From Economic Crisis to Political? Dynamics of Protest Demands in Russia (2011-2012)

Abstract

The article tackles the issue of the interconnectedness of the global economic crisis 2008 to the 'For Fair Elections' movement in Russia in 2011–2012. Recent studies show that the 2008 crisis affected the political attitudes of Russian citizens, who began to assign blame to the government and ruling party. This development might have contributed to the mass mobilization of 2011–2012 against unfair elections and the 'United Russia' party in particular. To test this hypothesis we examined a dataset covering public protest events over 2008 to 2012 in the regions of Persmkii krai and Tyumen oblast’. The cases in this article were selected due to their similarity along the basic socio-economic indicators and differences in their political features, particularly with regards to their degree of competition and the level of civic engagement. The challenges of event-analysis have been addressed as well; it appears that a focus on the sub-national level helps overcome certain limitations. Despite these limits, the data reveals both the frequency and the level of engagement of citizens in protest activity, while tracking the composition of demands on display. According to this data, the cases of Perm and Tyumen demonstrate divergent dynamics of contention while sharing a similar protest composition: local or urban governance issues are the most frequent closely followed by political and civil rights demands with economic protests lagging behind. The global economic crisis hit both regions badly but did not dominate the public protest agenda. Moreover, contrary to theoretical expectations, contention was more intense in Tyumen rather than in Perm, whose economy was prone to crisis and politics were more conducive for mobilization. This paradox can be explained by Tyumen’s highly active communist parties, who, also contributed to the amalgamation of economic and political claims. Umbrella organizations in both cases were identified as another arena where political and civic activists struggled to reconfigure protest demands.