Hannah Chapman1; 1 Miami University, United States
Discussion
How do electoral manipulation and oppositional protests influence political attitudes in non-democratic contexts? In this study, I leverage the plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of a series of original surveys fielded on nationally-representative samples in Russia to understand the ways in which electoral fraud and post-election protests independently impact trust in political institutions over time. Contrary to existing literature, I find that allegations of electoral manipulation and resulting protests do not appear to impact trust in political institutions generally. However, trust in the leading authority is more susceptible to these events: Trust for Vladimir Putin declines following the elections, only to rebound during the protest period. Finally, I examine the conditional impacts of fraud and protest on trust, finding that updating occurs primarily among urban residents and those with weak political views and affiliation.
