Market, State, or Don't Know? Education, Economic Ideology, and Voting in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

Russians' orientations toward market reforms and toward private ownership of the means of production are modeled with January 1996 survey data using simultaneous latent class analysis (LCA) in three education groups. Roughly half of Russian adults support market institutions, and roughly one-third support state-based economic institutions. The remaining one-sixth are uncertain or hold contradictory views. As modernization theory predicts, higher levels of education increase the likelihood that Russians will adopt a proreform outlook. Economic ideology strongly affects both turnout and party choice, net of demographic variables, income, membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (KPSS), egocentric and sociotropic assessments, and prodemocracy views. Moreover, economic ideology decisively mediates the effects of education on party choice and on turnout. In contrast to the issue-based struggles in established capitalist democracies, political conflict in post-Soviet Russia has been ideological conflict, pitting against one another two diametrically opposed visions of what constitutes a desirable economy and society.