Support or Justification? Questioning Political Support in Russia and Other Autocracies

This presentation is based on the paper that reexamines political support in autocracies, challenging the democratic model that assumes that citizens back governments when policies match their preferences. In autocracies where genuine choice is absent, high approval ratings mask a different psychological process. Focusing on wartime Russia and several other autocracies, we argue that what often drives political support in these regimes is a system justification process, wherein citizens justify a regime to preserve positive self- and group-images even when policies conflict with their preferences. This analysis makes the case for an alternative framework that offers a more conceptually valid way to grasp regime-individual relationships in autocracies.

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is Professor of Russian Politics and Director of Russia Institute at King’s College London. She is an author of The Afterlife of Soviet Man: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus (Bloomsbury 2023); an award-winning The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020), an earlier book, Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism Inside Russia (Notre Dame University Press, 2010), and numerous articles. Her current research focuses on issues of social psychology of collective ressentiment, authoritarian governance and legitimation, and public opinion in Russia.