Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Do ethnic federations undergoing democratization promote or discourage regional secessionism? This article argues, based on evidence from the Russian Federation, that when democratization produces a transfer of political accountability from center to region, the incentives of regional leaders shift, forcing them to react to local constituencies in order to retain office. If these constituencies desire autonomy, regional leaders must respond, making separatism not merely an opportunistic strategy but a necessary one for their own political survival. Democratization, then, can transform administrative regions into electoral arenas.
However, the case of Russia also demonstrates that regional demands for autonomy are not inevitable and may dissipate after they have begun. Popular support for nationalism and separatism varied significantly among Russia's sixteen ethnic republics in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. This variation is explained by showing that mass nationalism, contrary to conventional wisdom, is neither a latent attribute of federal regions, nor a simple function of natural resource endowments, nor something summoned into existence by the manipulations of regional leaders. Rather, it is argued that increasing competition for jobs in the Soviet Union's failing economy allowed particular issues articulated by nationalist leaders to resonate with ethnic populations. Through the framing of issues of ethnic economic inequality, nationalist leaders were able to politicize ethnicity by persuading people to view their personal life chances as dependent on the political fate of their ethnic community. Thus, secession in democratizing ethnic federations can be best understood by directing attention toward the origins of popular support for nationalism and the role that support plays in the elite contest for power within subfederal regions.
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37 Only in Chechnya and Mari-El do Russians dominate white-collar sectors, although Chechens constitute 40 percent of Checheno-Ingushetia's white-collar workforce and 54 percent of its total workforce. Chechens form 55 percent of the republic's total population.
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42 The social movements literature identifies these dimensions as critical. See Snow, David A. and Benford, Robert D., “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Morris, Aldon and McClurg, Carol, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 137Google Scholar; and Snow, David and Benford, Robert, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000)Google Scholar.
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91 Muzaev (fn. 61), 162