Abstract
ABSTRACT The 2021 urban political protests in Russia in support of Alexei Navalny have swept the country, beginning in the Far East and reaching Moscow. They, however, displayed large variation in the number of protesters taking to the streets in the country’s regional capitals. While the immediate driver of urban protests is usually a political event or a decision of authorities, the willingness to protest accumulates before that, creating protest potential. To explain why some Russian regional capitals accumulate protest potential while others do not, we perform Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 53 cases. It reveals that a high share of young and educated people and the presence of organized civil society, but not the Internet consumption or the performance of city authorities, are crucial for the accumulation of protest potential in Russian regional capitals. These findings advance our understanding of urban political potential in autocracies as well as of Russia’s political geography.
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