher levels of democracy should correspond to stronger democratic support. It also evaluates three competing models of democratic support: social modernisation, regime performance, and democratic knowledge.

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are valuable case studies due to their shared Soviet history and variation in their post-Soviet trajectories. Moreover, earlier waves of regime change did not coincide with readily available survey data. This thesis utilises the 1996, 2011 and 2017 World Values Surveys, supplemented by McAllister and White's surveys for Russia (2018), Ukraine (2010) and Belarus (2006). It employs ordinary least squares regression analyses and factor analysis to test each model. First, it finds little support for generational and lifecycle effects in any country, demonstrating that socialisation cannot account for generational differences in democratic support. Secondly, the explanatory power of social modernisation has declined over time, with urban residence being the most consistent predictor of democratic support. Thirdly, testing the performance model shows that the positive effect of seeing elections as fair is strongest among Putin supporters. Lastly, democratic knowledge has a positive effect across all generational cohorts. However, this thesis challenges these models of regime support by highlighting their limited explanatory power among younger citizens. The findings therefore have implications for understanding how young people socialised into authoritarian systems develop supportive attitudes towards democracy, as well as what generates democratic support in authoritarian and hybrid regimes more broadly.