Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T09:18:23.971Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Wage Arrears and Economic Voting in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2006

KASPAR RICHTER
Affiliation:
World Bank

Abstract

This paper revisits the issue of economic voting in the context of the 1996 Presidential Election in Russia. The election was branded as a fundamental choice between capitalism and communism, yet voters were also grappling with a large crisis of personal finances: about one in two workers experienced nonpayments of wages at the time of the elections. The analysis exploits a rich nationally representative household panel dataset to identify the impact of wage arrears on the second-round election outcome. Wage arrears reduced the vote for the incumbent President Yeltsin among workers from around 65% to 49%, which amounts to a drop of 4% in the Yeltsin vote in the second round. Support for Yeltsin vote declined with the amount of wage arrears at the time of the vote and with wage arrears in 1995. Wage arrears led more voters to believe the government to be noncaring and to favor income restrictions for the rich. Political attitudes of working men changed more than those of working women.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2006 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alfandari G., and M. Schaffer. 1996. “Arrears in the Russian enterprise sector.” In Enterprise Restructuring and Economic Policy in Russia, ed. S. Commander and M. Schaffer. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Ashenfelter O. 1978. “Estimating the effect of training programs on earnings.” Review of Economics and Statistics 60 (February): 4757.Google Scholar
Ashenfelter O., and D. Card. 1985. “Using the longitudinal structure of earnings to estimate the effect of training programs.” Review of Economics and Statistics 67 (November): 64866.Google Scholar
Blundell R., M. C. Dias, C. Meghir, and J. V. Reenen. 2001. “Evaluation of the employment impact of a mandatory job search assistance program.” Working Paper 0l/20, The Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Blundell R., and M. C. Dias. 2002. “Alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics.” Portuguese Economic Journal 1 (Issue 2): 91115.Google Scholar
Brainerd E. 1999. “Winners and losers in Russia's economic transition.” American Economic Review 88 (No. 5, December): 1094116.Google Scholar
Brudny Y. 1997. “In pursuit of the Russian presidency: Why and how Yeltsin won the 1996 Presidential election.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30 (September): 25575.Google Scholar
Cai H., and D. Treisman. 2004. “State corroding federalism.” Journal of Public Economics 88 (3–4, March): 44393.Google Scholar
Clarke S. 1998. “Structural adjustment without mass unemployment? Lessons from Russia.” Working Paper 13, Centre for Comparative Labour Studies at University of Warwick.
Clem R., and P. R. Craumer. 1995. The geography of the Russian 1995 parliamentary election: Continuity, change, and correlates. Post-Soviet Geography 36 (2, December): 6786.Google Scholar
Colton T. 1996. “Economics and voting in Russia.” Post-Soviet Affairs 12 (4, October–December): 289317.Google Scholar
Desai P., and T. Idson. 2000. Work without wages. Russia's nonpayment crisis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Duch R., and H. Palmer. 1999. “Theory drift in economic voting models: Perhaps the economy doesn't always matter.” University of Houston. Typescript.
Earle J., and K. Sabirianova. 1999. “Understanding wage arrears in Russia.” Working Paper 139, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and East European Studies.
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 1997. Transition Report 1997. London: EBRD.
Fidrmuc J. 2000. “Economics of voting in post-communist countries.” Electoral Studies 19 (2–3, June): 199217.Google Scholar
Goodhart C., and R. Bhansali. 1970. “Political economy.” Political Studies 18: 43106.Google Scholar
Goskomstat. 1998. Russian Statistical Yearbook 1998. Moscow: Goskomstat.
Grafe C., and K. Richter. 2001. “Taxation and public expenditure.” In Russia's Post-Communist Economy, ed. B. Granville and P. Oppenheimer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heckman J., and R. Robb. 1985. “Alternative methods for evaluating the impact of interventions.” In Longitudinal Analysis of Labor Market Data, ed. J. Heckman and B. Singer. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hoddinott J., and B. Kinsey. 2001. “Child growth in the time of drought.” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 63 (4, September): 40936.Google Scholar
Ivanova N., and C. Wyplosz. 2001. “Who lost Russia?Graduate Institute of International Studies, transcript.
Jalan J., and M. Ravallion. 2003. “Does piped water reduce diarrhea for children in rural India?Journal of Econometrics 112 (Issue 1): 15373.Google Scholar
Javeline D. 2003. “The role of blame in collective action: evidence from Russia.” American Political Science Review. 97 (1, February): 10721.Google Scholar
Kinder D., and D. Kiewiet. 1979. “Economic discontent and political behavior: The role of personal grievances and collective economic judgments in congressional voting.” American Journal of Political Science 23: 495527.Google Scholar
Kramer G. 1971. “Short-term fluctuations in US voting behavior.” American Political Science Review 65: 13143.Google Scholar
Layard R., and A. Richter. 1995. “How much unemployment is needed for restructuring: The Russian experience.” Economics of Transition 3.1 (January): 3558.Google Scholar
Lehmann H., J. Wadsworth, and A. Acquisti. 1999. “Grime and punishment: Job insecurity and wage arrears in the Russian Federation.” Journal of Comparative Economics 27 (4, December): 5956l7.Google Scholar
Lehmann H., and J. Wadsworth. 2003. “Wage arrears, pay gaps and the distribution of earnings: What can we learn from Russia?Royal Holloway University of London, transcript.
Lewis-Beck M., and M. Paldam. 2000. “Economic voting: An introduction.” Electoral Studies 19 (June): 11321.Google Scholar
McFaul M. 1996. “Russia's 1996 Presidential Elections.” Post-Soviet Affairs l2 (4, October–December), 31850.Google Scholar
Miguel E. 2003. “Poverty and witch killing.” University of California, Berkeley and National Bureau of Economic Research, transcript.
Miller A., W. Reisinger, and V. Hesli. 1998. “The Russian 1996 Presidential election: Referendum on democracy or a personality contest?Electoral Studies 17 (2, June): 17596.Google Scholar
Moscow Times. Selected issues.
Oxford Analytica. Selected issues.
Paxson C. H. 1992. “Using weather variablitiy to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in Thailand.” American Economic Review 101 (Issue 1): 3972.Google Scholar
Ponomareva M., and E. Zhuravskaya. 2004. “Federal tax arrears in Russia: liquidity problems, federal redistribution or regional resistance?Economics of Transition 12 (3, September): 37398.Google Scholar
Robertson G. 2005. Strikes and protests in Russia during the 1990s. Columbia University. Dissertation Manuscript.
Roland G. 2002. “The political economy of transition.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 16 (1, Winter): 2950.Google Scholar
Rose R., and B. Tikhomirov. 1996. “Russia's forced-choice Presidential election.” Post-Soviet Affairs 121 (4, October–december): 35179.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum P., and D. B. Rubin. 1983. “The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects.” Biometrika 70: 4155.Google Scholar
Russian Economic Trends. 1996 and 1997. Selected issuesRussian Economic Trends.
Thames F. 2001. “Did Yeltsin buy elections? The Russian Political Business Cycle, 1993–1999.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 34 (March): 3256.Google Scholar
Treisman D. 1996. “Why Yeltsin won.” Foreign Policy (September–October).Google Scholar
Treisman D. 1999. After the deluge: Regional crises and political consolidation in Russia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Treisman D., and V. Gimpelson. 2001. “Political business cycles and Russian elections, or the manipulations of “Chudar.” British Journal of Political Science 31 (April): 22546.Google Scholar
Tucker J. 2004. Comparative economic voting: economic conditions and election results in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic. Princeton University. Manuscript.
Tucker J., and T. Brader. 2002. “It's nothing personal? The appeal of party leaders and the development of partisanship in Russia. Princeton University. Manuscript.
Warner A. 1997. “Is economic reform popular at the polls?Development Discussion Paper No. 598, Harvard Institute for International Development.
Willerton W. 2003. “The dynamics of Presidential popularity in post-communist Russia: Cultural imperative versus neo-institutional choice?The Journal of Politics 65 (1, February): 11141.Google Scholar