Protest and the politics of blame [electronic resource] : the Russian response to unpaid wages / Debra Javeline.

ISBN:

9780472024773

Title:

Author:

Javeline, Debra, 1967-

Personal Author:

Javeline, Debra, 1967-

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 291 pages) : illustrations.

Series:

Interests, identities, and institutions in comparative politics

Contents:

Introduction -- The crisis -- The reaction -- The puzzle -- The structure of this book -- Why blame attribution matters for protest -- Explanations for protest and passivity in Russia -- Issue difficulty and blame attribution -- Blame attribution and collective action theory -- The importance of blame attribution for human behavior -- What is a "normal" amount of protest? -- How much protest is there in Russia? -- What we can learn from individual-level data -- Conclusion -- Wage arrears in Russia: a difficult issue -- The role of the central authorities -- The role of regional and local authorities -- The role of enterprises and enterprise managers -- The role of the general economic situation and the transition period -- The role of international organizations and foreign governments -- The role of the Russian people -- Other sources of wage arrears -- Specifying blameworthy individuals and institutions -- Blame-avoiding strategies -- Blame-avoiding institutions and circumstances -- Conclusion -- Whom Russians blame for wage arrears -- Multicausality and information overload -- Measuring the attribution of blame -- Blame cast widely and inconsistently -- No clear saviors or solutions -- What explains the attribution of blame? -- Conclusion -- The politics of blame -- Protesting wage arrears -- Blame attribution and individual responses to wage arrears -- Blame attribution and group responses to wage arrears -- Feedback: protest's influence on blame attribution -- Conclusion -- Alternative explanations for the Russian response to wage arrears -- Economic arguments -- Psychological arguments -- Cultural arguments -- Organizational arguments -- Opportunities and constraints -- Other explanations for protest and passivity -- The robust relationship between blame and protest -- Conclusion -- Implications -- The study of blame attribution and collective action theory -- Blame and protest in comparative perspective -- The unlikeliness of social unrest in Russia.

Alcoholism, depression, and learned helplessness -- Scapegoating and demagoguery -- Appendix A. how the survey was conducted -- Appendix B. survey questions.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Wages -- Russia (Federation)

Blame -- Political aspects -- Russia (Federation)

Social psychology -- Russia (Federation)

Social surveys -- Russia (Federation)

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2003

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
331.210947 21	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

The wage arrears crisis has been one of the biggest problems facing contemporary Russia. At its peak, it has involved some $10 billion worth of unpaid wages and has affected approximately 70 percent of the workforce. Yet public protest in the country has been rather limited. The relative passivity of most Russians in the face of such desperate circumstances is a puzzle for students of both collective action and Russian politics. In Protest and the Politics of Blame, Debra Javeline shows that to understand the Russian public's reaction to wage delays, one must examine the ease or difficulty of attributing blame for the crisis.
Previous studies have tried to explain the Russian response to economic hardship by focusing on the economic, organizational, psychological, cultural, and other obstacles that prevent Russians from acting collectively. Challenging the conventional wisdom by testing these alternative explanations with data from an original nationwide survey, Javeline finds that many of the alternative explanations come up short. Instead, she focuses on the need to specify blame among the dizzying number of culprits and potential problem solvers in the crisis, including Russia's central authorities, local authorities, and enterprise managers. Javeline shows that understanding causal relationships drives human behavior and that specificity in blame attribution for a problem influences whether people address that problem through protest.
Debra Javeline is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rice University.

Author Notes

Debra Javeline is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rice University.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

The central question raised in this study is why the Russians who were not paid their full wages in the 1990s did not engage in active protest. Ample evidence attests to the lack of wage payments to Russian workers (in the spring of 1998, 20 million Russians were owed back wages) resulting in severe and widespread hardship. Drawing on the literature of social psychology and political science literature on economic voting Javeline (Rice Univ.) develops the theoretical hypothesis that protests failed to occur because most Russians were unable to make specific attributions of blame for the problem and thus were unlikely to identify specific targets for protest. A nationwide survey of 2,026 adult Russians conducted in September-October 1998 provided empirical support for her hypothesis. It found that only a minority of Russians could clearly attribute blame for wage arrears. Javeline sees little likelihood of social unrest in Russia. Her methodology is a multivariate analysis of survey data. This analysis advances the study of collective action and has applicability beyond the issue of popular protest. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and scholars in Russian studies and comparative social protest. J. L. Nogee emeritus, University of Houston