Browsing by Subject "Russian sociology"

Trust is one the key concepts in analyzing the maintenance of social order and diversity in modern societies. Previous studies have reported that trust correlates, for instance, with higher economic growth, better governance, higher levels of education and subjective wellbeing. However, former Soviet countries face particular problems in developing the habits of trust. These observations of trust call for a more comprehensive and in-depth areal understanding of the concept. The present thesis examines the dynamics of political trust in contemporary Russia, and draws inspiration from W. Mishler and R. Rose’s (2001, 2005) studies of political trust. Mishler and Rose (2001) studied the origins of political trust in post-Communist Eastern European countries in the late 1990s. Their main finding was that while socio-demographic factors explain poorly the variance of political trust in post-Soviet sphere, the individual perceptions of political and economic performance of the institutions correlate significantly with it. Thus, they advance that political trust is a rational response to institutional performance in those countries. In this regard, political trust in Eastern European countries seems to adhere to conditions of the Russian proverb “doverjaj, no proverjaj” (“trust but verify”). This thesis aims to examine how relevant the aforementioned argument is in the context of contemporary Russia. This examination is done by conducting a kind of replicate analysis of Mishler and Rose’s model. Moreover, a critical evaluation of the results of thesis’ model is given by applying recent insights from Russian studies. The data for the thesis’ model are drawn from the third round of the Life in Transition survey (LiTS III). Analyses were performed using principal component factor analysis and ordinary least squares linear regression models. In general, the results of the thesis’s model are consistent with those of Mishler and Rose (2001): the subjective perceptions of political and economic performance of Russian institutions were the most significant domains associated with political trust in modern Russia, whereas socio-demographic factors had only a minuscule effect in shaping it. However, the hypothesis about political trust as a rational response to political and economic performance contradicts with the recent data and research on Russian economy and politics: economy has stagnated or even fallen in Russia during recent years, and, at the same time, Russian domestic policy has become increasingly repressive. These observations suggest that political trust might be a reflection of something else than mere rational response to institutional performance in Russia. On the other hand, the fluctuation of the Russian political trust implies that it presents evaluative attitudes toward institutions, but in the light of the evidence of this thesis, the level of rationality of these evaluative attitudes remains unclear and questionable.