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Publications
Publications (83)
Opinion polls suggest that Vladimir Putin has broad support in Russia, but there are concerns that some respondents may be lying to pollsters. Using list experiments, we revisit our earlier work on support for Putin to explore his popularity between late 2020 and mid-2022. Our findings paint an ambiguous portrait. A naive interpretation of our esti...
What factors affect citizens’ engagement with the state? We explore this question through a study of victims’ and bystanders’ willingness to report crimes to the police, using data from survey experiments conducted in Russia and Georgia. We find that citizens’ willingness to report in both countries is strongly influenced by the nature of the crime...
Modern clientelist exchange is typically carried out by intermediaries—party activists, employers, local strongmen, traditional leaders, and the like. Politicians use such brokers to mobilize voters, yet little about their relative effectiveness is known. The authors argue that broker effectiveness depends on their leverage over clients and their a...
How do elections and postelection protest shape political trust in a competitive autocracy? Taking advantage of largely exogenous variation in the timing of a survey conducted in Moscow in 2011, we find that with few exceptions the election had little systematic effect on political trust, perhaps because vote improprieties were not new information....
Hitting Them With Carrots: Voter Intimidation and Vote Buying in Russia – CORRIGENDUM - Timothy Frye, Ora John Reuter, David Szakonyi
Do economic sanctions turn the public against the target government or cause it to rally around the flag? How do sanctions affect attitudes toward the sanctioner? How does bad economic performance under sanctions shape support for the target government? Despite their importance, these questions have rarely been explored with survey data. Results fr...
Scholars have identified many ways that politicians use carrots, such as vote buying, to mobilize voters, but have paid far less attention to how they use sticks, such as voter intimidation. This article develops a simple argument which suggests that voter intimidation should be especially likely where vote buying is expensive and employers have gr...
Secure property rights are central to economic development and stable government, yet difficult to create. Relying on surveys in Russia from 2000 to 2012, Timothy Frye examines how political power, institutions, and norms shape property rights for firms. Through a series of simple survey experiments, Property Rights and Property Wrongs explores how...
There is a large literature on the causes of clientelism, but few studies examine its effectiveness in turning out the vote. We compare the relative effectiveness of various clientelist brokers — party activists, employers, and other intermediaries — as well as the effectiveness of different types of selective inducements. Using framing experiments...
We examine cooperation with the state using a series of survey experiments on policing conducted in late 2011 in Moscow, Russia, where distrust of the state is high and attempts to reform the police have been ineffective. Through various vignettes that place respondents in situations in which they are the witness or victim of a crime, we experiment...
Vladimir Putin has managed to achieve strikingly high public approval ratings throughout his time as president and prime minister of Russia. But is his popularity real, or are respondents lying to pollsters? We conducted a series of list experiments in early 2015 to estimate support for Putin while allowing respondents to maintain ambiguity about w...
The relative bargaining power of rulers and right holders is thought to be a key determinant of property rights, but because it both shapes and is shaped by property rights, it is difficult to estimate the impact of bargaining power on property rights. We take advantage of a natural experiment by comparing the responses of managers interviewed just...
Language, ethnicity, and policy orientation toward Europe are key cleavages in Ukrainian society, but there is much debate about their relative importance. Based on a survey experiment of 1000 residents of Ukraine that manipulated three features of a fictional candidate running for parliament, I find that a candidate's ethnicity and language had li...
There is a strong consensus that secure property rights are critical for economic development, but tricky issues about the direction of causation and measurement have made it difficult to demonstrate this relationship empirically. In recent years, scholars have made progress on these issues. In the future, scholars can profitably turn their attenti...
The relative bargaining power of rulers and right-holders is thought to be a key determinant of property rights, but because it both shapes and is shaped by property rights, it is difficult to estimate the impact of bargaining power on property rights. We take advantage of a natural experiment by comparing the responses of managers interviewed just...
Vladimir Putin has managed to achieve strikingly high public approval ratings throughout his time as president and prime minister of Russia. But is his popularity real, or are respondents lying to pollsters? We conducted a series of list experiments in early 2015 to estimate support for Putin while allowing respondents to maintain ambiguity about w...
From robocalls to vote buying scholars have identified many ways that politicians mobilize voters to the polls. One mobilization tactic that has received less attention, however, is electoral intimidation. We use survey experiments and crowd-sourced electoral violation reports from the 2011-12 election cycle in Russia to explore this understudied p...
In recent years, scholars have identified the impact of institutional legacies on a host of outcomes, from economic development to civil wars (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001; Engerman and Sokoloff 2002). Scholars of postcommunism have played an important role in this debate by pointing to the myriad ways that precommunist and communist legaci...
The authors explore how modern autocrats win elections by inducing employers to mobilize their employees to vote for the regime and thereby subvert the electoral process. using two original surveys of employers and workers conducted around the 2011 parliamentary elections in russia, they find that just under one-quarter of employers engaged in some...
What factors affect citizens' willingness to cooperate with the state? We explore this question through a study of citizens' willingness to report crimes to the police, a quintessential form of cooperation with the state apparatus, using data from survey experiments conducted in Russia in December 2012 and Georgia in June 2013. We find that citizen...
Before the names of Just and Unjust can have place there must be some coercive force to compel men equally to abide by their covenants by the terrour of a punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant… So that the nature of Justice consisteth not in keeping of valid covenants: but the Validity of Covenants begins n...
What factors affect citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the state? We explore this question through a study of citizens’ willingness to report crimes to the police, one of the quintessential forms of cooperation with the state apparatus. We develop a 'calculus of cooperation' that highlights three sets of factors that potentially influence citi...
Through discussions with five Muscovites, the film My Perestroika shows the effects of social class on Russian politics and attitudes toward the West.
Wrestling with basic problems of causal inference between institutions and outcomes has been a central focus of political science over the last decade, and as elsewhere in the discipline, scholars of postcommunism have begun to make some headway on these problems. Their efforts have not only advanced important debates about postcommunism, but also...
Collier's treatment of Russia's neoliberal experience in Post-Soviet Social is a subtle and empirically grounded conceptual discussion of neoliberalism that invigorates a debate that has became rather stale. Rather than take the easy path of accepting neoliberalism as a coherent doctrine backed by corporate interests to gut the state, Collier borro...
Political and economic outcomes depend, in part, on the quality of the officials making policy. Many scholars argue that the free and fair elections are the best method for selecting competent officials. Others, however, argue that elections can lead to the selection of amateurs, demagogues, and political sycophants. Under this view, sub-national o...
We propose three ideal types of business–state relations in a transition economy and explore the impact of government directors on corporate boards for firm behavior. Using a unique dataset of joint-stock companies in Russia, we find that the presence of government directors on corporate boards is more consistent with a “collusion” ideal type of re...
Studies of mass support for economic reform reveal a simple conclusion: Everyone hates privatization. Yet whether respondents hold this due to material self-interest or concerns about the legitimancy or outcomes of privatization view is unclear. We test these arguments using a 2006 survey of 28,000 individuals in 28 post-communist countries and fin...
Does democracy promote the creation of market economies and robust state institutions? Do state-building and market-building go hand in hand? Or do they work at cross-purposes? This book examines the relationship between state-building and market-building in 25 post-communist countries from 1990 to 2004. Based on cross-national statistical analyses...
Using survey data from 28 transition countries, we test for the complementarity and substitutability of market-relevant skills and institutions. We show that democracy and good governance complement market skills in transition economies. Under autocracy and weak governance institutions there is no significant difference in support for revising priv...
* This research was supported by the National Council on Eurasian and East European Research and the Center for Advanced Studies of Higher School of Economics in 2006–2007 and the Program of Basic Research of Higher School of Economics in 2008.
1. The state arbitration courts are the main forum for resolving disputes between firms and between firms...
This article discusses how research on the transformation of command economies has contributed to the broader literature in comparative politics. It depicts the great variation in economic reform across countries over the last fifteen years, and examines how the European Union (EU), quality of governance, regime type, and interest groups influenced...
What happens in a "managed democracy" when the manager's term expires?
A 2006 survey of 28,000 individuals in 28 post-communist countries reveals overwhelming public support for the revision of privatization in the region. A majority of respondents, however, favors a revision of privatization that ultimately leaves firms in private hands. We identify which factors influence individuals’ support for revising privatizat...
Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin, or can right holders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? This is a critical question for developing and transition countries, where privatization is often opaque and businesspeople may receive property, but remain unwilling to use it produc...
Job creation has had important economic and political consequences for countries in transition. Evidence from a survey of 500 firms in Russia finds that new private firms are more likely to increase employment, while worker-owned and worker-managed firms are less likely to create jobs. In addition, firm managers who expand employment appear to be a...
Are property rights obtained through legally dubious means forever tainted with original sin or can rightholders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works?2 This is a critical question for developing countries (and Russia in particular) where privatization is often opaque and businesspeople may receive property, but remain unwillin...
Few dispute that secure property rights are critical to economic development. But if secure property rights are so beneficial, then why are they so rare? More precisely, what factors promote secure property rights? Do rightholders view private or state agents as a greater threat to property? Do they value bureaucratic commitment or discretion? I us...
In the wake of the Soviet bloc’s collapse, various postcommunist countries rushed to gain greater access to foreign markets. Many of them have made substantial progress in liberalizing commerce, but the movement toward free trade has been by no means universal. One prominent view is that the establishment of democratic institutions has stimulated e...
Scholars and policy makers have displayed a longstanding interest in the politics of economic reform, particularly over the 1990s as former Communist countries struggled to develop market economies. Yet remarkably little systematic research has been conducted on the political economy of commercial reform in the post-Communist world. We argue that t...
A political scientist examines the relationship between private property and elections, using a survey of 500 business elites in Russia. Specific attention is paid to how the type of property held by company managers influences their support for promarket parties and the holding of elections.
CENTRAL TO THE POST-COMMUNIST TRANSFORMATION is a redefinition of relations between business and the state. This redefinition has been particularly difficult in Russia, where policy makers and scholars alike have cited an incestuous relationship between business and the state as a key impediment to an orderly market economy. However, we have few em...
This essay examines the role, sources, and effects of private protection using an original survey of 240 small businesses in Russia and Poland. Results from the survey support three findings, First. most managers said that private protection organizations offered a service other than protection against rival protection organizations, Second, privat...
Perhaps the most striking feature of the postcommunist transformation is the tremendous variation in rates of economic growth across countries. To account for these differences, this article develops an alternative to the J-curve and partial reform views that currently dominate discussions of the politics of economic reform. This approach treats ec...
Governments that levy predatory regulation and provide few weak legal institutions draw businesses into the unofficial economy and compel them to hire private protection organizations. Based on a survey of shopkeepers in three cities in Russia, we find that retail shops face very high levels of predatory regulation and have frequent contacts with p...
Governments that levy predatory regulation and provide few weak legal institutions draw businesses into the unofficial economy and compel them to hire private protection organizations. Based on a survey of shopkeepers in three cities in Russia, we find that retail shops face very high levels of predatory regulation and have frequent contacts with p...
A classic problem of social order prompts the central questions of this book: Why are some groups better able to govern themselves than others? Why do state actors sometimes delegate governing power to other bodies? How do different organizations including the state, the business community, and protection rackets come to govern different markets? S...
From relatively similar starting points the Warsaw and Moscow city governments both conducted economic reform strategies, but the legal and economic environments now differ dramatically. Previous research shows that shopkeepers in Moscow are far more likely to hire private protection rackets, to need to use courts, and to bear a much higher regulat...
This work uses incomplete contracting theory to account for variation in the specific and residual powers of post-Communist presidencies. It uses evidence from 24 post-Communist countries to test theories of institutional choice that link presidential powers to economic reform, institutional legacies, party systems, and social cleavages. It argues...
Evidence from a survey of 105 shop-owners in Moscow and Warsaw shows that the reliance on private protection, as well as the burden of regulation and corruption, are much greater in Moscow. The evidence suggests that the `invisible hand' model of government better fits the Warsaw local government, and the`grabbing hand' model is more appropriate fo...
The design of institutions to create trust between trading partners who have incentives to cheat is a critical aspect of economic development. Without credible guarantees for contract enforcement from third parties, such as the state, trading partners face a dilemma. They would benefit by trusting their partners and exchanging their goods, but in t...
Are private institutions, such as reputation, and public institutions, such as courts, complements or substitutes? Some argue that trust-based social networks that rely on reputation sap the ability of state agents to provide public goods, while others argue that strong reputation-based social networks are the key to improving state governance. Sur...
Attempts to build market economies and democratic governments provide a wonderfiil opportunity to study some of the central issues in social science: What is the relationship between democracy and the market? How does private property emerge? Is the strengthening of the state driven by forces within society or within the state? To gain a better und...
Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin, or can right holders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? This is a critical question for developing and transition countries, where privatization is often opaque and businesspeople may receive property, but remain unwilling to use it produc...
Abstract will be provided by author.
Do elected or appointed leaders provide more public goods? The incentives generated by democratic selection mechanisms should induce leaders to provide the public goods valued by constituents. However, existing research has found it very difficult to identify the causal effect of elections on public goods provision. In this paper, we take advantage...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1997. Includes bibliographical references. Department: Political Science.