Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Third Wave Reversed: Undercurrents of Authoritarianism in the Former Soviet Union

本研究试图解释几个后苏联国家的公民倾向于或多或少专制形式的政府的条件，以理解民主转型最终失败或成功的原因，因为本研究认为公众的偏好是决定民主能否生存的核心因素。虽然更广泛的研究项目在俄罗斯、乌克兰、白俄罗斯和爱沙尼亚探讨了这些问题，但该项目对乌克兰的2000名受访者和白俄罗斯的1500名受访者进行了全国性调查。调查数据将与地方经济数据相结合，以便对个人和社区层面的属性进行统计分析，这些属性形成了对威权主义的偏好，并与其他后苏联国家进行跨国比较。与现有的权威主义研究不同，本研究从公民的角度探索了威权主义经常被忽视的“需求方”。由于所研究的国家在后苏联时代达到了最低程度的民主治理，因此了解导致这些国家的公民选举专制领导人的因素是政权过渡的一个重要方面。早期对民主化的研究天真地认为后苏联国家正在向民主发展，忽视了反向过渡到威权主义的可能性。此外，关于威权政权崩溃的文献集中在诸如政变和革命之类的灾难性事件上，这些事件“从上面”取代了以前的政权。该项目提供了一种理论，说明在民主薄弱的国家，公民何时支持、容忍和偏好威权统治。最后，本研究中进行的调查将填补民主化研究的空白，提供研究人员可以用来检查人们对威权政府的态度的问题。更广泛的影响除了推进关于政权过渡的政治科学学术研究，并产生关于以前未被充分研究的主题的新数据外，这项研究还可以在学术领域之外产生重要影响。为什么民主在某些情况下成功而在另一些情况下失败，这个问题对学者和政策制定者都非常重要。然而，在当前这个时代，当美国试图在有专制统治历史的地区建立新的民主国家时，这个问题变得越来越重要。对公民对威权政府形式的需求进行研究，不仅可以让决策者现实地评估未来民主化成功的可能性，还可以让他们制定出赋予民主最大成功可能性的政策。因此，这项研究的广泛影响有可能为外交政策的核心方面提供信息。

This research seeks to explain the conditions under which citizens in several post-Soviet nations prefer more or less authoritarian forms of government in order to understand why democratic transitions ultimately fail or succeed, as this research argues that the public's preferences are a central factor in determining whether or not democracy can survive. While the broader research program explores these issues in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Estonia, this project conducts nationwide surveys of 2,000 respondents in Ukraine and 1,500 respondents in Belarus. The survey data will be combined with sub-national economic data to allow statistical analysis of the individual and community-level attributes that shape preferences for authoritarianism and to conduct cross-national comparisons with the other post-Soviet countries. Unlike existing research on authoritarianism, this research explores the often-overlooked "demand side" of authoritarianism from the citizenry. Because the countries studied have met a minimal level of democratic governance in the post-Soviet era, understanding the factors that lead citizens in these nations to elect authoritarian leaders is an important aspect of regime transitions. Early examinations of democratization naively assumed that the post-Soviet states were developing toward democracy, ignoring the possibility that reverse transitions to authoritarianism were possible. Furthermore, literature on the breakdown of authoritarian regimes focuses on cataclysmic events such as coups and revolutions that replace previous regimes "from above." This project provides a theory of when citizens enable, tolerate, and prefer authoritarian rule in weakly democratic countries. Finally, the surveys conducted in this study will fill a void in research on democratization by providing questions that researchers can use to examine people's attitudes toward authoritarian government.Broader Impact In addition to advancing the political science scholarship on regime transitions and generating new data on topics that have been previously understudied, this research can have important impact beyond the academic realm. The question of why democracy succeeds in some contexts and fails in others is very important to academics and policymakers alike. Yet this question takes on increased significance in the current era when the United States is attempting to create new democracies in areas that have a history of authoritarian rule. Research into the demands by the citizenry for authoritarian forms of government not only allows policymakers to realistically evaluate the probability of successful democratization in the future, but also allows them to formulate policies that give democracy the strongest probability of success. Thus, the broader impact of this research has the potential to inform central aspects of foreign policy.