Maria SnegovayaColumbia University | CU · Department of Political Science
Maria Snegovaya
Doctor of Philosophy
About
39
Publications
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Introduction
My research interests include public opinion, political behavior and political economy. I study Russia’s domestic and foreign policy. I also explore the ongoing democratic backsliding and re-autocratization in Central and Eastern Europe and the tactics used by Russian actors and proxies who circulate disinformation to exploit these dynamics in the region.
Publications
Publications (39)
Across Europe and many other parts of the world, traditional parties of the left seem to be in terminal decline. While there are many reasons for this, we argue that the most important was the left's shift to the center on economic issues during the late twentieth century. Although this shift made some sense in the short-term, over the long-term it...
On the concept of “rally around the flag,” scholars often argue that by invoking the danger of external threats in times of economic hardship, leaders can rally the public around the government in a way that would otherwise be impossible. Alternative streams of literature suggest that a darkening economic reality (“butter”) may weaken the impact of...
In the 1990s, many left-wing parties abandoned their traditional economic policies and adopted more pro-market economic stances. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context to explore the impact of these policies on the electoral fortunes of the left-wing parties that adopted them. Although rewarded at first with electoral victories, the ada...
The study scopes out the Kremlin’s malign social media operations in the United States, their key purveyors, platforms and enablers. It analyzes how the Russian approach to conducting social media campaigns targeting domestic audiences in the US has evolved since 2016 and whether its efforts can be deemed successful or effective. Snegovaya and Wata...
Scholarship analyzing Russia’s influence in Europe has focused primarily on the supply-side of this relationship, especially on the links between the Kremlin and specific parties. Surprisingly few studies have focused on the demand-side. My paper fills in this gap. First, I compile a dataset of pro-Russian parties in the European Union and show tha...
What explains the revanchism of (post-)imperial states? This question has renewed salience amid Russia’s expanded war against Ukraine in 2022. In this article, we conceptualise revanchism as a foreign policy preference that involves reclaiming territory once controlled. We also advance a new explanation for revanchism that emphasises elite continui...
Does the Putin regime have an ideology? This question has attracted renewed attention since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Some scholars claim that the war is directly linked to the Putin regime’s ideological aspirations to restore Russia’s greatness and challenge the West internationally, while others argue that contemporary regimes i...
From the rise of populist leaders and the threat of democratic backsliding to culture wars, the rejection of open markets and the return of great power competition, the backlash against the political, economic, and social status quo is increasingly labeled “illiberal.” Yet, despite the increasing importance of these phenomena, scholars still lack a...
Вопреки распространенному мнению, после распада СССР в России случился не демократический транзит, а временное ослабление власти федерального центра. Об отсутствии транзита свидетельствует почти полное отсутствие смены политических элит и воспроизводство в почти неизмененной форме многих институтов советской системы властных отношений в постсоветск...
Scholars often blame Russia’s recent re-autocratization on mistakes of individual leaders: Yeltsin or Putin. This essay casts doubt on such accounts. It argues instead that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced not a democratic transition but a temporary weakening of the state (incumbent capacity). This is evidenced by a lack o...
The article is devoted to understanding the origins of the Russian political elite. Relying on the empirical material of 2021, the authors study whether social ties in the Soviet managing class called “nomenklatura” is an important factor determining the position within the top echelon of the Russian political elite. In order to explore the genesis...
Recent studies of Putin-era elites have focused primarily on the role of siloviki. We bring the focus back to an analysis of the elite continuity within the Soviet regime. By compiling a dataset of the Putin-regime elites, we track their professional and family backgrounds to discover that the proportion of Putin-regime elites with Soviet nomenklat...
As Russia’s economy stagnated and real disposable incomes declined in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s 2014 war with Ukraine, observers have tried to analyze the extent to which these factors are able to shift Putin’s foreign policy priorities. This paper reviews the existing evidence to analyze how the perceived deterioration of the economic situati...
The regime that has emerged in Russia under President Vladimir Putin is no longer only Russia’s problem. By promoting corruption, kleptocratic practices and the violation of democratic norms in Western societies, and by using chemical weapons on their territories and carrying out assassinations abroad, Putin’s regime has become a significant domest...
In this study, I look at two types of political actors commonly described as 'populist' in literature-namely, rightwing populists and technocratic leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron and the Czech Republic's Andrej Babiš. While both types of political actors tend to emerge as a response to a decline in trust in established parties and adopt platf...
As Russian society becomes more modernized, the generational divide between the regime’s policies and the expectations and attitudes of young people has widened. This report uses existing public opinion surveys to provide a comparative and empirical examination of factors that distinguish Russia’s youth from older cohorts in terms of their sociopol...
How does perceived political corruption affect electoral preferences? Scholarship of Eastern Europe addressed this question primarily through the study of observational data. This study contributes to the existing scholarship by addressing the endogeneity problem and allows to causally interpret effects of perceived corruption on voting intentions....
Over the last decade, Russia’s position in global rule-of-law rankings has continuously declined as the Kremlin used Russian law to crack down on its political opponents. Recent amendments to the Russian Constitution in 2020 further weakened the independence of the judicial system. Have the legal setbacks in Putin’s Russia undermined the prospects...
Over the last decade, the Kremlin’s policies have consistently traded Russia’s economic development for Russia’s great power status. As a result, Russia has experienced a significant economic slowdown. Recent efforts to extend President Vladimir Putin’s presidency will enable Moscow to continue these policies. But are these policies feasible in the...
This paper explores the correlates of Russia’s aggressive international policy and argues that rising oil revenues increase the aggressiveness of presidential foreign-policy rhetoric. Using content analysis and machine-learning techniques, I generate a measure of aggressive discourse as the share of anti-Western sentences in Russian presidential sp...
Scholars on “rally ’round the flag” often argue that by invoking the danger of external threats in times of economic hardship, leaders can rally the public around the government in a way that would otherwise be impossible. Alternative streams of literature suggest that a darkening economic reality (“butter”) may weaken the impact of patriotic eupho...
This paper explores the correlates of Russia's aggressive international policy and argues that rising oil revenues increase the aggressiveness of presidential foreign policy rhetoric. Using content analysis and machine-learning techniques, I generate a measure of aggressive discourse as the share of anti-western sentences in Russian presidential sp...
In this paper, I dissect how the Kremlin reimagined Russia’s identity to support its policies both at home and abroad. It was the starting point for two of the most influential narratives in the Kremlin’s contemporary propaganda kit: the “predatory West” and the glorification of Russia’s past. I conclude that not only is the Kremlin successfully re...
In this paper I discuss the conservative turn that took place in Russia in the last 15 years comparing it to the recent experience of Hungary and Poland. I show that to a large extent this backlash is of a socioeconomic nature and reflects the people’s frustration with the downsides of the economic liberalization. Moreover, the depth of the origina...
Vladimir Putin's Russia meets the classical definition of fascist state, says Maria Snegovaya, except for one factor-the Kremlin can't yet unite the public around a clearly articulated nationalist ideology. This missing piece constrains the aggressiveness of the state. Without it, the Russian people will not accept fighting foreign wars indefinitel...
In her essay on Russia, Maria Snegovaya identifies three distinctive features of the Russian government’s system
for media control. The first is a combination of selectivity and “strategic uncertainty” in the censorship regime,
which offers a number of clear advantages over traditional mass repression. For example, it is less expensive
to maintain,...
Russia has been using an advanced form of hybrid warfare in Ukraine since early 2014 that relies heavily on an element of information warfare that the Russians call “reflexive control.” Reflexive control causes a stronger adversary voluntarily to choose the actions most advantageous to Russian objectives by shaping the adversary’s perceptions of th...
I conduct an econometric analysis of the impacts of Russian Orthodox Christianity in the values and attitudes of Ukrainians. I conclude that statistical evidence on all samples demonstrates that Catholics significantly differ in their preferences from Eastern Orthodox Christians: they are more likely to have less paternalistic and more pro-democrat...
This third, last article observes the dynamics of the development of Russia, the fourth of the BRIC countries, which have been analyzed in the context of the formation of its institutions and culture. Main factors that create a potential barrier on the way of Russias democratization and its transition to the innovation phase are selected. On one si...
Following the issue of innovational potential of catching-up countries the authors consider the peculiarities of China, India and Brazils institutions and culture. According to their opinion, these peculiarities can limit innovational development of the said countries. For each of them the limitations have their specifics, but when positive factors...
The article considers the role of innovations in the history of the mankind. Three stages of development are pointed out: agrarian, industrial and post industrial (innovational). Specific institutions and types of culture correspond to each of them. Peculiarities of the innovational stage according to catching-up and developed countries are discuss...
We focus on basic institutional and cultural obstacles for development of the BRICs countries. We argue that the tradition of authoritarianism and bureaucracy that provides the main support of an authoritarian leader, corruption, legal nihilism, disrespect for law (most notably by the authorities), and clientelism (most Russians believe that the be...